Here's the requested repost of part 2.

 

73, Jim

 

 

From: Jim Kutsch, KY2D [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: Wednesday, April 22, 2015 9:26 PM
To: 'For blind ham radio operators'
Subject: Hex Beam and accessible rotor, part 2: the mast and mounting the
beam

 

This is part 2 of my hex beam story, covering the mast and where and how it
is mounted. But first, to put it all in a bit of context, I live in downtown
Morristown in a residential section of town. I did not want an antenna that
would be obvious to the neighbors. That's one of the reasons I chose the hex
beam. It's not really as obvious as some larger antennas. So, the mast had
to be a bit stealthy too. I didn't want a tower or a series of guy wires.

 

I selected a Rhone telescoping mast and bought it from DX Engineering. It's
36 feet if fully extended but I didn't extend it all the way. These masts
come in two forms: one with 4 long sections and another with 5 shorter
sections. Only the shorter one can be shipped by UPS. The longer one
requires freight shipping. I bought the shorter 5 section one. Description
and ordering can be found here:

http://www.dxengineering.com/parts/roh-9h50

 

Our house is a two story house. In the back, the kitchen extends out beyond
the house but is only one story, making a 90 degree inside corner with the
rest of the back wall of the house. I put the mast in that corner supported
by wall brackets. One bracket is mounted into the outside wall of the
kitchen at the level of its first floor roof and the other bracket is
mounted in the rear wall of the house at the top of the second story roof
level under the rain gutter. The brackets I used hold the mast at a 12 inch
offset. They also came from DX Engineering, see:
http://www.dxengineering.com/parts/roh-wm12d

 

In the spirit of full disclosure, here's the part not to do. As I said
earlier I bought the hex beam last fall with the intent to get it up in the
air before winter and all the DX contests. I didn't make it. On the morning
of January 2, I had two friends here to help. One was a fellow ham and the
other was a professional handyman. After about an hour, the wall brackets
were lag screwed into the house; the hole was dug in the ground; a 2 foot
piece of 3 inch PVC pipe with a cap was placed in the hole; and the big
project to put it up was all nicely underway. Then, in the very last phase,
it all ran amuck.

 

Because the installation is so close to the back of the house and in an
inside corner as well, there was no way to put it all vertical with the
sections collapsed then push the mast up. We had the mast extended, the Ham
IV rotor mounted on the end, and the hex beam on a 12 inch mast above the
rotor. I was supporting the bottom at the PVC pipe, one guy was on the roof
pulling a rope attached to the rotor, and the 3rd guy was walking the mast
up, hand over hand. We weren't perfectly coordinated and made a very nasty
bend in the mast in the middle. WE put it back on the ground and were
thinking about how to go forward when it started snowing very heavily.

 

Yes, all good antenna projects in my ham experience involve snow. I can
remember being on the roof of our shared campus house with my college
roommates, who also were hams, working on antennas on Christmas break with a
blow torch and still not getting it hot enough to melt solder. But that's a
story for another day.

 

Back to the hex beam project, the snow presented a safety issue. No more
being on the roof. We took everything off the mast and the hex beam went
back on the 4 foot pipe in the umbrella hole on the patio table. New Jersey
had one of the toughest winters in quite a while and the snow wasn't off the
roof and ground anytime between that day and two weeks ago. Meanwhile,
Ginger kept asking when she could have the patio table back.

 

If you have stopped laughing by now, the moral of the story is when the
telescoping mast instructions say not to extend it before lifting it, you
should believe them. I had several months to think about  how to do it
correctly. Last Thursday, my helpful antenna team came back. We cut out the
bent part of the mast and put the two sections back together, albeit now a
bit shorter. No problem, I wasn't using the full 36 feet anyway. This time
we extended it all to the appropriate length to reach the 2nd story roof and
mounted only the rotor. One of the guys held the bottom in the hole and I
pulled the mast up from a second floor window with a rope tied to the rotor.
We bolted the mast into the wall brackets and then tied the ladder off to
the top bracket for safety. The 3rd member of my crew then walked up the
ladder carrying the hex beam in one hand. Remember, it's only about 20
pounds. He secured it on the 12 inch mast above the rotor then we pushed up
the sections a bit more to get to the desired final height. In its final
position, the rotor is about 4 feet above the gutter and all of the hex beam
sits below the peak of the roof so nothing can be seen from the front yard
or street.

 

As others on this list have pointed out, a hex beam doesn't really need a
Ham IV rotor but I already had one. But it isn't accessible. Years ago when
I used this rotor on my TA33 triband 3 element, I had an external speech box
that read out the beam heading. Unfortunately, I moved five times since I
was at that QTH and the voice readout box was lost in one of those moves. It
was custom built by an old Bell Labs ham friend back when I worked at the
Labs so there was really no way to replace it. Last fall before I started
this project, I went on a search for a way to make the Ham IV accessible
again. I'll share that story in part 3. Stay tuned.

 

73, Jim, KY2D