Antenna Takedown – Part 2

Continuing the story of the antenna takedown at K5ZD/1.

March 12, 2025

I was joined today by Mark KW1X, Martin AA1ON, and John N1PGA. We started around 10 am and the winds were relatively low with the forecast predicting they would become calm in the early afternoon (the forecast was correct!).

Here is our starting point for the day. A side-mounted 40-2CD at 70′, a 6-element 10m at 100′, and another 40-2CD at 110′.

The lower 40-2CD was on a bracket with a small mast. It was easy to pop the antenna off the mast and we engaged gravity to help with the rest. This tower has fairly narrow guying, plus a large pine tree that is too close, so it took some twisting and turning to guide the antenna down through the guy wires. I always seemed to get hooked on something behind me that I couldn’t see!

Next were the antennas at the top of the tower. We rigged up the gin pole and tied the rope to the 6-element 10. Of course, one side of one U-bolt holding the antenna galled during the removal of the bolt and had to be twisted off. A 6-el 10m doesn’t seem that large when you look up at it, but it was big enough to hang up on the 40-2CD above it and every guy wire on the way down. Again, gravity was our best helper, making it unharmed to the ground. I did have to climb down to help work it around each guy wire.

It took 2 hours of working time to reach this point. The wind had dropped to almost nothing there was no time to take a break. I headed back up the tower (again).

The mast on this tower is a 12′ long piece of 2″ OD steel tubing with a 1/4″ wall. It is HEAVY! My biggest fear is losing control of the mast and having it crash down the inside of the tower causing injury or popping the 40m off the top. I always add some safety u-clamps so the mast can never slip more than 3 or 4 feet. This took some time to set up. The gin pole rope was rigged to hold the mast.

Luckily, the mast was not sitting directly on the rotator. (Not really lucky, I always try to install them that way.) This meant I could remove the Yaesu G-2800 rotator completely without maneuvering the mast.

With the rotator removed, we were ready for the scary part. With the ground crew holding the rope, I loosed the bolts in the thrust bearing. With no wind, it was just a matter of moving the mast and it started to slide down. I tried to keep my feet out of the way and my hands away from the mast. When we hit the first safety, we stopped, rerigged, and repeated the operation. Once the mast had dropped through the hole in the rotator plate, I was less worried about keeping things straight and just worried about not dropping it.

With 3′ of mast sticking out the tower it was easy to attach the rope to the 40m boom and then pull it off the mast. With no other antennas on the tower, it was a matter of winding through the guy wires until we reached the bottom. There was a lot of waiting time for me to reposition on the tower and figure out which way to turn or twist the antenna.

Since the gin pole was already well positioned, I claimed back up and we removed the top plate from the tower. Since this tower had only been up for 2 years, it was relatively easy to pop off (with a little pushing on one side and then the other…).

The weather was perfect, but I was reaching my limit. Taking on the next tower section would require removing guy wires, which meant coming down anyway. I stripped the cables from the tower on my way down.

Total time was 5 hours. Amazed and happy that we were able to get so much down so quickly.

I hate leaving the gin pole outside in the elements, but no rain is in the forecast until our next planned work session on Saturday.

Here is the crew after chowing down their “pay” at the nearby drive-in.