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Home brew tower pics

Lil'Yeshua

.......
Nov 22, 2012
4,615
313
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Pageland,S.C.
Here's some pics of my home brew tv antenna tower that I'll use for CB,etc. I built this back in 01' using 1/2&3/4" rigid electrical conduit(galvanized) and some angle iron for the ends of each tower section. It got built better as I progressed and had help from my brother who used to weld for a living so the wire welder he supplied came in handy. If I spent enough time doing research on tower construction it would've been built different. The tower consists of four sections. The base and three tower sections. At first,I didn't think that rigid conduit would be strong enough for the job but with adequate bracing makes it quite strong. It does flex but not much so I wouldn't recommend it for very tall towers. Perhaps with cross bracing it would stiffen it up a whole lot more. My tower hasn't been painted for a few years so what you see in these pics is the Rustoleum primer coat. Painted up with silver paint it's a sight to behold. Costs:$250 per section
The rope in the pic is to pull the tower off center once the bolts that secure the tower to the base are removed.
 

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2 look closely you'll see the tower tilt pivot. I developed the KISS philosophy(keep
it simple saint)
 

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The bottom tower section was built after the middle section so the welds look a little better. I've never welded before but with tips from my nephew the top section has beautiful welds. I had no tubing cutter to fit everything together so a lot of weld wire was flowed into these joints. I did use a table band saw for cutting everything.
 

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Top of gin pole. A 8 pully rope hoist is attached here to the tower a foot or so higher then the rope goes down to a idler pully which then attaches to the fav vehicle of choice. The highest stress on the rope is when the tower is horizontal but gets easier as the tower is lifted to vertical
 

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Did you use a jig when welding? Did you have any problem with the tower warping or twisting from the welding?
 
Did you use a jig when welding? Did you have any problem with the tower warping or twisting from the welding?

My brother rigged up a jig for it and yes,there where problems with warping. I tack welded everything in place and used C-clamps. The tower isn't laser straight but close enough for a first time welding
P.S. I did the top section all by myself and it's near perfect. The only deal with it was where to do the rail bends to mate the rails at the top where I used a pipe coupling to mate them to. My brother educated me after the fact
 
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Well,without a tubing notcher there's a lot of weld material in those joints. Nothing a grinder can't smooth out. It's been through Hurricane Floyd and several high wind thunderstorms since 01'

Agreed , not bad all in all, I would rock it. BUT you could have notched the ends with an angle grinder(with a cutting wheel) Not very fast way to do it, but it works
 
... Costs:$250 per section....


err,.... don't take this wrong, it's a nice construction, but,....... you can buy (used) ROHN tower sections for $25 - $40 .

after TV went to digital, many people can't get OTA TV and many will just tell you to take it down and you can have it free**Jump_im**
 

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