Giant Flagpole Built From Old Radio Tower

Giant Flagpole Built From Old Raio Tower BUILDINGS New Techniques 33-4-44 Jim Kocourek built a 57-ft. flagpole with a circular stairway in his front yard that gets a lot of attention from friends and neighbors in Reedsville, Wis. The flagpole started out as a 100-ft. radio tower that had been used to dispatch service trucks at a Deere dealership. The dealer said that if he could remove the tower, it was his to keep. So Kocourek hired a crane operator and figured out the balance point of the big pile, which is about 20 in. around at its base. The balance point was at 33 ft., 6 in., so Kocourek attached the crane higher than that point to safely lift it off its base and set it down. Once it was on the ground, Kocourek cut the pole in half for transportation back to his shop. Using the bottom half of the tower, he hired a metal fabricator, Schuette Mfg., to make 40 fan-shaped steps for the stairs out of 1/8-in. sheet steel. Kocourek welded them to the tower using a plywood jig to space them evenly. At the top, he added a crow's nest with a railing, then extended the pole 7 ft. to raise a 5 by 7-ft. American flag even higher. Then he sandblasted and painted the pole in the shop. To create a solid base to hold the flagpole, Kocourek used a backhoe to dig a hole 5 ft. deep, 5 ft. long and 3 ft. wide, then built a metal frame 2 ft. square and suspended on 2 by 4's about 3 ft. below ground level. With four 2-in. studs placed in the framework, he poured about 5 yards of concrete into the hole, leveled the studs, then vibrated and cured the concrete. The same crane that took the pole down was used to put it back up. The total cost of the project was about $800, not including the labor of Kocourek and a friend working the better part of a week on the welding, painting and installation. Once bolted in place, the flagpole proved sturdy enough to support a person's weight and survive the strongest winds. "Once in a while I go up there with a bottle of beer to look out over the countryside. On warm summer nights, that's a fun thing to do,'' says Kocourek. He said it was probably a good idea not to include a railing in the plans because it discourages all but the bravest souls from climbing his flagpole. In fact, nobody has come to join him for a beer, even though he says the crow's nest platform would hold two or three people comfortably. "Nobody else has been up there,'' he says. "Some people thought they were going to try it, but they never made it up.'' Now that he's reached new heights at his rural home, Kocourek plans to plunge to the deepest depths. Sitting in his shop is a 20-ft. submarine he has been building for three years. He's part of the Personal Submersibles Organization (www.psubs.org), a private submariner group, and he's always dreamed of having his own underwater vessel. By 2010, he plans to be piloting the submarine in search of Great Lakes shipwrecks. Contact: Jim Kocourek, 1479 S. County W, Reedsville, Wis. 54230 (ph 920 772-4271).

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