| For Sale - Antennas, Towers, and Radios |
Twenty years worth of three-tower contest station accumulation!
Highlights include quite a few Force-12 antennas, and a couple of towers. Read on...
Preparatory to an eventual move to somewhere a single crankup and a tribander is all I'll be lucky to have, here are a wide variety of antennas and tower stuff large and small, and some radios; fun for all the family!
N.B. Antennas are collection only unless specifically noted as 'shippable'. This from near Junction 266 of the Pennsylvania Turnpike (Lebanon/Lancaster) approx. 1 1/2 hours from Philadelphia and Baltimore, 2 1/2 hours from NYC/NNJ or Washington DC. Directions on request.
Prices are firm, cash preferred. You know what this stuff is worth. I'll put the kettle on.
email: forsale@hifidelity.com
Monoband Antennas:
Cushcraft R5 - $25
20/17/15/12/10m vertical, used. Aluminium and traps straight and intact, but matching box needs new ferrite. (These are two FT-240-43 from Amidon (probably about $10 total), and a couple of hours rewinding them.)
Force-12 EF-415 - $450
New In Box. Premium 4ele 15m beam - a band-opener. Shippable. ($639 list, and you'd likely have to wait, too!)
KLM 40m3 - $100
40m. 3ele beam. Wounded. Complete, including the mondo balun and a replacement set of boom/element mounts, but quite a few pieces will need straightening or replacing. It's only aluminium for heaven's sake. The 32-foot boom is perfectly OK. A real bargain for someone prepared to put a bit of effort into it. As it is, you could probably make a two-ele out of it with little bother. Come on, the boom alone is worth more than this!
Cushcraft 10-4 - $150
Four element 10m. monobander . Band opener. Your choice of boom - the original 16 foot, or a 24 foot to make it a death-ray.
Cushcraft 10-3 - $85
NOT the little, short thing they did later: Three elements on a 10ft. boom.
Force-12 EF-180A rotatable 75/80m element - $150
Fifty-eight-foot long 80m element complete with all its (substantial) mounting and matching hardware, and the EF-180B switching assembly to tune it in chunks across the band. The original crappy copper-weld linear-loading/support wires will need replacing with something better equipped to survive life in the real world - a very easy task.
Homebrew 3-ele 15m. monobander - $100
Based on a TH3jr boom and elements, extended.
Multiband Antennas:
Force-12 Magnum 40-30-20 - $400
Two elements on each of 40m and 30m, 3 elements on 20m, all on the same Boom (with a capital 'B'). The elements are staggered to contribute such that the gain/fb is superior to a 2, 2 or 3 ele monobander by itself. A real monster that works very, very well. The original crappy copper-weld linear-loading/support wires will need replacing with something better equipped to survive life in the real world - a very easy task.
Force-12 4BA 17-15-12-10 - $400
Three elements on each of 17m, 15m, 12m and 10m on a single boom. You supply the sunspots. ($1239 new list.)
Hy-Gain Explorer 14 with 40m wingtips - $150
A classic seriously-built tri/quadbander which works really, really well. Six elements, three acive on each of 20/15/ and 10, and single element on 40m with the added wingtips. A great multiband antenna.
Miscellaneous Antenna Stuff:
Mosley 20/15/10 cubical quad spreader arm set - $25
With copy of the manual. Needs an 8ft. by 1 1/2" boom. The spreaders are aluminium tubing with insulators where the elements pass through - it's impossible to get the wire-lengths wrong. Additionally, one could change the lengths of the outer tubes to make it a spreader set for a 30m. quad, say. Lots of possibilities.
26 foot 2" dia boom - $50
From an old Wilson Sys 1 tribander (TH-5 clone); it'd make a great boom to make a killer 10 or 15m beam.
16 foot 2" dia boom - $30
Ex Hygain.
24 foot 2" dia mast, 1/4" wall, 6061 Aluminium - $100
Superb mast if you don't overload it.
All sorts of various . . .
. . . elements, booms, masts, mast steps etc.
9 * Rohn (and Rohn-alike) 45 sections, old, $270 the lot, no picking.
These originally came from a 300ft. commercial tower, then formed most of a 120ft. tower of mine. Whilst structurally OK, they have surface rust. Strictly speaking, these need sand-blasting and re-galvanizing, hence the low price to allow for this. Two of these sections have guy-torque-arm mounts (no, I'm not taking them off).
3 * Rohn 45 sections, good condition. $100 per section. ($239 each list)
One section has guy torque-arm attachments.
2 * Rohn AS-45 Rotator Shelves - $50 each. ($126 each list)
Rohn 45 concrete base plate pier-mount - $50 ($139 list)
70' tower - Universal 30-27 - $600 (~$3000 list)
Self supporting 70ft. aluminium tower with 27 sq.ft. top loading rating at 70mph wind. The perfect suburban tower.
Phillistran guy sets for 40/80/120ft. - $600
Three sets of three guys for 40, 80 and 120 feet guying of a Rohn 45 tower. Top set is 4000lb rating, lower two sets 2100lb. rating. Conservatively estimated lengths: 120', 90' and 65'. Complete with the epoxy-attached terminations, in good condition (no deep cuts or abrasions). This lot would be MUCH more than twice this price new.
Phillistran guy sets for 70' tower - $400
Two sets of four guys for 40' and 70' guying of Something Really Big. These sets are of (at least) 4000lb rating, maybe 6700lb. The concrete in the ground will break before these things. Conservatively estimated lengths 90' and 70'.
Phillystran is a non-conductive alternative to steel as guy-wire. The two huge advantages are (a) that they don't distort beam patterns, including and especially of those mounted lower down on the tower - allowing stacking - and (b) they permit the use of the tower itself as a radiator on the low-bands, 160 and 80.
Kenwood TS-140S - $300
An excellent 'starter' or second radio. Fully working, Very good condition, with original carton. Display bright, no blemishes. Used mostly as a receiver at LF (136kHz) where it works better than nearly all other 'ham' radios. (Exceptions: IC-781 and the above modified IC-751a)
Yaesu FT-817 - $350
The dinky little one. Well used, but not scruffy at all. Comes with the stock microphone, a good NiCad battery, a spare battery with charger, a bunch of Anderson PowerPole connectors and RigRunner distribution/fusing box. Collins 500Hz CW filter available if required.
Icom IC-R75 - $435
I just MAY have another of these available (the one I was going to keep) - email and ask; it'll depend what mood I'm in. In excellent condition with manual, power supply and original box, and with internal DSP and Sync-AM feature.
A few R75s were used on the LF monitoring for this website; these great little receivers were superb, if perhaps overkill for that application.
Optional filters etc. available:
Icom FL-63 9MHz/250Hz $60
Icom FL-232 9MHz/350Hz $80
Icom FL-53A 455kHz/250Hz $125
Icom FL-96 455kHz/2.8kHz (wide SSB) $125
International Radio 9MHz/400Hz $80
International Radio 9MHz/1.8kHz (narrow SSB) $80
International Radio 455kHz/125Hz $125
Icom UT-102 Voice Synthesizer Unit (speaks frequency etc.) $45
R75 Serial Numbers - A Warning
There is regrettably some misinformed, bogus, confused and confusing information about R75 serial numbers floating about, purportedly claiming that "all serial numbers beginning with so-and-so don't have this, those starting else-else do, except . . ." et-garbage-cetera. The batch numbers mentioned (02- 04- 12- etc.) are useless since THEY DON'T APPEAR ON THE RADIO! They do on the box, if you're lucky enough to find one still with it's box.
Simply, there have been three basic phases of R75 production of which a buyer should be aware:
(a) When originally introduced (~1999), the DSP board (UT-106) was an OPTION. So there are many early R75's out there that *don't* have DSP. Checking for it is easy - if the DSP board is installed, 'DSP' indicates on the front display near the top-left corner; no 'DSP' indicated, no DSP in the box. Simple. And has nothing to do with serial numbers, other than they will likely be low, being early.
(b) In the US at least, the DSP became installed as standard fairly early on, about 2001. Again, nothing to do with serial numbers. Most R75's except very recent ones fall into this category, with DSP as standard and being Sync-AM capable.
(c) In the late 2000's production stopped for a while, mostly because the Motorola chip used in the Synchronous AM detector became end-of-lifed. Production restarted without the Sync-AM feature. The test for this is equally facile: if the receiver will enter Sync-AM mode (S-AM) when the AM-mode button is repeatedly pressed, it has the Sync-AM feature. If the receiver *won't* enter S-AM, then it *doesn't* have the feature. Easy, eh? Now - and this is the germ of truth behind the madness - since there have been hardware and software changes made to the design to remove the Sync-AM but the model name (R75) retained, undoubtedly the serial numbers will have been re-started at a different value. And I have no clue what that might be, and I'm pretty sure anybody else is probably just guessing.
That said, the ONLY fool-proof way one has of telling what is in an R75 is to do the simple tests above. Don't get confused by the serial-number jive.