Focus has been on installing the Custom Extra Heavy Duty Zero-Five Flagpole-Vertical HF Antenna. First you have to dig a hole. of course we hit bedrock just 24 inches down, and brushed against the telephone wire despite the hole not being on the original plot of land. No idea why the telephone wire ran west onto what was at te time a neighbors parcel. Some mysteries are lost to time.
down to rock at 24 inches
Since we hit rock we had to go for a modified base, where weight and physical dimensions substitute for the 24 inch 6 ft deep cylinder we’d expected to have poured. I was off island when it was formed and poured, so here is the result. We made a form plate to put the L-bolts in the right spacing and pattern.
Final dimensions ended up 4 ft x 4 ft x 2 ft, with a 2 ft x 2 ft by 3/4 ft riser. Because of the way the bedrock stripped the overall pour was just over 2 yards of high strength concrete – nearly three times the expected 7/10ths of a yard for the tubular design we couldn’t use.
Here is the result once the forms were removed:
Zero-Five Flagpole base
I didn’t want to take the spacer off at this stage, preferring it to keep everything in alignment until the base is actually installed (it is sitting on the bolts in the picture).
Feedline conduit will turn up along side the base, and I’m running power to the area for later use. Power will be in a separate 3/4 inch conduit,
I’ll be making up a copper “halo” to go around the base for radials.
Glad to have the support of some engineering for “on rock foundations” as blasting a deeper hole seemed pointless. I don’t think this flagpole is going to go anywhere before the weather bends/breaks it first.
73
Steve
K9ZW
