To Plant a New Tower!

de N5XU

As reported in last month's UTARC News, a research group in the Department of Aerospace Engineering has been busily transforming the exterior of the eastern penthouse of WRW. A three meter dish antenna has been installed in the center of the concrete pad that is the roof of the eastern penthouse. This antenna will be used for satellite tracking and communications. There is a lot more to the project, though, including a new railing on the eastern penthouse roof, conduit through the tar and gravel roof, large NEMA waterproof electrical boxes for equipment, and more.

The new concrete pad on the roof of WRW.

The research group is interested in helping to support UTARC, as naturally any students interested in satellite communications or radio communications in general should find a welcome home in Amateur Radio. Chris Wilkinson N8DVM has been working with the Aerospace Engineering department, and persuaded the project manager to include a new concrete pad on the roof of WRW for UTARC to use. As a portion of the overall cost of the project, it isn't very much, but is of enormous potential for the club.

The new concrete pad was poured on the roof sometime during the winter inter-semester break, at least five weeks ago. It is twice as thick as the concrete base for UTARC's current tower, and should easily support either a Rohn 25 or a Rohn 45 tower. It is located in much the same way as our existing tower's pad, so that a tower can be bracketed against the top of the staircase.

Looking down at the pad from the top of the stairway on the eastern penthouse atop WRW.

Unlike our current tower pad, bolts were not sunk into the concrete at pouring. This means that we will need to drill holes for the bolts and secure them with concrete epoxy or some other appropriate method.

Club members will discuss a new tower at the February club meeting. To make a new tower a reality, the club will need to buy or secure through donation four tower sections, a base plate, a top plate, a rotor plate, a thrust bearing, a mast, a rotor, and associated hardware. Rotor control cables and any run of coaxial cable to the new tower will be in the 300' range. UTARC News has learned that the club treasury is around $700 more or less.

How will a second tower benefit UTARC? Club member Ken Harker WM5R suggests, ``We can move the tribander over to the new tower, and maybe get the Force 12 add-on kit that extends the boom and gives you two elements on 40M. 300' of feedline loss at HF is not much different from the 100' of feedline loss we experience now. If we can find used hardline, we might make it almost the same as it is now. We could also put up our big Force 12 six meter yagi on the new tower, giving us two antennas on six meters - very useful in contests. By moving the tribander off the existing tower, we gain more mast space and remove a lot of windload from that tower. We can use the new capacity to add more UHF/SHF bands (902 MHz, 2.4 GHz) or to stack two meter yagis, or maybe even build an H-frame to phase four 1.2 GHz yagis. Another option is to install a WARC bands tribander for 30 meters, 17 meters, and 12 meters. Or mount a 2' dish for 10 GHz. There are many possibilities.''