Cheap Tilt-Over Tower Ideas for Ham Radio Antenna 

Sounds like a good start. Finding all of those clever bits that make fabrication easy is the key. The biggest problem in home brew is sourcing suitable components, that's why your verticals sell so well , everything in a kit with some instructions, which allows people to build something themselves, that actually fits together, and works. Very satisfying. 🙂

Here in the US a lot of people buy extremely long telephone poles from the power company contractors. They're made out of pressure treated wood. Of course, it doesn't fold down, but you can have a ladder added to the side of it with saftey wire for climbing.

I built a 55 and a 75 foot tilt over 25G Rohn. I don't do heights, and I can lower them both by myself. I have lowered a few 80 foot windmill towers for people that have the falling derrick style. My 75 foot is in about 3 yards of concrete ( which you can't do ) and my 55 foot is mounted on a steel shipping container not in the ground ( which you don't have ). I designed mine using a truss mounted winch incorporating my tilt over hinge. The 75 foot has a 20 foot tall truss for the cable to pull from, and my 55 foot has a 16 foot tall truss to pull from.

Looking forward to seeing this go up in the new space.

Large plastic buckets filled with concrete are a great support and easier to remove. Add some u shaped iron as hooks for easy removal when the time comes. I would use fibreglass as a coupler between metal poles. Not sure why you shy away from a regular tower if you are going to use so many guy wires, if you are going to use 12 guy wires to stabilise the pole you can use the same for a tower. Only difference is that you can't bring down a tower as easy as the pole.

a long time ago 30+ years I went to a local rally and they had an antenna test range set up for VHF. You could book a slot, connect up your vhf beam and then get a 360 degree plot on paper. They used a variation of the falling derrick system. There was the main vertical scaffold pole, and at the base another pole (the derrick arm) pointing away from the main pole. What they then did was add some more poles from the top of the derrick out at 45 degrees or so which connected to another couple of poles attached to the bottom of the main upright. Another two poles were used as "guys" to the top of the main pole. Hard to describe in words, but another description, it was a triangle on the ground half way along one side was the main upright, another pole from the apex to the bottom of the main pole, then from each corner of the triangle to the top of the main pole. The triangle on the ground acted as a pivot and counter balance as the pole was winched up and down. It seemed to work very well. Andy

I got a barenco tilt base, i dont see it on their website anymore, but its quality and ability to get a mast up is brilliant. A very interesting project you got going on there callum, looking forward to see how it goes.

Silent Keys, Gene Welch and Ron Adams both hand quad antennas, and what they found is that best results were around 10ft above ground or 100ft. Both used gamma-matches to tune each element, using a fifth pole mounted vertically. My old history teacher also used a quad, but found that he had best results with the antenna 6-8ft above the ground.

You're right not to use polyrope. At the back of my house once year we put up a 48m high lattice mast, with a crane and a rigger. We guyed it with 16mm blue polyrope. It was only temporary, hence no steel guys. And it was for AM broadcast so wire guys would have affected it anyway. Anyway - all was good! But it rained heavily one day and when wet the polyrope stretched, and I recall watching in horror as the mast swayed alarmingly in the wind. Next day, when the rain abated, I went out and had to tighten the guys considerably. Mastrand is your friend. Oh- a guy anchor point idea that we used: Got a mini-digger and dug a trench at each guy anchor point, perpendicular to the way the guy would run, and a sloping narrow 'ramp' from the centre of the trench towards the mast. Got a railway sleeper, wound galv steel wire around the centre and clamped it, then dropped the sleeper into the trench, with the galv wire coming up the ramp. Filled the trench in. The wire then protruding from the ground was the stay point. As all the strain was trying to pull the sleeper sideways against the wall of the trench, it was never coming out. Of course we did this six times for the six guy anchor points. Then when we had to vacate the field, we just dug down with a spade about 18", and cut off the galv wire, leaving the sleepers down there forever! This idea came from a bloke who used to put up those temp masts for wind measurement when planing wind turbines.

Going to be a great project. Looking forward to the great videos' on this and more. Just keep in mind the strong winds you get . The outher thing to watch for is ground wire length . Any resonant length above ground may affect the radiation pattern. also choke balen on coax will help with common mode currents on the shield of coax. With coax going up in the air ,it may pick up RF from outher antenna near buy. The length of coax in the air will also be a factor as well. going to be a lot of fun. Cheers from USA !

An ideea, put a hinge at the joining spot of the mast, right at the middle of it. You will have ropes also there, right below the hinge. First, easy loosen the one on the top, only the upper part above the hinge will go down. After this is down, loose the rope that is connected right below the the hinge and lower also this part. This will also minimize the weight of the base, the lateral forces for rise and lower the mast will be splittes with the anchoring ropes. I think will work, you will have a 2 pieces pole with a hinge between, rise and lower on stages. I have done my best to explain :)

If you can do a lattice tower, the width (or rather pour depth) of the pad can be minimized by angled pile rods. There are high strength concretes and excellent bonding products to supplement your physical connection of piles to the structure within the concrete. A H shaped form with 45 degree piles driven down would be something you could remove yourself with a hired excavator and a pneumatic hammer if need be. This is obviously dependent on your local geology.

I'm dreaming of a quad antenna, but I can't afford a tower. So this is a great solution and I would buy it right now.

Hi Cal, I think you have it all sorted. Just need to start acquiring the equipment. A worthy project. You and the family stay safe. 73 WJ3U

Filling that extra plot real fast!

Did I see you use a double socket hinge on your compact 160M video? I caught a glimpse at the base of your install. I have the Classic. Can that double socket hinge be adapted for the Classic?

Cheap and tower, never thought those went together.

I love this idea, thanks for bringing this to my attention. I may use this type of mast at my new QTH!!!!

We used the same system for NFD at a location on a farm. 2 scaffold poles plus rotator plus 2 meter aerial while not heavy was difficult to raise without a ratchet winch. And we were/are getting on a bit. You no doubt had the same issue of the lever over the pivot point effect and the shifting of the weight from horizontal to vertical and visa versa. Not something I wanted to repeat in my back yard as from a safety factor needed assistance from others. You have the luxury of a field but I assume you want a one man band to erect. As usual you will work through it- All the best Mike

Your easiest option is a Clark scam 12 Millitary pneumatic mast with the leg kit. Mark

What I'm doing now is a pipe mast where a thicker pipe (6m long) is the bottom part. Thinner pipe (6m as well) sits inside a thick one 1 meter deep = 11m high. Winch attachment is at 6m point with pivot at 10cm of the ground. Winch crank attached to a roof structure about 3.5m above the ground. Whole gizmo with antennas will be about 100kg. According to my maths total winch pull gona be 220kg. With fiber glass tubes anything you do will be a piece of cake to build up.

Hi Callum. John Eckert KK7UAG here. You may look into using something like Unistrut. If I remember correctly, it comes plastic, fiberglass and steel. GOOD LUCK & 73's

I don't know about the construction, but you're gonna need another plot soon!😂👍📡

I like the idea of the fiberglass scaffolding poles. They make fiberglass re-bar in at least 20' (banana;) lengths. You could epoxy one of those inside at the mid point for reinforcement. Or maybe drop a 10' section in the bottom one and let the twenty-footer sit on top of it thereby spanning the joint between the two poles as well. One thing I have successfully used to reach similar lengths is 35'+ bamboo poles with a cobra ultralite senior wrapped around them like giant rabbit ears. kb3uka

Hi Callum. All the best with this project. With some custom spacers / clamps, you could form 3 scaffold poles into a lattice structure? I did this 30+ years ago for a temporary mast for an EME array, so it was not that tall. Can't remember quite how I did it, but it worked! 73

Our Radio Club used an older military style (WW2) for HF comms. Looks like a hand truck (for moving boxes) but the bottom was bigger. Roll it into place and use steel rebar to pin the bottom unit. Insert a 8 foot section of HD fiberglass and turn a crank. That raises the first piece bottom to 8 ft and locks into place allowing you to insert another 8 ft section - turn a crank and that raises it and locks, now you have 16 ft. etc...Our Vertical was at 50 feet supporting a large yagi antenna. Would be easy to make permanent. This vertical supporting device was new to me - had never seen this before. bet you could find one in the UK military surplus?

You appear to be on the right track. I assume that you have taken wind loads into consideration (and multiplied calculated loads by min. 1.5 or safer 2.0). Also anytime I am handling ropes or cables I wear medium duty leather gloves. I also like to put all my antennas up without extra help, I enjoy figuring out how to get the job done by myself. Its the challenge!

Coupling the tower with solid fibreglass pole to the inner diameter would be more stable as it can be longer remove some flex. Will also allow you to decouple the two section so that they appear electrically smaller.

Jolly nice video Callum. 👍 I got a tilt-over tower without asking for one.....someone cut my guy wires! ☹

The Chinese use bamboo for scaffolding. Four guys? I prefer Five Guys, but they are quite expensive compared to McDonalds. Oh, unrelated, have you seen Lewis (RingwayManchester)'s latest video? He shows an old cell tower which is currently laying on the ground and is going begging. Probably overkill, but probably cheap. Will probably require three smaller embedded concrete blocks. And it'll probably detune the other antennas so probably a non-starter...

Callum, May I please make mention of a design that I use at my QTH, it doesn't use a huge concrete base but it does have one, the mast is 15 metres tall and it bends over in the middle. This was not my original idea, it came from Peter VK6YSF in Perth Austrailia, he has a website where you can see his design and run-down of what he did with his. Please have a gander at it, if it helps you out with your plan, all the better. Cheers, Mike ZL3XD.

I have some 6m long, 2-inch fibreglass poles, and they are thick walls so as to be rigid, but that makes them heavy. Without checking, I think they are at least as heavy as Ali' scaff poles of the same length. If you haven't checked the weights, I suggest you take a look. A well-known contester in GM guyed his masts with Masterant D12, and it failed catastrophically. Look at the UK contest reflector for a full autopsy (in 2012 so ropes may have changed since)

I picked up a Cl;arke pneumatic mast that was frost damaged very cheap, no you can't have it, but one may be a possible solution. Clarke do a lot with the military, but may do a deal to break into the ham market. Possibly worth a try? 73 Jim M7BXT

From my personal experience , massive height is not essential for excellent results . It sound like the aim is experiment with a y a g i antenna at height ?? I can recommend the two element Delta loop as these don't need to be up high to work well . ( no need for a tower ) You have to feed the driven element with 75 ohm twin feeder ( two core bell flex ) and a " BALUN " or preferably with an A.T.U. with a Balanced output . The 15 meter delta loop I built was only 3 feet off the ground at the base , Provided a forward power gain of around 6DB over a dipole , front to back ratio was probably around 15- 20 DB , not a lot off the sides . And a very low angle of radiation even at this low height above ground level . I will post you more details for your consideration a.s.a.p. .73's DE Chris , G4MXC

Hi Callum, have you considered screw-piles for the base? I know these are used on commercial towers for permanent and semi permanent installations.

One of the larger Clarke Masts will work without a concrete foundation. I have one of the telescoping 18 Meter high Clarke Masts - 66 ft, which is a good height

For raising and lowering, check into a 12v DC winch for an ATV. You can put a clevice attachment on one of your guy wires so it's removable when not raising or lowering.

A military surplus AB-577 portable mast setup checks all the boxes. Don't know if you've got access to one over there. I'm sure there's some regional equivalent.

What if you created a 4-sided pyramid (just the wireframe of one) and put a hinge at the apex to tilt the mast over (mast would be going through the apex of the pyramid to the ground). If you support the mast at the apex, and the apex is slightly over half the height of the mast, you could almost tilt it so it is hanging inverted to work on it (albeit upside down). To raise it back up, you'd just need to have a rope tied to the base and pull on it to rotate it back to vertical, and secure the mast to something in the ground (maybe just your bag of concrete and a metal attachment point). Essentially the 4 pieces of wireframe for the 4 sided pyramid are 'permanent guys'. You could just use sandbags, or tent spikes and rope to hold the base of the pyramid wireframe down. You could additionally guy the mast part way up to the apex and use the base of the pyramid for guy attachment points (some eye-bolt attachments). It depends on what materials and heights as to whether you need guys for the mast or of if the 'wireframe pyramid' is enough to support things freestanding...It is a space hog, I wouldn't want it in my backyard, but that's because I use it for gardening and other stuff...if you have some space... If you aren't using the antenna for a while, the inverted antenna (lowered position) could attach to the ground and have a super-low center of gravity to be easy to raise at a moment's notice...And it would be 'off the ground' as well so it doesn't sit in wet grass, or dogs/wildlife won't run into it...might paint the wireframe pyramid visibly though! :) WW0K 'pyramid foldover tower' :)

Use 2 connection points to the tower and lift with a loop mid way and high up back to the fixed winch pole (compound lift)

Just watched a video from Cool breeze adventures, he’s helping his mate put up an extendable lattice tower. Would this be suitable?

Have you thought about an A frame design? Being a bit creative you can make the A frame without any welding, lots of fittings on Norscaff website. The advantage of the A frame is that you basically have only one plane of movement as you are raising it and no swivel joints at the most vulnerable points. 73

For that height, why not a tilt-able fiberglass flagpole? The ones we have here, comes with a footing, with a hinge, that only requires a small amount of concrete in a post. And flagpoles, even at that length are easy to erect for one person and as many people buy flagpoles, its quite cheap...

Great you are back!

Not calling anyone out, but it's sad sometime seeing hams having invested tens of thousands of $ on radios, LPAs, mics and a number of shack gimmicks while having modest or minimal antenna setups. People with the ability to raise a solid antenna system, not talking about HOA and city folks. My suggestion for your particular case would be a crank up steel box section tower. It can be built at home, granted it's more complex than the scaffolding sections idea. However, it would offer a much higher carrying capacity and be easier to use. A 12m variant would be about 4,5m when collapsed. Tilt hinge base, and base secured by long spikes. Because it's steel, only 2 anchor points would suffice. Does require some welding, though. Italians made a similar thing for WRTC 2022(3), and the same towers were purchased by the organizers of 2026 WRTC that's happening in the UK. Something to think about.

Your idea is sound. I've done what you describe with a 120 ft. mast of four inch pipe!

Let’s give her a go , IS THIS FREQUENCY IN USE 👋A couple of pints one for me mate at the other end of the transmission 👍

Oh yes, use the cork screw anchors that we use for hot air balloons or big dogs. Has a hex head for power drill to drive them in.

Some Asian countries use bamboo for scaffolding - maybe possible to source that size of bamboo in the UK somewhere?

Interesting project. I'm trying to figure out how to house mount a tilt over 30-40' tower without breaking the bank. I don't want to pour a ton of concrete as well.

Would it not be simpler to use your generator pump up mast , or is that not suitable for what you are doing ?

some one used a old council light pole, ones that can be un bolted and dropped down such a good idea

Oi! Good to see ya, mate!

use the metal poles and join them with plastic joiners.....if you keep a short space between the poles it won't be a continuous conductor.........also, I'm sure you have modeled the interaction?.........spacing matters.....my phased 40 meter verts corrupted the pattern of my 5 active element circle array (W1FV & VE6WZ stuff) moved the circle array which solved the problem.........cheerio from Boston FN42........

CALLUM, are you sure your not from Mississippi,

I think that the guy from Walter's and Stanton watches your channel. After you do a video on something, then he does the same subject afterwards.

Would it be possible to use a winch to raise and lower this with the dead fall.

I've got a spare SCAM 12 mast that I want rid off, it's fully restored with black poweder coating, never been raised since restoration. If no one wants it, it'll be going to the scrap.

Look at s/steel gripple wire, with interlock blocks.

Dx Engineering has some very sturdy fiberglass tubing roughly 46 ft tall TFK 46 I think

Friend of mine used an old construction site elevator

Thanks for the video..would like to see how you ended up doing...I have a 41ft(12m) vibroplex mast that won't be extended the whole way (more like 22-26 feet). The rotor is base mounted so the whole mast rotates. Looked at Barenco fixtures, and they are not quite cost effective for this Ham. My neighbor will be welding up an equivalent one. Maybe i should do a video of that whole thing. I have limited space where it should tilt over..nervous..Hi Hi. see my qrz page

I built mine like a trebuchet. It has a pivot point at 8 feet between 2 poles. The tower has a weighted base so one person can lower it with little effort.

I don't see them sharpies holding up 😅

No no no 3 polls the One in the middle tilt's over there one in middle is waited for easy tilt 3 bolts or stage pins to lock in place

Take it from a professional mason. Go twice as strong as you think. Ive had hospital time from underguessing it. Max Gain Systems here in the states does serious fiberglass for aerials. They have stuff thats designed for horizontal loads. The best system for raising a mast is absolutely the pneumatic hollow shaft system. Impossibble to destroy and built for industrial Lighting

Al u whatium?

Have a look at the “ground screws” used in this video. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-w6gsify9o-U.htmlsi=3pFNGT2Qb23WJcdA

Disclaimer - I don't know the Mastrant line like I do some other brands. Here in the US I'd be looking at Samson's Amsteel Blue for the guy rope - It's Dyneema with a coating that adds to the abrasion resistance. It's crazy low stretch and easy to splice (I'd use splices instead of knots or bolted clamp style connections, but not everyone is set up or knows how to splice these types of ropes). For the lift line / pulley rope I'd either go with jacketed multi-core line (the kind of stuff used by cavers or rope access workers) or a product intended as a hand line for the utility industry. Jacketed multi-core are intended for use with pulleys and friction devices. They'll typically be Nylon or Polyester so they will have more stretch than Dyneema but it's probably not a problem for lifting and lowering. Utility hand lines will be single braid and are available in a number of materials and they'll be large enough in diameter to make them comfortable in the hand. While they'll do fine in properly sized pulleys, some hand lines will have fairly low melting points and I would avoid using them with any kind of friction device.

Brits and their fasteners.

I have found a solution for a tower from NN4SA club sight using one pole with the tower balanced at center a few pulleys and a small hand winch. Would love to send you photos but not sure how on RU-vid

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