Rebar grid construction for tower base.

Installing the driven element return fixture.

Control lines from each active element and the coax switching relays come together into junction terminals.

It looks like coax in this picture, but it is Phillystran, a non-conductive arimid fiber guy wire. Good for about 4,000 lbs pull.

Drilling through mast for 3/8" bolt anti-rotation (no-slip).

Peter Rosenberg (AC7SB) from Fall City WA joins the antenna assembly team. Steve (WA7DUH), Peter and Gary (W7TYQ) apply anti-sieze compound to the staddles that will be used for one of the Return Element fixtures. Liberal use of anti-sieze compound is critical because of the many dissimilar metals used in both the antenna and hazer (aluminum, stainless steel hardware and galvanized steel.)

This cart has a dump function, which really helps unloading!

All the cabling prior to clean up.

Guy lines are Phillystran, a non-conductive arimid fiber. Cable grips are used for termination.

The interior of a SteppIR Element Housing Unit (EHU) with stepper motor that drives copper-beryllium tapes in and out of the hollow antenna element tubes. The tapes are the radiating/active elements of the Yagi beam antenna. This SteppIR antenna is able to be resonant anywhere between 6.5 Mhz and 54 Mhz by adjusting the lengths of the Beryllium tapes. The tapes are wound on the spools that are seen in the picture using the cogged wheel that engage holes punched into the tapes. Cogged wheel is driven by a stepper motor, which has absolute positioning capability. The computerized controller knows how far to position out the tapes in the driver, reflector and director tubes for any given frequency.

Trenching between the tower base and the ham shack entrance. The picture doesn't really show the 18% downslope here, and the trencher was stuck and rolling into one of the deck support posts. Come-alongs are keeping the trencher from taking out the deck post plus the tractor is extracting.

One of three rebar cages for guy stations. Each guy station consists of a reinforced block of concrete 6ft x 4ft x 2ft high buried 4 ft below grade. That long 3/4 in rod is what the guy lines are tied to, and is buried in the concrete block. Each rod will sustain at least 8000 lbs of pull, which is about 4X overkill, since the worst case forces with an 88 mph wind is calculated to be 1000 lbs. Building code in Benton Co. requires survival of 88 mph winds.

After assembling 1 of the active elements on the grass by the tower in about 3 hours, assembly was moved into Steve & Linda's shop where an assembly line could be set up, as there are 6 of these to make. Time was reduced to about 1 hour per unit.