For The 2.25" Legacy Antennas
Field Report — The First XL In Service
"I received my XL tilt base and I'm beyond impressed with the build quality and performance. It was always scary lowering and raising a 28-foot flagpole, worrying about which direction it might want to go if it got away from me. This base is something I've been wanting for years, and now it's available. Loosen the top bolt and the bottom two bolts, remove the second bolt from the top and it walks down easily. A five-minute job. Going back up is just as easy and quick. The best part is it stops at vertical. No more worrying about bringing it down or up. This is an awesome investment for my antenna and personal peace of mind. It's well worth every dollar."
"I also replaced my RG8X coax with LMR-400 thanks to Jon's coax information. What an unbelievable improvement that made, 80 through 6 meters. I went from a good antenna to a great antenna."
— Gary Kalata, KC4ES · 2.25" 28' DX Flagpole · The photos in the gallery are his · Published with permission
If your Greyline HF vertical is from the 2.25-inch era, this is your tilt. The standard Tilt-Up Base is built for the current 2.00-inch antenna line -- machining it to fit a legacy antenna would leave a thinner splice carrying a bigger, higher-wind-load vertical, and we do not build weak links at the bottom of anything. So the bench built the XL: the same one-person tilt-over mechanism as the standard tilt, sized and reinforced for the 2.25 HF vertical from the start -- heavier square tube, heavier bar, longer pivot bolts.
It stops at vertical. Gary put his finger on the part the drawing does not show: the base catches the pole plumb, so raising it alone is not a balancing act. Walk it up, it stops, bolt it. The fourteen-second video shows N3EQF raising his 24-footer alone on the standard tilt; the XL does exactly this for the 2.25.
What it buys you is what every tilt buys: the whole antenna comes down to waist height with one pair of hands -- no ladder, no crew, no waiting for a calm day. Inspect the insulators, read the hardware, swap bolts, dress the flag, and walk it back up. The fall checkup becomes a ten-minute job on the ground.
Straight talk: these are hand-built in Sun Valley in small runs. Your order carries a real build queue, and you will get a real date -- that is how a hand-built shop works.
The other end of the system: once you can reach the top, the 9' DX Whip is what most operators put up there -- added aperture, and 40 and 80 come alive. The tilt is how you reach the top; the whip is what goes on it.
And the other end of the coax: Gary's second sentence is the one most legacy owners need. A 2.25 antenna fed through old RG8X is a great antenna held back by its cable. Genuine LMR-400, assembled and sealed -- 10% off when it rides with an antenna, and $9 shipping on its own.
Our guarantee covers the antenna and mounts as we build them. Hand-built in Sun Valley, Idaho. Questions: 435-200-4902 -- an operator answers.