I built a mountain recently, and thought it would be cool to model a radio antenna atop this mountain… I haven’t seen any kits for radio antenna’s, so I wonder if anyone has constructed one, and how tall would it have to be to realisically model a 150 foot antenna?
BUSCH makes a transmitter tower with lights. 14 3/4" tall. Walthers 2007 book on page 525. Take a look. In HO 150’ is about 20" tall
Not hard to fabricate one in HO, like next post says it would be about 20 inches tall.
Can be made out of 1/32 nd square balsa sticks, paint to any color you wanted.
I made a revolvng airport beacon light for my layout using 1/16 square balsa sticks, then used a small electric DC motor to power it, and LED lights on it.
Not on my layouy yet, as I just finished it last week, will try and get some pics of it .
TheK4Kid
Working on the Pennsy
What a great idea.
My “other” hobby is amateur radio. I could build a tower with a big beam antenna. It’s probably the closest I will get to a real one.
I would use styrene though as most towers since 1900 were steel.
BB
I did 20 or so years ago when I had my American Flyer set going. I am an ex Broadcast Engineer so I had to have a tower, complete with a 4 bay fm rotar-tiller ERI antenna. I made a flashing beacon and the obstuction lights. I made it out of matchstick (the long kind). I tried to get as close as I could to the aviation orange and white paint and to the FAA spacings of the paint sections. I would have to look up the actual specs again as to the patterns… its like every so many feet you switch colors. You could find it on the web under Part 17 of the CFR… I saw a tower in the Walthers catalog that looks pretty close.
I would love to see a pic of that beam antenna!
The closest I have gotten to a radio antenna is a couple of lighting towers for my refinery area.
I wound some steel welding rod 1/16th. diameter around a piece of dowel and then soldered three more bits of the same rod lengthwise equidistant to each other. (For a tapered mast use a tapered dowel!) All soldered and then painted silver with a 12v vehicle 4 LED very high intensity ‘bulb’ fitted at the top enclosed in the case of a PL259 (to the non radio amateurs that is a largish antenna plug) casing. I will post pictures if anybody so desires.
To Blind Bruce I am also a radio Amateur UK Licence G8 & G4
Kind regards,
Goetz.
Thanks for the info everyone. I was thinking about fabricating a tower out of brass. I will look into the kits mentioned, and compare cost.
I have not checked out section 17 of FAA regulations, but I did notice today, that the towers near my house, vary in height and all have 4 red zones, and 3 white (or was it 5 and 4?), with the bottom and top zones in red. It would seem feasable to paint the model tower in equal distances of each color, in the same pattern.
Most of the towers (about six) near my house, have pairs of beacon lights at each zone. Just one of the towers has a pair of lights halfway up, and one at the top.
If I do construct one from scratch, I’ll post it here.
Jeremy
Here are three pictures of my Lighting Towers. As explained above.
Comments welcome.
Kind regards,
Goetz.
I read a lot, and I remember a lot of what I read, but I forget a lot of it too.
That in mind, I kinda, sorta, think I remember a Ham manual that said you start with red, alternate red and white every 50 vertical feet, post one red light every 50 feet, and you have to have redundant red lights on top, in case one burns out.
I know this:
Planes + unlit towers = ugly mess.
Best I got…
Those light towers are really neat Goetz. Thanks for sharing!
(chuckle)-Jeffers, I’ll keep that info in mind!
From memory from recently building a tower, towers that are painted have 7 alternating color sections - starting with the orange/red color and ending with it. Typically painted towers greater than 200 feet only require night time lights. Unpainted towers over 200 feet require daytime strobes and night time lights. Towers under 200 feet typically do not require any marking unless you are near an airport. If my calculations are right, any ho scale tower in the united states not near a tower taller than 27.5 inches would need to be lit, or feel the wrath of the FAA/FCC! 
Of course any tower can be marked and lit in the real world, as long as it follows the guidlines.
Well, here it is! I decided to scratch-build the tower out of brass, and make my own electronics for the flashing lights. It is not to scale, and isn’t prototypically correct, but still serves it’s purpose. In HO scale, it is 125’ tall (18"). I miscalculated when measuring for the colors, so I ended up with 3 red, 2 white, rather than 4 red, 3 white (which is prototypically correct). In all, it cost about $11.00 for the brass rod, and electronics. This cost does not include a 12V power supply… There are two LED’s at the top, one which serves as a beacon, and the other which serves as an indicator, when a train reaches the end of the track within the mountain. (the circuit for this operation is not included in the $11.00.)
Since this is on a club layout, and will most likely be moved in the future, I had to plan to take the tower down for moving, so I had come up with a “quick-plug”, which is installed on the hardware shack near the tower. I used an 8-pin, chip connector, which I cut in half, to use one half as the female end and the other as the male end. The base of the tower slips into a pedistal mounted on the layout, which conducts the postiive current (as the tower itself conducts the positive current for the LED’s) One lead powers the two lamps at mid level which require more resistors (due to lower milliamp consumption), the Second lead powers the top lamp which is run directly off of the basic circuit, which it’s voltage has been pre-determined in the circuit, and thus doesn’t require additional resistance. The Third and Fourth leads are the + & - to the lamp that is operated by a separate detection circuit.
The hardware shack is made of 1/8" balsa wood, which I spread wood putty over to smooth out, and fill in the seams. The door trim is 1/64" styrene, and the doorknob is a track nail.
I have a short video which shows a brief “in the making” and the lights flashing if anyone is interested:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBFjOorCQKc
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Now what would be really cool - for all you wireless DCC folks out there - is to make a working transmitting/receiving tower for your layout and hook your repeater up to it. It would not only look like a working tower, it would actually BE a working tower. I’ll freely admit that I’m no electronics expert. But it seems like the idea oughta work…
Tom
I give it a week before someone does this now.
The hardest part, i think, will be getting the antenna scale-sized. [;)]
although i guess that you could make the entire tower the antenna…
Great work!! It looks pretty realistic to me!
Pretty cool tower, mtrails! I like the video also.
I noticed that the mid-tower lights flash as well as the top tower lights. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but generally only the top-most lights on a tower flash (I learned that while in pilot training). There are probably exceptions, though - I guess yours is one of those! [:D]
Very nice tower! (if you will excuse a few quibbles):
- You’re right, towers normally are painted with 7 bands, starting and ending with International Orange;
- That’s a guyed tower, so it needs AT LEAST two levels of guys (3 in the middle, 3 at the top). Obviously more if the tower is taller!
- A guyed tower almost always has a “pivot base” (where the 3 legs converge to a single base point). The pivot section would be about TWICE as tall as the width of the tower.
- Your flashing beacons in the center are probably OK, although the FAA would likely prefer 3 non-flashing side lights at that level.
I like your equipment shack and transmission lines!
/lone woof
I was waiting for my tower to get picked apart!
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I screwed up! I was bummed about it, and realized the mistake once the paint had been applied. [banghead]
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I am all for; guying the tower, but unfortunately this is a modular layout, and as many times as the club has had to relocate, it is inevidable that it will be moved in the future, so I omitted them.
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The pivot base was my first choice, but I did see a picture of a tower with a base similar to the one I fabricated. The base plate supporting the exoskeleton should have been modeled to be about 2" or more thick. There should also be gussets attaching the base plate to the pedistal…
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I chose the two mid-level lamps to flash, as I have seen on an ammature radio tower locally, which stands about 100’. The only difference, is the on/off of the lamps are opposite of the mid and top lamps, as mine are on/off simultaneously.
Mark- The steady mid-lamps are pretty regular, but I have seen a couple of exceptions. I also notice on much taller towers (up to 1,000’) that have 4 or 5 sets of lamps up the tower, every other level flash.
Thank you for your input, and comments, they are very much appreciated!
Jeremy
Jeremy - don’t worry about the nitpicking too much (part of the hobby) and besides it looks great!
lonewolf is correct in his observations. Although, not to step on any toes, one of the stations I worked at 15 years ago put up a new guyed FM tower and I remember it having three sides at the bottom, rather than one…could be wrong about that - I climbed about 40 feet up this tower - if I can find the photos I took up there, I’ll see if my memory serves correct.
And you made the correct choice in not putting guy wires on a modular. They would get destroyed very fast!
And in the “there’s a prototype for everything” department…I will not name names to protect the guilty…but when this tower I am posting about was put up…it DID NOT get put up in the correct way as far as the red and white sections.
When it was delivered, there were white sections and red sections and we all know (MOST of us anyway…) that they are supposed to go up in a certain way…I don’t remember the measurements but I think someone posted it above…anyway, this guy installed the sections however he wanted!
So you had, say, 1 15’ white section, followed by 3 (45’) of red, then 30’ of white, 15’ of red, 60’ feet of white…etc.
He said it didn’t matter how the colors were arranged when a young smartaleck DJ told him it was wrong.
Makes for some great photos of the wrong way to put up a tower! I left the station soon after…I assume it was repainted fairly quickly.
And I can’t find my info on it, but BLMA just released a nice looking radio tower kit, for those not interested in scratchbuilding one.
I’ll second the notion that your transmitter building and the wires leading into it look very realistic. Nice job!
You’re right Tom, it is possible to do just that. Kind of funny that this tower is right near an actual DCC radio reciever! (the pvc pipe…) The thought had crossed my mind, but I had already provisioned one other operation of the tower. With that, there would have been an additional two leads to run up the tower. Do you know how difficult it is to run wire through that sucker!? [:)]