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   KM1C / Bill Pedersen's project

   QTH is the beautiful fishing village of Oriental, NC
   (Pamlico County, Grid Locator FM15PA)

Bill is putting together a great antenna setup and agreed to provide pictures and notes about his project for me to share with others. What follows are his construction pictures and commentary shared with me over the course of several months. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did. In one of his first notes, Bill wrote: ...remember I am the guy who was only going to do wires and verticals and low-power for the rest of his ham radio life .... until I spotted the ad for your TiltPlates! Once I realized I would no longer actually have to climb a tower, I got on the path to multiple beams, perhaps multiple towers, big-gun transceivers, and QRO!
Thanks a lot! (Hi!)

The Plan; Three Optibeam antennas will be mounted on a U.S. Tower HDX-555.; The antennas are: An OB4030 (on a TiltPlate) near the bottom of the mast, the OB9-5 (on a TiltPlate) in the middle, and the 6 meter OptiBeam at the top.Click here to go to the OptiBeam site to learn more about these great antennas.; Picture looking at the rear of the house taken from the dock below on Greens creek (salt water).
: Preparations (November 2010); In the last month, I have completed all the cabling to the HDX-555 tower, a 190 foot run from the house. 1/2" hardline, M2 Orion rotor cable, and Rat Pak remote antenna cable installed and working. The two control cables each have three Cannon plug disconnects: 1 at the base of the tower, 1 at the entry point to the house, and 1 on the pigtails from the control boxes. Installed for ability to disconnect for lightning, but also to be able to move the control boxes out to the tower for testing.; The Antenna Work Begins (December 2010)

I used a 2 step stepladder to get the TiltPlate slipped onto the end of the mast via a tempory double rope sling (I'm working alone) .... only because I have the tip of the mast up at about 8 feet. I then slid the assembly down the mast (on the ropes) and started bolting her in place and removed the rope.

As fas as I can tell, that is the last time I will have to use the short stepladder for this beam. I'll start building the boom tomorrow, right on the TiltPlate .... Looks like all work will be done chest high .... a dream come true.

Above - (The mast is a 24' chromealloy).

Above - One of the stackable TiltPlates is bolted in place. Note KARLock tube and catch in place.

Below - building the 40/30 meter 2 el yagi in place. (Note the heater, temps were in the 30's during this December cold spell, try doing that on the top of a tower.)

The mast is tied off at the far end to prevent "wobbles" during beam construction. The top end of the tower is resting on a boat jack stand .... Safety first, no sense in just relying on the tower raising fixture cable. This also stabilizes the tower during beam construction.

That's "Otter Creek" in the background along with some creekside neighboring homes. Our house is on "Green's Creek", off to the right of the picture .... a much bigger creek, almost half a mile wide. The water around here is all brackish, mostly salt.

If you look carefully, just to the left of the far end of the OB4030 boom, you can see the ZeroFive 43' vertical in the woods next to the creek. This antenna has worked far better than I ever expected .... I think due to "saltwater enhancement" of signals.

OB4030 antenna is completed while working entirely at ground level. The only time I got on a large step ladder was to take these pictures!

: VIDEO; Video Details: 9 minutes, SMALL 320x240 screen size, Microsoft .WMV format; Click to play .WMV format; Video Details: 9 minutes, LARGE 960x720 screen size, FLASH format; Click to play the FLASH format; A FULL Screen DVD version (500 MB) is available on request. Send me an eMail with your address information.