A new item on the plot, a radio tower.

[ProDave]

Yes I admit, not what everyone wants.

One of my hobbies is ham radio. always in the past I have had my ham radio aerials attached to the house in some form. But now I am building a wooden house clad in wood fibre with no real means of fixing great sturdy T & K brackets for an aerial pole.

So time for something completely different, something I have wanted for a long time, but never managed to find one cheap enough. A trailer mounted wind up telescopic lattice mast:

Yes it's only a baby one. Three 10ft sections which when fully extended as in the picture, will give an aerial height of at least 30ft, more if I choose to have less of the top mast section inside the top tower section.

It came from a good friend of mine just up the road. It was originally a lighting tower and had a generator bolted on the A frame. My friend bought a job lot of 3 of them, he only wanted the generators so he then sold the bare towers. This was the last one of the 3.

It's not in bad condition. The steel ropes that wind the mast up need replacing as they are well rusty, and a few bits, mainly the jack legs need cleaning and re painting, but the rest of it is in pretty good condition, even the galvanising is good in most places, not bad since it was made in 1989.

It's going to get parked somewhere behind the static caravan eventually and the rear bedroom of the 'van will probably become my "radio shack"

I had some fun and games to get it here. The tyres were completely rotten. It took a well fitting spanner, a lot of WD40 and a long pole to get them undone. 2 replacement tyres from freecycle, old but legal tread, and my friendly garage mechanic swapped them over free of charge.

At some point someone changed it over to a pin hitch and in doing so didn't re connect the trailer brakes, and the mudguards have gone AWOL but that doesn't bother me as I don't intend towing it on the road again.

 

[SteamyTea]

"Friends from all over the world, non from this country"

 

[Onoff]

I used to muck around with building all sorts of receivers and transmitters. Back when it was all Denco coils and Jackson variable capacitors. I've built all sorts of aerials too from Yagis to corner and trough reflectors. Even had a bit of correspondence with Joseph J Carr.

Do you need new ropes for the winch? What size as I've just got a load of 6mm galvanised.