Category Archives: Uncategorized

Well, it’s MN. So once the panels are covered with snow they do a lot less. During normal days I’ve left the mesh transceivers operating all the time counting on the sun to keep the batteries topped off. Sure enough the panels were putting out zero amps. When it gets cloudy and snowy too long,Continue reading “Snowlar Power”

Keeping your tower trailer painted will help it last longer and can make it look a lot better. Below is the J trailer, both before and after re-painting. A few words to the wise about painting these things. First of all, any of the lettering you see on the old trailers are generally provided byContinue reading “A little paint”

Well, bouncing around back in a trailer (or not!) it’s bound to happen eventually. Antenna radials can wiggle loose or get lost. My recommendation is to remove the radials and put them on when you get where they’re going. However, if you’re missing some – this is what I did. First choice would be toContinue reading “Antenna Radial blues…”

This weekend my tower trailer will be used in a simplex net to facilitate the 2020 ARRL simulated emergency test. In preparation I’ve removed and replaced the last commercial antenna on the trailer with a Tram 1480 (they were on sale). If you’re in the twin cities metro area; look for us on 146.550MHZ atContinue reading “Ready for the road”

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”