Clearing the top soil.

I thought I would hand dig a 5'x5'x6' pit,HiHi!!

Time to rent a mini back hoe to dig in the rock.

The back hoe could only reac to about 4.5' I hand dug the rest.

Three days of digging and exhaustion is setting in.

It is done, 6 cubic yards of dirt has been removed.

Now came the critial alignment of the first tower section.

I attached the three 6' 30 pound steel legs to the tower. Almost 100 pounds haging from the tower.

I plumbed the legs and drove a stake for each leg to set over to keep them from moving during the pour.

No way to get to the back yard so I rented a Georgia buggy to hall concrete 1/2 yard at a time.

It took 12 trips and about an hour to complete pouring 6 yards of concrete, that is appox. 4024 pound per cubic yard or about 12 tons.

Now for the curing.

Now for the tower assembly.

The tower was positioned so I could assemble a 50' tower a 40 and 6 meter antenna.

I started the assembly of the Mosley S-33 but found a bad coil and had to order it.

I started the fence assembly to protect it from kids and unwanted climbers.

I used marine grade pulleys, all SS bolts and hardware on the tower.

A recommended decoupling coil fro the Alpha Delta sloper.

All surge protectors including rotator are in a DX Engineering weather proof box.

The coil finally arrived from Mosley, 2 1/2 weeks, time to call in the ground crew.

It was a long hard day.

The 6 meter antenna was a piece of cake.

Now for the 100 pound Mosley. It has a 26' mast with three element , the logest about 48'.

It is finally in place and I am making the connections. It was in the 30s that day.

Now we start the lift. The tower and antennas weigh about 340 pounds.

We were only able to get the tower up to about 45 degrees. It was dark and cold and we were tired. So I rented the beast.

This was a self propelled 60' bucket lift. I literally pushed it up the rest of the way.

We are almost there!!

Finally we made it!

The only problem is this beast weighed 22500 pounds, boy do I have ruts to repair!!

Still trying to get the first one in the hole.

The crew- Gary Osborne, W8XS, Myself, KC8RP, Rick Burdick, K8WWA and Paul Flaugher, KB8ANY. What a crew.

The view from the front.

Atop the bucket lift doing some final work.

My wife Donna without who's support and help this would have never happened!!! By-the-way she was scared s*&%^ less!!!

It was a long way down.

This is a 4"x18"x3/8" copper ground plate outside my shack window.

The only thing left to do is put a locking gate on the fence.

The sloper runs down the north east side of the toer to a post 14' above the ground.