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Erecting a Tower

S

Skim

After having a roof antenna fall last winter (luckily without taking the chimney with it), I'm looking into having an antenna tower in the backyard or on the side of the house. All the tower installation companies I can find seem to specialize in commercial towers, and I don't want to dish out too much money if possible. Also, finding a way to do this without guy wires is preferable.

Anyone know if residential installers still exist, and are guy wires necessary at 50' or so?
 
A 50' tower should be guyed unless it is installed against a two or three story building and secured to the building.
Even if the tower is bolted to the top of the building, you'll have twenty or thirty feet of tower above the building.
That's a lot of steel. A high wind could bring top of the tower down.
I would guy the tower no less than thirty feet from the base.
You might also want to check with your Home Owner's Insurance Carrier to find out what they require.
 
I erected mine with guided wires and when we had a day where winds gusted up to 70 mph (non severe thunderstorm winds), our trees blew down before the antenna did, and it's still up! But the pole looks a little bent but at least it's still erect!
 
A 30-35 foot tower and mast bolted to the house is usually fairly stable.

Don't put a heavy antenna and rotator on a chimney mount. It may not fall down, but it will often bend.

If you have an ham or radio engineer friend, they might be able to help you if you know them well enough and make it worth their while.
 
I brought my folk's chimney down around 1971 with too many antennas...and dad didn't exercise his right to kill me. Bigger tower is better. Rohn 25G should be a minimum, with 45G being notably more rugged. Don't think about putting up the junk that has only horizontal members (was it called Phillips tower??)...it is garbage, will rust and even with guy wires, it's unstable. In my case, I had 80' of guyed 25G that I put up new in 1981 and transplanted when I moved in 1989. After the move, I took 50' of it, put a Rohn house bracket on it at 10-11' and burried the bottom 3' in cement. That puts about 37' of tower above the house. It has a 7' Channel Master dish and an APS13 FM yagi on it and has had bigger stuff on it in previous years. It's on a big hill and has a wind speed indicator on it. I've had it logging weather data since 2007 and the strongest wind gust recorded was 56mph--but the cups on the anemometer blew off at moment of that 56mph gust. I'll never know what that actual wind speed was. But in the end, 37' above the roof line, 30 year old Rohn 25G with no guying has survived everything mother nature has thrown at it for going on 22 years at this windier than most location.
 
Thanks for all the advice. One question: How do you reach the antenna on top if you need to adjust, replace, or add something?
 
What about lightning strikes? How do you protect your home and attached equipment?
 
1st of 5 said:
What about lightning strikes? How do you protect your home and attached equipment?
Click to expand...
Have I ever been down this road, but I have it licked to where I don't disconnect during any storm. I have a 240' commercial tower about 50' from my 47' DX tower. Each tower has 3 8' ground rods. There's a large copper wire between the two towers to bond them together. Each tower is bonded to the AC power ground rod (that's an important step that's rarely observed). Of vital importance...each coax cable that leaves the tower must have a "ground block" attached to the tower where the line leaves the tower. The rotor line may either be unplugged or a Polyphaser surge protector properly installed on it's control line. It took several years of lightning hits to perfect this, but it's been years since I've had damage even though I've watched the big tower getting struck. You're mileage may vary but that's what has worked for me.
 
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