This ensures you are able to “encourage” the tilt base bolts into the correct slots and keep them there during lowering. The good news is you will get the hang of raising and lowering your antenna as you realize you will need to apply some downward pressure during transition.īasically, you will need to hold the antenna nowhere near its center of gravity and manipulate it just as if it was not attached to anything You and your two widely spaced hands are the antenna support, not the tilt base pivot point. If you cannot handle the antenna yourself, enlist the aid of a friend who takes direction well. You are well advised to pay very close attention to what is happening to your tilt base while moving it. If you do not seat the lower pivot bolt properly, you will bind it and/or the top sliding bolt and may simply cut it off. However, you need to really watch what you are doing when lowering the antenna. The “kit” from DX Engineering included an Antenna Tilt Base which I gladly installed.

This results is a gooey mess the first few times you apply, but you get the hang of the proper amount soon. I used the recommended aluminum conductive anti-oxidant compound suggested by DXE on all physically and electrically mating aluminum surfaces. As shown below, I applied regular flat black paint over the primed aluminum pieces except where the pieces slide into each other If you are going to paint your antenna, you need to mask the mating four or five inches of the lower end of each tube. Priming aluminum is a topic I researched very carefully to be sure I applied a lasting finish. Compromises understood and simulations complete, I carefully considered the Big IR, but liked the idea of no moving parts or switches at the antenna location.Ī bare aluminum antenna would stand out too much in my neighborhood so I decided to paint the antenna black.

I chose the DX Engineering 43 Foot quick taper model during the price war between DXE and Zero Five.

Zero five antennas installation