This is the view of Roof Butte looking west from Hwy 666 that runs from Gallup, New Mexico
to Cortez, Colorado.
This is the old rat infested and rusty tin building we are going to remove. It has
served its purpose and needs to be removed.
Here are both buildings as we back the new fiberglass building into place. The old
building will have to be torn down then transported down the mountain on this flat bed trailer.
During this adventure we used the 4,000 pound winch on the front of my Nissan truck to pull the
old building apart. I lost the windshield in this action and should have received a purple heart
from the scare it gave me. I was lucky and dove for the floor as the line broke loose from the
rotten wooden beams and flew back towards me.
This photo shows Ben Mc Gaha (KB5ITS) by my truck. This is the area where the new building and
tower will be installed.
We had to clear the ground, tree roots and the brush away from the site and here
D.W. Baxter (KA5DVI) is in the foreground and Pat Bowers (KF5OL) in the back of this photo.
The building has already been set in place. Now we have to level the ground and drill several two
foot deep holes into the rock to secure the concrete pad down.
This is the real hard work, we were dealing with rock and had to drill into the
mountain for support. We drilled several holes in the rock for anchors for the concrete base.
There are about five 10 foot lengths of rebar iron in that slab to give it more strength.
This is the concrete base we built for the tower, notice the template for the tower
legs has been removed. The template gives us the exact location for all the mounting bolt that
hold the tower legs. We are ready to mount the base of the 50 foot tower.
We are hooking up the base tower section to D.W.'s winch truck before raising it
on to the base up of the concrete slab. Kurt Hesselden, (N5SDQ) is facing the tower section,
with D.W. and Pat bracing the section. Kurt and Pat were the main tower monkeys on this job
and did a great job. I managed to become busy photographing when some of the work was being
done. Somebody has to this kind of dirty work to record the operation don't they?
The base tower section has been bolted to the pad. Now Kurt, Pat, and D.W. are
raising the top section up wards to be mounted to the top of the lower section. On the side
of the tower in the next picture you can see a pole mounted to the side of the tower. This pole is
called a gin pole and it helps to lift the tower section above the lower sections. There is a rope
that goes up the center of the pole to a pulley, then down to the section to be lifted. The rope
then is pulled by the ground crew, (usually me) to lift the tower section up for mounting.
The team (Pat and Kurt) are mounting the tower sections together to the lower section of the
tower. This puts a real strain on all your back , leg, and arm muscles not to forget the
arches in the feet. It is always a good idea to wear two pairs of socks and a good pair of
boots when doing tower work for better comfort.
D.W. and Jim Lesher (WA7UKV) inspect the connections on the repeater equipment in the
building. The equipment has to be checked out before throughly during the installation because
service calls are not much fun when it takes two hours to get to the site.
This is the antenna array on the tower the 2 meter link antenna on the left. The
corner reflector antenna on the left is aimed to Flagstaff. The other corner reflector was aimed at
Albuquerque. The dipole directional is aimed to Farmington for future linking.
We made several trips to the mountain top in all kinds of weather. Here the work
on the cable tray is being done. The antenna cable come down the tower then go under the tray
and are secured. The tray its self protects the cables from falling ice and snow.