Manotick Tower Install

A friend of mine found a 30ft tower in storage. It was in pretty good shape. The tower itself was of unknown origin but it was heavy duty construction. We first dug a 2 foot hole. We then assembled 2 of the 3 sections on the ground and propped it against the house. I attached 2 brackets to the roof facia where the tower met the house. We then lowered it and added the last 10 ft section, the rotor, 10 ft mast, (old school RCA) preamp and the DB8 antenna. The tower didn't seem to take a standard sized mast so we hacked/bolted a short section of plumbing pipe below the rotor.

​Normally we could raise a 30ft tower with 2 or 3 guys but this tower was so heavy we needed 5 guys. We had one man on the roof with a rope and 4 guys walking up the tower. Once up the house brackets are loosely attached. The tower base was then easily moved around to get it plumb. Once plumb we then poured some gravel and then a couple of bags of post hole cement to lock the base in place. We then tightened the house brackets to the tower. The tower is a hybrid bracketed/self supporting set up. It works due the strength of this old school tower.
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​The rotor generally is useful for finalizing the best antenna direction. Not really for everyday use. The strategy I like is to point the antenna at the hardest regular station you hope to receive. In this case CBS/Fox from either Watertown or South Colton. Surprisingly from Mantotick, 28.1/28.2 CBS/FOX on real channel 18 seemed to be available 24/7. All local Ottawa stations and the 3 PBS stations also come in easily. We may tweak it in January.