After I got into ham radio, I realized very quickly that I couldn’t reach very far with my current setup. The primary culprit was the dense tree line surrounding my house. In an attempt to get up and over the tree line, I wanted to build a simple DIY radio tower. I designed a low cost and cheap radio tower using a utility pole and some metal tubing. It stands right around 37ft and with the antenna, just around 40ft.
Design
The base of the tower is a 20ft utility pole. This pole will be set into the ground a few feet with the dirt packed around it.
The upper portion of the tower would be made using some long sections of metal tubing. These sections were welded together to form about a 20ft section of pipe.
The trick of this design is being able to get to the top of the tower to change antennas. Since it’s not rigid enough to climb and it’s not feasible to put everything on it before it goes up. I needed a way to allow the upper section to swing down without much effort.
In the top of the utility pole, I drilled a hole and on the metal pipe, I welded an I bolt that pivots on the utility pole. Next, to prevent the pole from swinging down, I have a plate with two bolts that fastens just below the pivot point. To get the tower down, I just have to climb to the top of the utility pole and from there, I can swing the tower down
Feedline
The antenna feedlines run down the side of the upper section. There are 3 feedlines in total: primary multi-band, VHF, and broadcast FM. They run across the yard to the house and come in through a window.
This DIY radio tower is very simple and was made using stuff laying around. This reduces cost and produces a nice functional radio tower.