The VE3KSR Antenna 
Project Update Page
Photos by Ben VA3BNY

Early Construction    Tower Top-Off    Cable Arrives  Oct News
Final Update

October 16, 2000 Update
The work of reinstalling our clubs antennas at Baden hill has started. On Monday October 16th, we watched as riggers hoisted into place four of our antenna arrays and mounted them to the tower legs. 

The photo show the carriage basket with our antenna's being lifted with the riggers inside.

Two of our antenna's have been installed at approx. 175 ft level, offset from the tower by approx. 40" to give us better pattern coverage. If you look at the picture carefully, you can see four of the climbers standing on the three 2 ¾" galvanized pipe fastening our antenna. 

When finished, we will have had over 1000 ft of feed line installed, of various sizes, some 300 individual heliax mounting brackets, to hold the feed line to the tower at five foot spacing, and approx., 15 grounding kits. Our highest antenna is at the 250-ft level, which will be for the clubs 6-meter repeater. Just below that, VE3KSR voice and packet, along with VE3SED 440 machine. Finally, under an ice bridge, the ULR link antenna to Aurora has been mounted. 

Once finished, and we hope soon, the new installation has to tested, before we can bring the equipment on line. This will only take a few days, baring any problems found. 

Because of the concern for safety, we have restricted access to the hill to all except a few from the tech committee. 

I will try to get more pictures later to view at one of our clubs meetings. 

From VA3BNY
Ben Sasiela
Technical Director KWARC

October 5, 2000 Update
Some picture of members moving our club equipment back to the hill in readiness for re installation.

Ben VA3BNY

	Tedd's truck bringing the cable reels up the Baden hill.  Note the horizon... gives a good perception of the hills height.
	VA3MRJ  Dave (left) and VE3TJD Tedd (right) moving reels of 1 5/8 inch heliax to the trailer
	Our Heliax feedlines on reels at the Baden Hill awaiting the riggers to install.
	Picture of the jin pole that was  used to haul up the huge tower sections while the tower was being built.  Each section is approx 20 ft long, equipped with a heavy duty swivel for cable on top.

[ TOP ]

New CKCO Tower Topped-Off
Thursday Sept, 7,2000, 14:30 EST

The folks from LEBLANC topped off the new tower (left) at 700 feet on Thursday, Sept 7th, 2000 at 14:30 EST.  Now the big job of installing the huge new broadcast arrays begins for....(top to bottom)

There will also be a large number of commercial microwave as well as UHF VHF antennas along with associated feedlines and wave guide to be mounted and then the VE3KSR project can get under way.  

More details on timing as the commercial projects get underway.

Thanks to Ben, VA3BNY, here's a picture a few hours after the top-off.

Paul VE3SY

[ TOP ]

August, 2000 Update

These new tower sections lined up and ready to  be hoisted into place, are 7 feet across the face.

The folks at Baden Hill have been working on the new tower for CKCO and the small (200 Ft) tower that our equipment was using has been removed. This tower was originally installed in 1949 and was used for CFCA-FM which went off the air around 1952. CFCA then re-appeared in 1967 and is now known as "COOL FM"

The temp antenna farm for KSR and SED atop the CKCO TX shack. The WX station is also here.

CKCO TV then came on the air in 1954 using the small tower at first then in 1956 built the present 600 foot tower.  This tower will be coming down as soon as the new one is up and working.

Our equipment including the packet and VE3KSR (voice) is currently working on temporary antenna's on the roof of the TV transmitter building (see pix) and of course the coverage is not very good (as advertised).

The new tower (left) on the way up and when complete will be 700 feet high.

There has been some work done at our new site, the Bell Canada building at Mannheim. Some co-ax has been installed and we hope to soon have some equipment working at that site. The long range plan is to move VE3RCK repeater to that site and get it out of the rooftop room at 100 Queen St, Kitchener.

We have another possible site nearby that may be available to us It has a 350 foot tower with an OMNI antenna at the top and we are working at getting the proper approval for this site. We may consider moving VE3KSR to that site, but that has not been approved by the directors and is only in the planning stage.

The work at Baden is behind schedule and we the Amateurs will be the last to have our antenna's installed on the new tower. Commercial users will come first as could be expected since we are "guests" there. Incidentally we have been very fortunate to have the Baden Hill site since July 1 1969 that's 31 years !

Some estimates say that it may be next spring before our antenna's are installed on the new tower. The new tower will be in the area of 700 feet and the Television antenna's will be "Panel" antennas mounted around the tower at the top. there will not be a single "stick" for CKCO as is now.

We wanted to advise you that no one is allowed on the Baden Hill during this construction phase. A few of the technical committee are allowed access for service work only. 

73, 
John J. Riddell, VE3AMZ, 
Technical Director, KWARC, inc.
e-mail: jjr@attcanada.ca