RadioBanter - How to drive a mast down the road

Scott,
Reminds me many years ago, when I lived in a small farming town, our family
company built a 100 foot self supporting tower some 3 miles away from where
it was to be erected.
The tower was constructed in one piece and to get it to the site we simply
used a small 6x4 ft box trailer under the large end on a turntable made up
out of two lengths of 8x4 inch pieces of local hardwood (actually railway
sleepers) and that assembly was fixed to the box trailer. The trailer was
fixed to the tower with the tow hitch facing backwards.

Up the front we slid a piece of 2 inch pipe in the antenna mounting spigot
and attached a small tractor to tow it to the site. The reason behind the
turntable down the back of the tower was that we had to deal with a narrow
timber bridge with a right hand turn at the end of it, and just 200 feet
further on a Tee junction and just after that a final right hand turn of
some 120 degrees. When we needed to turn the large end to manoeuvre it
around the turns we simply pulled out the lock pins on the "turntable" and
rotated the box trailer and manoeuvred the large end of the tower around
each turn.

In those days, the 1960's we simply rang the Police and they came out and
stopped the traffic for us and we accomplished the move in about 20 minutes.
Today it would be impossible to achieve that because of the red tape.

The tower is still standing now and supports a heap of mobile phone
antennas.

Ahh for the good ole days!
John in Australia

"Scott Fratcher" wrote in message
...

This is a link to an article on how to move a mast down the road
legally. It's about getting the mast or tower up and over the vehicle
and then now to make the trailer pivot differently than the tow
vehicle.

I thought it just might transfer over to moving towers and such.

The link is-
http://www.tongacharter.com/report-mast.htm

And... dang, no way to post a photo. That was the point. Well no
worries, the article has the photos, but it's more fun to post them
here.

Scott