Simple Full Size 80m Vertical

This is a description of my home-made 76ft high 80m vertical. It is made from two 20ft long dural (aluminium alloy scaffolding poles and a tapering 36ft extension on the top made from old pieces of aluminium rubbish. The whole thing is insulated from earth by a piece of PTFE which I found at a rally. It's about 8 inches long and has been turned down on a lathe at each end inwards for about 3.5 inches each end. It provides a nice tight fit to each piece of pole. The RF is fed to a old clamp, as is the earth connection. These are well greased to keep the water away. The base hinge unit is made from welded 2" angle steel with a piece of steel pipe of 2" inside diameter. The gin pole is attached by a right-angled clamp, although I have used a scaffolders right-angle before. The gin pole has a pulley on the end. The other pulley is attached to an 18in guy peg, and about 100ft of good yachting rope is used to raise and lower the whole arrangement.

This sort of lifting arrangement will raise anything. Things worth noting when putting up an antenna like this are:

• Keep the left and right main guys and base hinge as in line as possible. They can be tilted (sloping ground), but keep them in line.
• The gin pole must have a set of guys too. This keeps it in line with the pole that's being lowered. The pulleys can be atached to the gin pole while it is lowered to one side before you raise it.
• Put the whole thing up without any head load at first - perhaps just 40ft - then set the guys to the right length to ensure it's vertical.

80m vertical

80m vertical base area with gin pole

80m vertical base detail

80m vertical gin pole detail

The system works - even with a 4 yagi EME array on very rough ground (GM4AFF/P IO66 1986)!