Shack 2.0 Phase II: Dreaming of Towers
Back in 2016, my wife and I were becoming more serious contesters. We had a station on the air, but wanted to become more competitive. I also wanted to improve my DXing. I had earned DXCC using our 5 band Hustler trapped vertical, but desired more entities. Reading a lot of others it seemed the biggest bang for your buck always tends to be antennas. We already owned a K3S so there was also not much more to improve on that. While benchmarking, I realized we would need a tower and a directional antenna.Thus, the summer of the tower was born!
Examining what to buy and what to do took a lot of time. I asked questions and opinions from Mad River Radio Club members to understand their experiences. I read the ARRL Antenna Book and the Antenna Towers for the Radio Amateur book. The list of variables was bewildering. Like a normal engineer, I found I needed to use a process to help me decide what I wanted. Initially, I started with some goals.
I looked at several different antennas: tri-band yagis, spider beams, quads, and hexbeams. The real debate ragged between the yagis and a hexbeam. There were a lot of items to consider. I then turned to my thoughts on the tower to help eliminate some of my antenna choices. Remember, there is a huge interplay between the tower and antennas you can put up so the two should be considered together.
Now towers, yagis, and rotators were not new to me. I had been at W1YK and W0EEE in college. Both some of the best college clubs on the planet! My experiences there showed me the pitfalls of towers and multi-operating environments. And the fun!!! I was well aware of the issues that can occur when an antenna or rotator failed during a New England winter storm and what was necessary for repairs. I also knew how things have changed in our local area in terms of people capable of tower climbing.
I struggled for a long time with a classic Rohn tower, US Towers, masts. And the height. I conducted HFTA analysis on our QTH and of course being Michigan the results didn't help since they basically confirmed the old adage, "The higher the better!" I started to gain some headway when I decided to make it free standing. I also decided that the tower would need to be near the house and located about where the current vertical was to let the kids use most of the property near the house. My concerns over rotator issues and an inability to tower climb or find a climber once I was older lead me to to select US Tower's MA-40. Mounting the rotator at the bottom would also allow me to swap it out for repair much easier than a traditional tower design.
With the tower selected, I knew the maximum weight and wind area. I could now turn back to antennas. The tower selection meant I had to stay below 8 sq. ft. of wind load on the tower. There are not many antennas in this area. I really kept looking at a small yagi and the hexbeam. Specifically, the hexbeam from K4KIO. I eventually selected the hexbeam for its gain, low wind load, stack of monobanders for 6m through 20m, and ability to feed with one coax. (Back to those goals!)
Now, I needed to work through site planning, building permits, and final purchase. Oh..... and what to do about 40M. Since the tower could not support a 40M beam, I decided to move forward with a 40M vertical since I was focusing on DXing. That antenna would have to be located farther from the station, though.
Examining what to buy and what to do took a lot of time. I asked questions and opinions from Mad River Radio Club members to understand their experiences. I read the ARRL Antenna Book and the Antenna Towers for the Radio Amateur book. The list of variables was bewildering. Like a normal engineer, I found I needed to use a process to help me decide what I wanted. Initially, I started with some goals.
- Improve DXing contest scores
- Increase my country count
- Make the station easy to operate without exposing the complexity to guest ops
- Automate as much as possible
- Make maintenance as easy a possible
- Stay within a $10-$15K budget
- Keep the antenna farm at the fringes of locations to keep most of the property available for the kids to play
I looked at several different antennas: tri-band yagis, spider beams, quads, and hexbeams. The real debate ragged between the yagis and a hexbeam. There were a lot of items to consider. I then turned to my thoughts on the tower to help eliminate some of my antenna choices. Remember, there is a huge interplay between the tower and antennas you can put up so the two should be considered together.
Now towers, yagis, and rotators were not new to me. I had been at W1YK and W0EEE in college. Both some of the best college clubs on the planet! My experiences there showed me the pitfalls of towers and multi-operating environments. And the fun!!! I was well aware of the issues that can occur when an antenna or rotator failed during a New England winter storm and what was necessary for repairs. I also knew how things have changed in our local area in terms of people capable of tower climbing.
I struggled for a long time with a classic Rohn tower, US Towers, masts. And the height. I conducted HFTA analysis on our QTH and of course being Michigan the results didn't help since they basically confirmed the old adage, "The higher the better!" I started to gain some headway when I decided to make it free standing. I also decided that the tower would need to be near the house and located about where the current vertical was to let the kids use most of the property near the house. My concerns over rotator issues and an inability to tower climb or find a climber once I was older lead me to to select US Tower's MA-40. Mounting the rotator at the bottom would also allow me to swap it out for repair much easier than a traditional tower design.
With the tower selected, I knew the maximum weight and wind area. I could now turn back to antennas. The tower selection meant I had to stay below 8 sq. ft. of wind load on the tower. There are not many antennas in this area. I really kept looking at a small yagi and the hexbeam. Specifically, the hexbeam from K4KIO. I eventually selected the hexbeam for its gain, low wind load, stack of monobanders for 6m through 20m, and ability to feed with one coax. (Back to those goals!)
Now, I needed to work through site planning, building permits, and final purchase. Oh..... and what to do about 40M. Since the tower could not support a 40M beam, I decided to move forward with a 40M vertical since I was focusing on DXing. That antenna would have to be located farther from the station, though.
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