So I'm disassembling an antenna rotor and running it through the parts washer... it has 12 - 5/16" ball bearings that carry the antenna load as it turns... when I'm finished I carefully gather the bearings and put them in a spray can lid...handy little things and head back in the shop to start the reassembly.

I'm carrying the top half and bottom half of the case the ring gear, 6 internal gears, the bearing race and the little cap with 12 bearings... 15 feet from the shop the little cup tips over and without a free hand to catch it... bearings start escaping... running...er rolling for their lives... after several expletives I have recovered 10 of them... after another 45 minutes of searching, sweeping and moving everything I can think they might have rolled under... I finally move hose reel and look behind it... nothing... then I lay my face on the floor looking under the welder rack and I see a shiny object shivering in fear inside a piece of angle iron /.\ lying behind the welder rack... his buddy was right behind him !!!!!

I should play the lottery today


well, that's 45 minutes I'll never get back

j

 

Why is it, when that happens to me it is always in the gravel driveway?

 

Those poor little guys . You should be ashamed of yourself for scaring them like that !

 

Better question.....what is an antenna rotor and why does it have ball bearings and gears?

 

i would have taken that long to find 11 of them, then triple that to find the last one. nice save.

 

tinman.... an antenna rotor is a device used to turn antennas ...duh

from tv antennas to get signal from distant tv stations to large ham radio antennas

mine is gonna turn a small ham antenna the bearings fit on a ring between the top bell of the rotor and the base to support the weight and inable turning

the gears are driven by a small a.c motor inside the bell

 

with that on the roof of your truck, doesn't it hit power lines?

 

My question was: Does anyone still use these things? 'Tenna Rotors were ubiquitus some 40 years ago when almost all TV reception was via radio waves. Almost every home in towns, and EVERY home with a TV in the country, had various styles of antennae sprouting from their roofs, or alongside the house. Poor people (like my family), couldn't afford a rotor, so we had one of the kids go outside and twist the pole the antenna was mounted on until the reception was the best. Someone inside the house would shout out the window: "Keep going...STOP!....Back a little...OK!." Wasn't bad in the summer, but no fun when the temperature got down around zero.

Ah, the good old days.

 

Haha, I thought it was some new fangled auto accessory.....

I remember the antenna adjusting drill, as I was the kid on the roof....

 

Wow, our family must have been poorer than yours! We did not have an antenna, we had rabbit ears (with tin foil on the tips). We got only one channel, the local NBC channel from Lancaster, PA.

I loved it when we went to my cousins' house to watch their TV. They had an antenna and a turner! We could watch the Three Stooges and Looney Tunes!

 

I bought a rebuild kit for Albatross' T98 and naively failed to count all of the new roller bearings. Today, I put the output shaft assembly together and deftly stuck 34 of the 0.187"x0.990" rollers in before pressing on the hub, fighting manly snap ring dragons and carefully putting it aside. Then I double-checked my work.
Then, folks, is when I realized that the kit was missing 34 3/16"x1.25" roller bearings. So, I tore it all apart. He-man snap ring dragons, hub pressing and all. Fortunately, PartsInternational has them in stock and is on my way home from work tomorrow. Some days, it is especially nice to have the right tools for a job!

As for antenna rotors, I've seen prop pitch motors used. But the biggest by far was on the 2 meter 48(!) Yagi array used by the owner of Texas Towers to work Earth-Moon-Earth communication into Japan. It is made of two Ford Pinto rear ends. No grass grows around the back of that array!
73 de KB5SHC

 

You cheated! With a smooth clean floor like that and plenty of light....it was like a kid's game of hide and seek.

Try it with an uneven cracked floor, steel shelves permanently attached to the walls, 1/2 inch of dirt and leaves under them, and fluorescent lights that put out about 5.25 lumens when it is cold outside - then go looking for dropped parts!

You should see me swinging a magnet on a stick all over the place looking like Luke Skywalker fending off Obi Wan while blind as a bat....

And just for the record I had to reach up and turn an antenna on a pole - by hand - outside the deer camp to get better TV reception - two days ago. That stuff still happens in Maine. We get a whole three channels up there on an old TV that is next to the Atlantic enamel wood-fired cookstove. (patent date 1918) Now that is living in style!


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Ah yes, its been my experience that those bearings can be quite skittish, and given the chance, will dash off in all directions and bury themselves in the most inconvenient location imaginable.

I'm glad you were able to rustle the stragglers and bring them back into the herd.

Bobby

 

That sounds like a New Hud Home in this country.

 

Seems like I have heard of that "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof" somewhere. Now we know!!!!