Today we continue work on Tower #2 and the 15m Yagi project… but halfway through the fiberglass falling derrick experiment, I realised I didn’t fully trust it.
Originally, the idea was simple: replace the heavy aluminium derrick with fiberglass to reduce weight and make the whole tower system easier to manage.
The problem? Fiberglass bends. A lot.
And after already having one tower-related mishap recently, I decided I really didn’t fancy another disaster involving a mast and several metres of expensive antenna hardware!
So this video became a real-world engineering rethink:
drilling and fitting lifting eyes
hot-swapping mast sections
balancing weight versus rigidity
guy tension adjustments
dealing with stretchy rope
British weather interruptions ☔
and eventually redesigning the derrick into a hybrid steel/fiberglass system
This is very much “field engineering” rather than textbook engineering. We experiment, rethink things, salvage what we can and gradually evolve the station one step at a time.
Next job:
Get the 15m Yagi properly mounted right at the top of the mast, wire up the elements and finally get the station fully operational across all bands again.
As always, thanks for watching and supporting this tiny little niche hobby of ours.
73,
Callum – DX Commander