Building and Installing the Antenna Mount
A fundamental engineering hurdle was the design and mounting of the 335ft metal ‘can’ antenna to the 1500 foot concrete shaft of the CN Tower. This was achieved through a massive 40 ton “antenna mount” as fabricated by CANRON at their Disco Rd. facility in Etobicoke, Ontario (as seen in the two left-most images). It would then later on be disassembled and hoisted to the top of the tower by the dedicated Pecco PC900 crane.
One year prior, in January 1974, a massive “clump” of concrete was poured at the top of the tower (where today’s “Space Pod” is located at the 1500ft level) whose primary purpose was to anchor and hold 125, 14 foot pipes in a hex configuration. On January 31st 1975 the massive 13.5ft high, steel-plate antenna mount was lifted and assembled on top of this “concrete clump”, in 10 sections, by CANRON’s dedicated antenna iron worker team over an 18 hour period. The mount was then anchored to its base using 125 steel anchor bolts and then the tubes filled with grout.
Since the SkyPod's diameter, as of January 1975, limited the tower crane’s lifting capacity, each 4 ton section of the antenna mount was first lifted up to the SkyPod roof by means of the "material hoist" located in the south leg of the tower. Then, the tower crane lifted the section of the antenna mount from the roof of the SkyPod up to the 1500ft left, based on the now shallower depth of the crane's boom extent. Just before the Pecco PC900 crane was dismantled on March 8th 1975, the antenna mount was tensioned to the top of the tower with 125 Stelco A490 bolts, each 12ft long. Each bolt was tensioned to 120 kips (54 360kg).
Upon completion, the 25 tons of zinc coated steel framework of the “Space Pod’s” canopy roof was installed in February 1975 (as seen partially in the upper right image), all ready for the removal of the crane + installation of the antenna in March 1975.
The upper middle image is a rare photo of Winston Young (one of the tower’s two primary crane operators), along with Jimmy Arsenault (iron worker), Mike Newhall (iron worker) and Jerry Morrow (one of CANRON’s primary engineers on the antenna project) – taken from Robert Lansdale’s personal negative collection.
CANRON’s iron worker “gangs” were carefully selected for the tower project, with the same general group of guys working on the SkyPod steel erection, the antenna mount installation and the erection of the antenna + its bolting. Its for this careful choice of people and the careful management of the project that CANRON was able to pull off such a phenomenal amount of work in such a short period of time and under immovable deadlines.
Building and Installing the Antenna Mount
A fundamental engineering hurdle was the design and mounting of the 335ft metal ‘can’ antenna to the 1500 foot concrete shaft of the CN Tower. This was achieved through a massive 40 ton “antenna mount” as fabricated by CANRON at their Disco Rd. facility in Etobicoke, Ontario (as seen in the two left-most images). It would then later on be disassembled and hoisted to the top of the tower by the dedicated Pecco PC900 crane.
One year prior, in January 1974, a massive “clump” of concrete was poured at the top of the tower (where today’s “Space Pod” is located at the 1500ft level) whose primary purpose was to anchor and hold 125, 14 foot pipes in a hex configuration. On January 31st 1975 the massive 13.5ft high, steel-plate antenna mount was lifted and assembled on top of this “concrete clump”, in 10 sections, by CANRON’s dedicated antenna iron worker team over an 18 hour period. The mount was then anchored to its base using 125 steel anchor bolts and then the tubes filled with grout.
Since the SkyPod's diameter, as of January 1975, limited the tower crane’s lifting capacity, each 4 ton section of the antenna mount was first lifted up to the SkyPod roof by means of the "material hoist" located in the south leg of the tower. Then, the tower crane lifted the section of the antenna mount from the roof of the SkyPod up to the 1500ft left, based on the now shallower depth of the crane's boom extent. Just before the Pecco PC900 crane was dismantled on March 8th 1975, the antenna mount was tensioned to the top of the tower with 125 Stelco A490 bolts, each 12ft long. Each bolt was tensioned to 120 kips (54 360kg).
Upon completion, the 25 tons of zinc coated steel framework of the “Space Pod’s” canopy roof was installed in February 1975 (as seen partially in the upper right image), all ready for the removal of the crane + installation of the antenna in March 1975.
The upper middle image is a rare photo of Winston Young (one of the tower’s two primary crane operators), along with Jimmy Arsenault (iron worker), Mike Newhall (iron worker) and Jerry Morrow (one of CANRON’s primary engineers on the antenna project) – taken from Robert Lansdale’s personal negative collection.
CANRON’s iron worker “gangs” were carefully selected for the tower project, with the same general group of guys working on the SkyPod steel erection, the antenna mount installation and the erection of the antenna + its bolting. Its for this careful choice of people and the careful management of the project that CANRON was able to pull off such a phenomenal amount of work in such a short period of time and under immovable deadlines.