The story of the 70′ antennae

Been really busy lately putting up a 70′ tower to hit another really tall tower several hundred feet tall twenty or so miles away in San Angelo so I can get true high speed internet. After two unsuccessful tries, the tower went up and started receiving strong signal the second it was activated. Hooray. That is the main reason there have been no posts for a few days now.

We have had Hughes Net satellite internet for several years because I thought it was the only option. I have really tall, massive, ancient pecan trees and no access to DSL because of our rural location. Finally had enough one day because my business model depends on high speed internet for streaming video. Couldn’t do that with Hughes. Went into San Angelo and visited with Bill Jones of Zipnet.us and he thought it might be possible, if we could get over the trees. After all is said and done, we NOW HAVE high speed and can do anything. I feel like the man with the lever who can move the world.

Of course there are several people to thank for the success of this project. Joe David Werst came and spent the better part of two days welding on the drillstem part of the antennae. Mike Dolan, a great Real Estate agent in this part of Texas, provided pipe, structural steel, and 4″ posts and concrete. He will probably never have to buy beer for the rest of the year. In addition to Bill Jones and his crew of Zipnet, Ramona did a great job also. She can do anything. The most accolades however go to chief engineer Richard Boggs. Richard ramrodded this venture and provided lots of technical expertise in a mostly polite way. Meaning he didn’t cuss directly at me most of the time. With the addition of the tower we can now proceed with our internet ventures including RealTexasBlog.com, and the not quite launched “So You Think You Can Ebay.com”. We have a great plan, and business model to grow on, and it’s all coming down the road in “high speed”.

Here are a few things that had to be done:

1. Had to dig a 6′ hole in the ground, (I’m a degreed ditchdigger thank you) welded two 4″ drill pipes close together with enough room for another piece of pipe to fit in between them to make the cantilever base. Put 6′ of the 4″ pipe in the hole and filled the hole with a yard of concrete and let it set for a couple days. BTW, drillstem is not plain old 2″structural steel pipe. About twice as heavy.
2. Put a drillstem 30′ pipe in between the two 4″ pipes and welded a pivot point onto it.
3. Welded another 33′ drillstem pipe onto that and then attached a 10′ aluminum pipe with antennae attached to it. Wired it all together with R6 romax
4. Attempted to raise tower. Tower was too heavy. Cut off top piece of drillstem and attached 30′ aluminum telescoping pole to that. Re-attached antennae.
5. Tried to raise pole again. Aluminum pole buckled. Cut a smaller piece of aluminum pole and drove it into larger piece, in essence one pole inside another for double strength. Tried to raise pole. Success. Got signal and living happily ever after.
6. That makes it all seem simple, but it was much more than that.
7. Where did the idea originate? From me. Who made it happen? Lots of people working together. That’s how nearly anything gets done. Richard was proud of his engineering and I was proud of everyone.
Here’s a short video of the last…and successful attempt at raising the pole. My pickup is attached to a cable which in turn is attached to a section of the pipe in the stand. Maybe I’ll have a picture later of how it all fits together. The dern thing is too heavy to raise by hand, so the pickup pulled it up. It nearly went off to the right too far, but we have the technique down pat now.