Author Archives: timjneu

So if your ham gear needs more than a simple battery or solar panel, you are probably going to want some kind of generator. If your tower trailer does not have a working generator we have found that the sportsman or similar 2000 watt or less dual fuel generators work well. They can be hadContinue reading “More amps”

My antenna towers came with some existing commercial antennas pre-installed. They weren’t close enough to the ham bands to use (~3:1 SWR on 2M) which was a darn shame. They were well built commercial antennas. Sometimes the best replacement for an antenna is not an antenna at all. If you need just a little moreContinue reading “Not High enough!”

There never seems to be enough time to communicate all of the fun aspects of ham radio quickly. This is also true during many of our events. To help, we’re contemplating adding QR codes to our ham radio tower trailers so that interested folks can scan the code to find out more about Amateur RadioContinue reading “Elevator speech with QR Codes”

Unless your tower needs are very simple, it’s likely that you will want more than one “thing” up in the air – be they mesh nodes; cameras; dishes, lights, antenna wires or standing antennas. To have the room to do all this, you may want to add a crossbar on the tower, at the placeContinue reading “Cross-bar installation”

One of the first installs for the towers were upgrades to make the power deliverable in a form that projects/people could use it. First, fuses so that it all doesn’t burn down (tower not as useful in charcoal form). https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07RY8Y2QV/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 This includes having accessible USB ports, voltage meter, a cigarette adapter (for chargers/inverters), and powerpoleContinue reading “Power options”

If your favorite tower project needs internet access to work; one of the challenges is that internet access tends to be delivered either via wifi (hotspot) or USB cable; whereas projects and on-prem stuff tend to be hard-wired, RJ-45. One of the easiest ways to get there from here is with this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B073TSK26W/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 It’s aContinue reading “Internet Connectivity”

These tower trailers (if kept outdoors) are the perfect hide-out for bees. They can fly in and make it their perfect home. When I first got the tower trailers, I had to remove three different wasp nests in succession over about a month span in time. So I’m telling ya nothing quite like working onContinue reading “Wasps / Bees”

It’s very handy to be able to reposition the trailers without having to hook them up to a tow vehicle. That said, the strike plate platform needs friction with the ground to function as an outrigger. I’ve added a second set of wheels that can be cranked down to allow moving the trailers, and thenContinue reading “Wheels”

I am installing buck converters to drive the voltage for the mesh hardware from 12v to the native 24 volts expected. I chose the following module on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07VNDGFT6/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 One goes to each trailer, and should be able to support up to 3 mesh nodes with the same buck converter. (just hook up the pigContinue reading “Buck/Boost converter upgrades:”