17m Yagi

17m Yagi 5 el 10m boom 

This has been on the cards for while 

Having the th5 on top means i cant come to the floor so the elements had to be slid on the boom

With the help of the mobile scaffold ..aka pallet and telehandler.

Kevlar rope for the supports 3mm

It makes the th5 look a little small.

 Only had to move the driven in 20mm for a perfect match ...well impressed with the software bang on

Pay close attention to the tubing sizes indicated ,these are metric sizes.I actually used a mixture (imperial and metric) in order to slide fit and even then the joints are tight.(www.aluminiumwarehouse.co.uk  is your friend)

120mm Variable air capacitor

Wow it's been a while since the last post ...dont time fly!! Im wanting  a big auto ATU to handle some big doublets ,nothing on the market ...well for normal men money anyhow ! So here we go with the first thing ..the variable air capacitor. Plates are made from 1.5mm alloy 1000 series which i drew up and got laser cut ,bearings off ebay for a few pence.

 6mm brass rod holds it all together

 Plates on rotating shaft

 Fixed plates on rod ,I drilled the nuts out to 6.3mm to slip over the thread ,makes it a lot quicker and by far less tedious.

 fitted together ready to line up .Insulator is made from bakerlite .

 Adjustment is via the fixed plates jacking the plates one way or the other

 All together and meshing nicely.

Measurements are 1680pf in full mesh ,will have to mount isolated from chassis to keep the minimum capacitance down ....Should of been a butterfly .After all this i recon i could make it with twice the space ....ill get some spacers !!!

75ft / 23m

Its up ,listen out for me #on air guys 

Up up up and away

New Gear box all in place and in its mounts .Pad at the side is for the tourqe reaction arm just to allow a little movement in case the coupling isn't bang on !

Managed to maintain the old chain guard ..saved a bit of time there .

Motor fitted to final drive with anchor arm in place 

From the other side

Its too fast

 Got round to trying the #electric tower winch ..if the motor had got enough poke it would of been up in 10 secs .It needs a reduction .Just so happens I've got the one left which I didn't use from the rotator :-).


By mounting the box here, if its still to fast i can put another chain reduction on it LOL .It will do 3 rpm as oppose 30 before .

Of course its never all straight forward over here ...the box is imperial ,they don't do metric imperial motor couplers so ive made one ...yes yes ill get some grub screws ,but for the time being they will suffice. These will also provide the drive (cant cut internal keyways here ) being as they are on the low torque side it should be fine if they break ,the worm drive will hold the tower up .

A bit more tomorrow 

A lick of paint

All Painted ,Ringspan tightened ready to roll

Installed onto tower, this nearly killed me !!! One hell of a lift with a bad back ,anyway its there !!!

View from the other side 

What's left to do now is get a bag of volts and chuck it in the motor ....maybe tomorrow i'm beat and need a seat .....oooh it rhymes .

Back to the winch (raise and lower)

Back to the winch .Having fitted the triplex chain ,it really needs a guard on it !!

Off cut of 3mm from the workshop steel archive !! cut and shaped 

Welded a band around the 2 half's then cut through middle ,makes a clamshell guard

This will keep the weather off the chain ,also keep the kids from getting there fingers in it ,having said that the winch is in the air abt 6ft/1.8m

A lick of paint is all i need to finish this now,unfortunately im struggling with a bad back and retired from workshop duty for a bit