[BC] Wireless Internet Installation on AM Tower

[towers at mre.com]

I know the site.  The towers are 1/2 wave tall.  So a bazooka could work.
IIRC, the site has them now for the STL TX antennas used to fed their
other stations. I didn't see anything related to Carl describing the
elevation of the wireless IP antennas.  He's at the top end of the band,
so anything above 160 ft. should be work. I suggested an iso-coil for that
reason so they could place the antennas really anywhere on the tower.

I didn't state conduit would be needed all the way up...which I should
have.  The conduit then acts as the farraday shield for the cable.

The caviat is the CAT5 cable.  Recall, you need to decouple the cable's
shield just like any other cable on an AM tower and the tie point for the
short. The problem really is the cable's quality as well as the
installation practices by the installer.  Unlike Heliax, et. al., the
shield on the CAT5 cable is rather small and delicate.  So conduit is the
preferred choice of carriage up the tower through the isocoil and that's
easily coupled to reduce circulating currents.

Otherwise, everyone else has echoed my comments about reproofing.

MM

 Dana and Mark's seems like the best idea to me.
> If it can't be done this way, the next best thing would be a shorted 1/4
> wave isolation section (called a bazooka by some). As a conduit for
> shielded
> cat 5, there should be 1/2'' or larger copper tubing on insulators going
> up
> the inside of the tower a bit past the calculated 1/4 wave point and,
> ideally, the exact point for the short found by probing while measuring
> the
> tower Z so as to set it where the resistance is the same as before. The
> reactance will change some, so the taps of the output coil will need
> adjusting a bit to get the network input back to 50R j0. If not 1/4 wave
> tall, oh well..................
> M
>