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how I got mine:


Decades ago, when I was around 15, I happened to be riding my bicycle down an alley in a nearby neighborhood
when I saw a rotor just sitting beside the alley, near where garbage cans would be set out for collection.
This was probably a case of someone taking down the eyesore of an antenna when they took possession of a house,
and this was just set out for a scrapper to take away. There wasn't a control box, but I figured that'd be
easy to replace. I was just getting into radio and recognized the value of a rotor, although I didn't have
any immediate use for it. I hauled it home anyway, and it sat in the basement for quite a few years before I
decided to look into it further. It turned out to be a Ham IV rotor (with brake), quite a nice find for free.

I cracked it open, and found it was in pretty good shape. No brake damage, the position indicator looked good,
though several of the bearings had started to rust since the case wasn't completely sealed. I ordered a bearing
kit and swapped the bearings while I re-greased the gears. Later I found a control box for sale at a hamfest,
and after replacing its start capacitor and lamp, got a successful test of the rotor. I sealed it up with RTV,
and set it aside until I could find a control cable etc. I finally ran across a cable for sale at a hamfest,
(those don't show up very often) and got some automotive plugs to use as quick-connectors, both at the control
box and at the rotor. It took me awhile to find satisfactory connectors, since I was looking for waterproof,
8 pins, and capable of high current, all at a reasonable price.

About this time I had acquired both a 11 element VHF and a 22 element UHF beam. I put them on opposite ends
of a 6ft boom, and used a scrap HF beam plate to connect that to a vertical mast. The rotor went in between,
and now I had a UHF/VHF beam. (no room for an HF beam here unfortunately) Of course the UHF beam pointed in
the opposite direction, so I had to keep that in mind when aiming it. I'm using a UHF/VHF duplexer to connect
both antennas to a single 1/2" hardline into my radio stack. I also stuck a dual band vertical on the mast
and ran that back with another run of 1/2" hardline.

Currently I'm having problems with slippage pretty much everywhere, and I need to find a better way to secure
things down from spinning.



rotor with beams:



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