Established 1984
The North 80 Foot Repeater Tower
Original installation 1993
After many years of sharing the two towers on the house for both the PBBS system and voice repeaters, Dad and I decided to move the voice repeaters out of the radio room in our house to a new "repeater shed" with a separate tower just for the voice repeaters.
In 1992 Sandy and I purchase a second hand Heights Tower from a local amateur radio operator, as we were unloading the sections in the backyard I heard my mothers voice coming from one of the upstairs bedroom windows...
"Where the hell is that thing going?"
In these two photos you can see the tower sections lined up in the backyard with the nice "rust free" hinged base plate and screw drive. I was not sure where the tower would be going but it was a really good deal that I could not pass up.
(click on images to enlarge)
The gang that participated back in 1993 on the repeater tower project:
Brad KA1SVW - Bill KA1VKD - Bruce KD1BE - Greg KC1CE - Steve KA1RCI - Syl N1DKF
Digging the hole back in the spring of 1993
One afternoon I dragged all of my grandfathers tools out into the woods and just started digging in the rocky ground behind one of our storage sheds. After a few hours of swinging the pick axe, grunting, sweating, and swearing... My father joined me and took over the hard work in the shallow hole that I had started.
(click on images to enlarge)
When Dad and I started digging this hole for the base of our third tower
we both knew this was going to be a huge project.
It took us several months to complete, with help from many of my friends, and as I create this webpage in August of 2010 the tower has been standing for almost seventeen years. We dug the hole and prepared everything that would be needed over several weekends in June and July of 1993.
In these photos you can see (Bill KA1VKD) providing more than his fair share of "sweat equity" digging the 6 x 6 x 12 foot hole for the towers concrete base.
(click on images to enlarge)
While my father was busy digging, Bruce KD1BE helped me to build a cage of rebar to drop into the hole for reinforcement within the concrete base. I drove over to Bruce's house and just started welding in his driveway. A few hours later I brought the cage home, hanging out the back of my IROC Camaro! Oh what a site that was, driving down Route 95 thru downtown Providence with all that rebar hanging out the back of my car...
(click on image to enlarge)
I had purchased the tower from a local Amateur Radio Operator that fabricated the hinged base plate, however he never made the mounting stubs used to bolt the tower to the tilt base. My friend Syl N1DKF came to the rescue and had three custom mounting stubs fabricated in his shop by welding large one inch bolts to some steel pipe the correct diameter to slip over the tower legs.
In these two photos you can see the wet concrete right after it was poured on August 23rd 1993, and then a few days later when I was testing the hinged base operation. I had just the first few sections of the tower in place, and the custom mounts that Syl N1DKF had welded for the project, and everything worked great.
(click on image to enlarge)
In this group of photos you can see the Diamond X500-NHA mounted at the very top for the 144 & 440 MHz voice repeaters and the Diamond X2200A side mounted for the 220 MHz repeater. These were taken when the tower first went up in 1993 and before the new repeater shed was built. Dad and I had moved the voice repeaters out of the house and had them on the air in the main shed before the separate repeater shed was built.
(click on image to enlarge)
In these next photos you can see the new repeater shed under construction while the new tower is on the air with the repeaters in the big shed at this time.
(click on image to enlarge)
North 80 Foot Repeater Tower Main Page
East 38 Foot Repeater Tower - West 48 Foot VHF / UHF Tower
Return to the KA1RCI Repeater Network Home Page
This page was last updated on
11/07/2010 and it has been viewed times.
Send mail to [email protected] with questions or comments about this web site.
Copyright 1995-2010 Steven M Hodell
Copyright in these pages, in the screens displaying the pages and in the information, materials and other content contained in this web site is owned by Steven M Hodell unless other wise indicated and is protected by U.S. and international copyright laws and treaties. The information, materials and other content of this web site may not be copied, displayed, distributed, downloaded, licensed, modified, published, reposted, reproduced, reused, sold, transmitted, used to create a derivative work, or otherwise used for public or commercial purposes without express written consent.