At my previous QTH in Schaumburg, Illinois I had a tower up to about 75 feet with a Hygain TH6DXX on top for 20, 15 and 10 meters. For 40 meters I had a center fed half wave dipole in an almost vertical position strung from the top of the tower sloping down to the ground. It slopped at something of an angle so it was not perfectly vertical. For 80 I had a top fed quarter wave element in a sloper configuration angled, as best I recall, to about a 45 degree angle.

I had that system up for probably not more than a year and a half because in the later part of 1979, we moved to Texas. Yes, I lowered the antennas, disassembled the sections of Rohn 45G tower and they along with the disassembled TH6DXX were loaded on the moving van along with all of our goods.

In Schaumburg I had sufficient real estate to string guy wires for the tower, but in Bedford, Texas I did not. The layout of my lot did not lend itself to guying which would be needed if I intended to raise the tower to its former height. I decided that I probably would not raise the tower to the same height I had previously done.

I installed enough tower sections to get the tower to 25 feet. I did not put on the top section. My plan was to eventually raise the tower to perhaps 50 feet and put the beam on top. I had no idea how I was going to handle antennas for 80 and 40 though. One thing at a time.

In the meantime I installed a half wave center fed dipole for 40 which had the apex up a little over 25 feet using the top of the tower as a mount. The antenna slopped in somewhat an Inverted V configuration. I am not sure why I selected that band but I suppose I considered it a good compromise for one band if that was all I was going to have for a while.

A brief side bar with a description of the operation in Schaumburg, IL. Obviously with the antenna system I had installed there, HF performance was ideal. Due to the nature of my job (lots of business travel) I was not able to operate as much as I would have liked to. Nevertheless, during that time I set out to and accomplished the Bicentennial WAS Award offered by the ARRL during the Bicentennial year 1976. That was no mean feat considering that I only became licensed that year and collecting confirmed QSL's for all of the contacts with all 50 states is not always an easy task.

After accomplishing that task I became motivated to try for a 5BWAS (Five Band Worked All States). I hit it hard and heavy. I came close to accomplishing it too. I worked and confirmed contacts with all fifty states on all HF bands but two. Yes, that included AK and HI on 40 and 80 meters. I lacked (as I recall) something like two states on one band and one state on the other band. I believe those were 15 and 20 meters. I don't recall which of the two I lacked confirmed contacts on. The states I needed were the more close in states to Illinois and those aren't always easy to get if propagation tends to "skip" over them because of the close proximity. Anyhow, that's where I was when I found myself having to pull everything down in preparation for the move to Texas.