“That was an awesome day, glad we got lucky with the weather and managed to build the frame and hang four dishes.” Tristan NM0TH
Corral Bluffs June 8th – The Crew (alpha order) Dave WA1JHK, David W0CBI, Doug0, KF0PCW, Glenn KE0UWC, Jeff KD0MDP, John W0VG, Mark7 N7CTM, Mark0 N0OHJ, Mike K7AIH, Tony (the Site Owner), Tristan NM0TH Wayne N0POH
Talk about a “Site installation!” This site, although existing, has now got to be adapted to the needs of the owner and RMHAM. Whatever was there before is being removed and all new stuff is going in.
Dave WA1JHK and Mark7 N7CTM are seen cutting down the rack so it will fit in the “hut” Yes, this one is and hut. 
The site is situated on a bluff east of Colorado Springs. Don’t try to look it up, as it is situated on Private Property and visitors are not welcome! Continuing with the hut, we have Dave and Doug0 KF0PCW installing the innards. The router, surge protection, DC power distribution and the Ethernet connections leading to the tower. 
Meanwhile, Tony, John W0VG, Jeff KD0MDP and Wayne N0POH are assembling the clamps that will attach an “H” frame mounting to the tower. This H frame support is designed to support mounting 
four dishes, two commercial and two for the Rocky Mountain Ham Radio backbone. You can see one of the commercial dishes awaiting mounting in the foreground. For those who are unfamiliar with tower climbing, it is an art. Tower climbers have a rather healthy investment in harnesses, straps, and other paraphernalia to enable them to safely climb. Tower 
climbing requires training, caution and a constant awareness of your surroundings. You can see Tristan and Mike outfitted with their safety equipment, climbing gear and in the photo. Those of us on the ground also need to be acutely aware of our surroundings, a hard hat is de rigueur for the ground crew, lest you get beaned by a dropped part or tool. Tristan NM0TH and Mike K7AIH on the tower preparing the rigging to hoist everything up. The design and configuration of the dish mounting on the tower required special consideration in order to accomplish the objective of creating a intermediate link at Corral Bluffs west to Westcreek and south to 
Piñon. Due to the weight of the 2” conduit that was used to create both the uprights and the cross-arms, the “H” frame needed to be built in place on the tower. Tristan and Mike placed the crossbars the appropriate distance apart from each other on the tower. Once in place they took a short break and John and Tony started to assemble the “H” frame uprights.on the tower. When this photo was taken, Mike had already joined John and Tony back on the tower and was starting to haul up the lengths of outdoor rated CAT5 cable that would eventually link the microwave radios on the dishes to the router in the hut. Tristan and the rest of the ground crew 
were busy moving the dishes into place below the tower. Once the The “H” frame was completed Tristan went back to assist on the tower and John resumed supervising the ground crew as the dishes were raised. Glenn KE0UWC, in the orange T-shirt, was operating the motorized capstan attached to one of the trucks. These dishes are not light, by any means, and not having to haul them up using our own muscle power was a great help. The capstan had the “load” line, this is the line with the weight. David W0CBI is shown handling the “tagline”. A few of us had a discussion on the way home about the origin of the term “tagline”. The only thing I could find was OSHA’s definition “Tagline means a rope (usually fiber) attached to a lifted load for purposes of controlling load spinning and pendular motions or used to stabilize a load during material handling operations”. In other words, David kept the dishes from banging against the side of 
the tower! Getting it all together was Mark0 N0OHJ. Mark was feeding the Ethernet cable back into the hut where it was terminated and the dishes were connected to the router. In a perfect world we would be done, not today. First we had some cleanup around the site and then packing up all of the tables, tools and items that we needed throughout the day to fabricate our mounts and get the dishes in the air Also, in a perfect world, we would have communications. The dishes at Westcreek were set up in advance using the best bearing based on compass settings and the results were less than optimum and would need to be peaked. We hadn’t been to the Piñon site yet, so there was nothing installed there for us to connect to. As the skies darkened and the rains came down in sheets, here is the results of our day at Corral Bluffs.