Saga of the Truck

EVERYTHING SHINY AND NEW

The heart of a full-timer's life is the rig they live in.  And if one lives in a trailer, then the lifeblood is the truck that tows it.  Big Gulp has been our lifeblood since 2006 and has seen us through thick and thin.  Some of the thin would be Big Gulp itself.

The day we took delivery of Big Gulp
March 31, 2006

It was a proud moment when we picked up our truck from the custom up-fitter in Valparaiso, IN.  It symbolized a new beginning, a whole new way of living.  A nomadic life filled with adventures of all kinds.  And with this truck, dubbed Big Gulp for the copious amounts of fuel it consumed, our adventures began.  Small ones at first because we were both not yet retired, but vacations and long weekends helped us hone our skills for the full-time lifestyle.

THE SHINE DULLS

The warm glow of the possibilities before us were soon tempered somewhat when we began having mechanical failures, all associated with the Ford-built diesel engine.  The 2006 model was the first year that Ford coupled an in-house built motor to one of their trucks after a lengthy and bitter battle with their previous motor manufacturer, Navistar.  It wasn't much longer before the realization set in that we had the worst built diesel engine in the history of diesel motors.  Anyone that owned a Ford 6.0L all came to that same conclusion sooner or later.

The first six years the breakdowns were a nuisance, repairs were done mostly under warranty and we were still in a bricks-and-sticks home with three other vehicles at our disposal at those times when the truck was in the shop.  Luckily there were no major breakdowns when weekending or vacationing with our 5th wheel attached.

Spring 2008
Long weekend at Lake Lanier, GA

The above picture shows the 5th wheel we were pulling those first six years, a Newmar that weighed no more than 13,000 lbs fully loaded.  The 6.0L was a strong motor when it wasn't broken and had no problem with such a small and lightweight tow.

Multiple trips were made from our then residence in Georgia to be with family and friends in our home town in Texas and many other locations in that giant state and Oklahoma.  Never less than 3,000 miles per trip, many times in excess of 5,000 miles.

Again, breakdowns in the form of failed fuel injectors, broken turbochargers, and faulty EGR valves happened in that time frame but luckily not in a way that stranded us while on the road.  However, the cost of keeping this motor running was swelling.  The warranty eventually ran out and all repairs were coming out of our pocket.

THE NEXT CHAPTER

2012 rolled around and full-timing was about to get very real.  Big Gulp spent much less time towing and a lot more time hauling.  We distributed furniture and household items to family and friends as far away as South Carolina.

Summer 2012
Load of Furniture Bound for South Carolina

By late spring of 2012 our house sold and with downsizing complete we moved into our 5th wheel.  We are now full fledged full-timers.  Our only remnant of our previous lifestyle was Cyndee's little PT Cruiser.  We were both going to be working for another year and it was prudent to each have a vehicle to drive to work.

Cyndee's PT Cruiser
The last of our pre-full-timing vehicle stable.

Always part of the plan was to acquire a 5th wheel that was built for the purpose of full-timing.  That meant much heavier framing, solid wood cabinetry and heavier duty everything.  But we did want to stay as close to the length as we had (shorter than average) because we knew many of the places we wanted to go would be tight on space.  But those decisions, those choices had consequences.  The full-timing rig was much heavier.  Big Gulp was about to fulfill the job it was built for, heavy towing.

Solid oak cabinetry.
This is the wardrobe and dresser for the bedroom.

Incredible framing. Beam-welded-on-beam chassis, 
square tube framing, gussets everywhere.

  

In August of 2012 our built-to-order full-timing 5th wheel was finished and ready for pickup in Junction City, KS.  940 miles and 14 driving hours away.  Cyndee could not get off from work but I had weeks of vacation to work off before the end of the year so I went solo to Kansas to bring our new home, home.

The picking up of the new 5th wheel is a multi-day process, with doing a walk-thru, developing a punch list, getting the fixes done, getting a certified weight with my truck, etc., etc.  No use in pushing it and trying to do the drive all in one day so I decided to drive until it was dark and past the heat of the day.

I left in the early afternoon and drove almost nine hours before the hot August day had turned into the less hot August night.  Overnighting in a roadside rest stop was a new experience for me.

Big Gulp had been built with a fully reclining rear seat.  When made down it was somewhere between the width of a twin and full-size bed.  The length was just barely over five feet.  Not the way I would want my bed for every night but plenty good for the short layover.

It was a four-day process after all was said and done at the factory pick up.  There were a few finishing touches that were being completed on the afternoon of  my arrival and then the walk-thru inspections and follow-up punch list.  There was almost a full day fine tuning the electric/hydraulic brakes so that they would work with the integrated brake controller in Big Gulp.  The brakes working properly was an absolute must for this beast.

When we made it to the scales for title certification the trailer came in at a hefty 19,000 lbs/8,618 kg  (later, when loaded with all our stuff, it was 21,000 lbs/9,525 kg).  Combined with Big Gulp and the stuff in it, including two people, we tipped the scales at a whopping 31,000 lbs/14,061 kg with a bumper to bumper length of 60 ft/18.3 m.

Never had I seen Big Gulp look so small than the first time I hitched up the New Horizons trailer.

I can't tell you how many truck and RV forums I have read that the poster is bragging on their truck saying it was so big and powerful that they "don't even know the trailer is back there".  Those guys are so full of s**t!  Even when towing my previous 5th wheel that was only just a little more than half the weight of my new one, I knew it was back there, especially in a hard braking situation or steep hill climb or descent.  If you can do those things and still not know it is back there, then your sensory nerves are dead!

But again, Big Gulp was up to the task.  It was now doing what it was built to do and if not for the frequent motor component failures, life would have been grand.

THE ADVENTURES BEGIN

The next year was like being a kid waiting for Christmas.  It took FOREVER!  But retirement day finally arrived and we were off.  Our first volunteer assignment was at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.  But we had about 8 weeks to get from Georgia to Arizona and we were going to need that time to move our home base from Georgia, returning to our native state of Texas. Plus many other stops before and after our new home base in Livingston, TX.  Big Gulp did great, until it didn't.

BIGGER PROBLEMS

All was well, until it wasn't, we had traveled several thousand miles without a hitch.  We had just finished our tourist stopover in Winslow, AZ and were moving to Flagstaff, AZ as our last staging point before reporting to the North Rim.  We were about half-way between Winslow and Flagstaff on I-40 when Big Gulp had a catastrophic failure.  The exhaust gas return (EGR) cooler had ruptured, dumping a large amount of antifreeze/coolant directly into the engine block.  Instant and complete shutdown.  For the first time we were stranded on the side of the road in a relatively remote area.

Our emergency roadside service sent out an eighteen wheeler tow truck.  By and large it was a good experience in that he towed the whole rig back to Winslow, dropped Big Gulp at the Ford Dealership and then towed our trailer to a run down, virtually abandoned RV park up against I-40 in Winslow.  We arranged for a rent car and occupied ourselves for the week it took to get the repairs done.  This was our first experience with a repair that required the cab to be taken completely off the truck.  It really affected our psyche.   But we got back on the road and had an uneventful period while volunteering the summer in the Grand Canyon and the winter in Big Bend National Park.  But the uneventfulness didn't last.  We were eventually plagued by a number of breakdowns, two of which were the same EGR cooler failures.  At $4,000 per fix just for the cooler, repairs were unbearably affecting our budget.  We knew it was really bad when Enterprise Rent A Car just had to hear our name and they knew what we needed and why.

This was becoming an all too familiar sight for Big Gulp

By 2018 Big Gulp was 12 years old and beginning to show its age.  It had well under 200,000 miles on it but up-keep costs were mounting as if it had a half-million miles.  The interior suffering the passage of time too by wear on the seat cushions, an entertainment system that the buttons needed "encouragement" to work and a navigation system that had been abandoned by its manufacturer (Alpine) long ago.  The maps had not and could not be updated since about 2010.  On the exterior the air systems for both the horns and the springs developed slow leaks that soon enough became quick leaks.  Everything had a fix of some kind but it was getting to be constant and we had developed a confidence crisis about traveling with our home attached.  We just didn't trust Big Gulp to get us there without breaking down.

DECISION TIME

In 2019 we could not put off the decision to pull the trigger on purchasing a new truck.  We had been hunkered down in one place since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis and Big Gulp hadn't been driven a hundred miles in eight months.  But we knew this would not stay this way, at some point travel restrictions would be gone and we would get back to some level of normalcy that would see us seeking new adventures in remote locales around the country.  The reason Big Gulp had been driven so little was because we acquired a second vehicle.  With what we were spending on rent cars we decided to buy us a little grocery-getter.

This is Cyndee's car.  No more rough riding truck for her.

So in mid-year 2019 we chose to do what was necessary to get a new truck under us.  Arranging finances required some careful planning and several months transpired.  I'll admit that I did not get in a big rush to complete all the things I needed to do in an expeditious manner.  After all, there was no rush.  Places we wanted to go were not open at the time and volunteer systems all over the country let their phones go unanswered.  That casual approach would come back to haunt us.

SAY WHAT?!?!

The first business day of 2020 I called my up-fitter and told him it was time for me to get a new truck.  There was a pause, then a light chuckle, then he told me that he could not take my order.  He said that the shortage of more than 200 truck components and computer chips had shut the commercial truck (all the chassis cab vehicles) production down in October of 2019 and not made a truck since.  And it was not known when they would again.  I asked about a waiting list; "nope, not one" I was told.  All I could do was keep checking back.

I spent all winter, spring and summer going on-line to Ford's commercial truck website.  It would let me go through the process of "building" a truck only at the end to roll me over to a dealer near me to tell me that they couldn't help me.  I also tapped into some Ford truck forums.  Most of that was people's conjecture, nobody really knew anything.  Until one day they did.

I was checking my sources for the week and came across a forum where someone posted what looked like credible information from a credible source.  The information being put forth said that Ford would start taking orders for 2022 chassis cabs on October 13, 2021.  That was only days away, I jumped on a phone call to my up-fitter immediately.

After a few days of going back and forth with the exact specifications for the order my up-fitter said he would place the order after the upcoming weekend.  That would have been October 18th.

With great anticipation I waited for the email confirmation and invoice to arrive.  I waited until Friday and couldn't wait any longer so I called the up-fitter to see what was going on.  The person answering the phone sounded like the guy I had been talking to but come to find out it was his brother and he didn't have good news.  The weekend before, the up-fitter severely injured his back.  He had been in the hospital, sedated and getting stabilized enough for surgery.

A few weeks and several surgeries later the up-fitter was in condition to order trucks.  I talked to him in the late afternoon of November 10th and we got all the documents lined up for placing the order the next morning.  On November 11th I got a call late in the afternoon and it began: "You're not going to believe this".  I've never had anything good happen after someone has said this to me and this day was no different.  It seems that we missed an unannounced order cutoff day by 24 hours.

It wasn't so much a cutoff day as it was that Ford had reached a production limit for the year.  Normally they would build 200,000 units of my truck but this year, again still due parts shortages, there would be no more than 50,000.  They got their 50K orders and closed the books for 2022.  It would seem that I am out of luck until they open orders for the 2023 models.

So, here we are again.  In a year long holding pattern with no guarantee that it is the end of it.

Birds!

 Early this spring I was asked to photograph an event that took place at Allatoona Lake dam.  The Corps of Engineers were hosting a local museum society by giving a talk on the history of the dam as well as a tour of it, both inside and out.  While on top of the dam I was trying to find a good angle to capture the ranger giving the talk as well as his audience.  I got up against an exterior wall that overlooked the Etowah River, which is what the dam discharges to, and got my shot.  But before moving to my next shot I took the opportunity to enjoy the view.

Besides being a long way down, there were a lot of wildlife present in the form of birds.  What particularly caught my attention were a pair of Osprey that were building a nest.  This nest was being constructed atop a telephone pole installed by Georgia Power (just one of many they put up around the lake for nesting purposes).  A platform atop the pole to act as a base for the nest is a surplus WWII cot.  These cots were discovered in a store room in the dam.  They were assumed to be left over from the time of construction of the dam (1940's).  Pretty clever repurposing of something that had just been occupying space for 50+ years.

Not only had I discovered this pair of Osprey while building their nest, I also observed the moment they started a family.

Having obtained these first shots spurred me to want to document this pair of Osprey's raising a family.  I'm no pro and I don't have fancy video equipment with awesome lenses but I wanted to do what I could with the equipment I have.  Which is a 24mp DSLR, an 18-300 mm zoom lens and a tripod.  Not even close to ideal for serious wildlife photography.  But with a little help from some good photo editing software it will look good in my photo library.

Here's what the photo above looked like before cropping, enlarging and digital enhancing:

Distance was the biggest challenge to this project.  My subjects were in the wide open and most of the time lighting was excellent.  But the nest was so far away that even with a tripod it was hard to get a crisp image.  Between the wind and natural vibrations in the dam I just couldn't get a steady image with the exposure times needed.

This is a shot that I think conveys just how far away the nest was:

That first photo at the top of the page was on a cold, cloudy day in mid-March while there for another purpose.  I had to campaign my volunteer supervising ranger to get permission to enter this extra-secure area to do follow up photos.  Fortunately he agreed and got the okay from the civilian contractors that operate the power house (this dam does flood control and power generation).  So now all I have to do is check out keys to get me through the chained and padlocked gates with razor-wire tops and set up without the worry of being shot.

Between my volunteer duties and weather I was able to return once or twice a week at first and then about every 7-10 days as we got into the busiest part of the summer recreation season.

A week after the first photo finds our expecting parents sorting out fishing duties and eating priorities.  Despite no eggs or chicks in the nest the pair have brought food to the nest to eat.  After observing for about a half hour it was obvious that the female was in no mood to share.  But this didn't deter our dad-to-be, he just kept trying to get a bite in, albeit unsuccessfully.

Ten days in from mating and small improvements in the nest continue.  The female is spending more and more time on the nest while the male seems to be spending a lot of time hanging out and soaring with the turkey and black vulchers.

Eleven days after the first picture and a single egg appears.

While mom was taking care of business at the nest, dad was out gallivanting around.

My first visit in April found mom sitting the nest.  However she seemed tense and was keeping a wary eye to the sky directly above her.

Her wary eye to the sky was for good reason, the air was full of flying creatures - turkey vultures, black vulchers, crows, ospreys and an eagle.

CLICK ON PHOTO TO ENLARGE

This is another osprey.  He was circling low, at the same elevation as the nest. 
That's the dam in the background.

Our intrepid father of the egg got airborne and joined up with 
some crows that were making a noisy fuss.

Turkey Vulcher.
These guys look like a giant bomber coming in.

And here we have a Black Vulcher.

It doesn't look like it but this is a Bald Eagle.
This is a juvenile (less than 5 years old) so no white head yet.
It is also in what appears to be a full blown molt.

Yet another Osprey has joined the soarers above the dam.
This one was hamming it up for the camera as he kept circling 
closer and closer until we were practically eye to eye.

Looking right down the barrel of the lens!

I liked this one because of the airplane silhouetted in the distance.

Mid-April I happened to time my arrival with a shift change at the nest.  The male was finishing up his sitting duties and turning them over to the female.  In this transition there was a chance for a good look at the nest that hasn't been possible recently because the pair have been sitting almost constantly.  With this new look I was able to see that instead of one egg there were now three.  I don't know if it is common for eggs to be laid so far apart but that is what is going on in this nest.

I made many visits to my perch atop the dam over the next couple of weeks hoping to catch a hatching.  But all I got was one of the parents, mostly the female, sitting on the eggs.  Not too exciting.  Then, about mid-May I noticed the female had a different posture than usual.  She was holding her body up a little and spreading her wings ever so slightly.  But she never moved from this position in the two hours I kept watch.  A couple days later when I was able to get back, BINGO, chicks in the nest.

In the photo above it was hot in the direct sun and the female was adjusting her position when I got a look at the fuzzy little balls.  Because they are so hard to make out in the photo (the limitations of my equipment are really showing) I have drawn a red line around the one, most distinguishable head.

All three of these chicks appeared to have hatched within the last 48 hours, can someone tell me how the heck the egg laid a full two weeks before the other two did that?

Looking ahead now almost two weeks, the chicks have grown substantially.  Clearly the parents are good providers.  I was able to snap a family portrait on this day.  Adult male on the left, adult female on the right and the chicks circled in red.

It is now June 15 and the buzzards are back.  My lens was able to get in about half of them as they were riding thermals coming up from the dam.  None of them came down to check me out this time, they had to be admired from afar.

As for our osprey family the order of the day was to beat the heat.  I've noticed that ever since it has become truly hot that the male has been virtually absent from the nest.  I've spotted him with binoculars sitting on tree branches in deep shade from time to time, but never on the nest.  I would presume that he is still fishing for the family as the chicks look well fed.  Not so much for the female.  Between the storms we have had and the brutal direct sun on the nest, she looks a little rough around the edges.

In just two more weeks the chicks don't look like chicks anymore.  They've acquired flight feathers and are practicing wing flapping, getting ready for the big day.

I got caught up in summer duties and it was a good while before my next visit to the osprey family.  Between June 28 and July 16 they had become empty nesters.  But it is not what you think.  It is not the kids that have flown away, instead it is the parents.  Their job done they went on about their own way and will return to this same nesting site next year.  The offspring however are having a little trouble letting go.  Two of the three adolescents still come to perch and feed at the nest.  But the nest is getting in pretty scruffy shape, a couple more good storms and it will be gone.  This will be my last photo of the osprey family.

Doing Our Thing During COVID

 Six months!?  It's been six months since my last post?  Hard to believe, at least for me.  But it is true, time has gotten by me, at least where this blog is concerned.

My readership has dropped to embarrassingly low numbers.  This blog is more of journal for my own purposes rather than a public publication.  The upset in all things normal caused by the cruelty of COVID-19 is easy to blame for my reticence to sit down and write this blog.  It seemed as if every day was the same as the last and not worth the effort to write about.  But after doing some photograph file maintenance today I realized that we stayed busier than I thought.

The open outdoors seemed to be the go-to thing with everything else either closed or with severely restricted access.  Riverside Park hosted two disc-golf tournaments in June and September of 2020.  The September tournament was several weeks later than planned but the civilian that organizes the tournament did a great job of making it happen.  Cyndee and I were dispatched to the golf course to mow everything accessible by our large zero-turn mower and garden tractor mower.

All day mowing job at Riverside Park

Cyndee and I got tagged for the mowing job because the summer volunteers that usually did the landscaping and trail maintenance jobs had gone south for the winter.  So we loaded a rusty trailer up with two mowers and made a day of it.

Speaking of rusty trailers, I thought it was a shame that a piece of equipment that we volunteers used and depended on frequently was so dilapidated.  I asked to and was approved for rehabbing this cancer-ridden eye-sore.

After a significant number of hours on a wire-wheel grinder, the crust of rust had been taken down to smooth (well, more like rust pitted) metal and then two coats of rust reformer were applied.  I can't say enough about how well the rust reformer works.  I've used it on several projects and it always performs great.  Once the rust reformer cured it was time for a matte finish spray paint.  All this was done with cans of spray paint.  The compressed air spray gun we have in the shop was way too big to use.  Using the spray can amateur method was the way to go.  Two coats of rust re-former and five coats of paint.

Another one-off team effort project that came up was to assemble and replace all the decades-old conference room chairs in the Allatoona Lake Headquarters.

Cyndee unpacked and staged parts while I assembled.
There were several volunteer teams working on this day but we
each took a part of the room and kept our distance.

35 chairs assembled when it was all said and done.
A whole truckload of cardboard and packing had to be
hauled to the city recycle.

While many organizations that usually participate in the annual Allatoona Great Lake Cleanup dropped out last fall there were still enough that wanted to do it to make it happen.  So on a bright, crisp October morning hundreds gathered to scour the shoreline for all things trash.  Getting good shots was a little more challenging this year as everything was done at a distance with a telephoto lens.

The morning started off a little chilly but once things got moving and bags started getting heavy the cool air felt good.

Even with quite a few organizations choosing to stay away due to COVID this year, there were still shorelines full of people picking up refuse.

Two of our finest, rangers Davis and Simpson were at the ready.

Proud of their haul.  This small scout den pulled a pretty good load out.

This troop is made up of about six or eight dens/packs and they scour Kellogg Creek shoreline every year.  The clean-up efforts seem to be having an effect, their accumulated total is a pile a fraction of the size from previous years.

Not everyone on this glorious day was participating in the cleanup.  This beautiful lake is attractive to outdoor enthusiasts year 'round.

Click and enlarge.  These two are very fashionable for being on 
stand-up paddle boards.  To bad there is not a PFD in sight.

November rolled around and yet another delayed disc golf tournament was about to happen.  We got tapped again for the mowing.  Actually it was more like leaf mulching than mowing.  Not much grass was cut but tons of leaves were.

Since the contractor seasonal mowing crews were gone for the winter we had access to two zero-turn mowers.  Cyndee and I made quicker work of the golf course this time than we did back in September.

In November our volunteer coordinator arranged for an all-hands-on-deck workday to do some much needed maintenance on a chestnut tree orchard.  We met every Tuesday for a month to get this place up to snuff.  There is a story behind this stand of chestnuts, a little over a hundred of them.  The American Chestnut is in crisis.  It is being wiped out by blight and disease transmitted by invasive species.  The COE in cooperation with the Agriculture Extension Agency and a local university have been hosting a study of breeding blight resistant chestnuts.  The university bred the saplings and the COE provided land and hands to plant and maintain. It has been several years since planting and many of the saplings have outgrown their anti-browsing cages.  Our assignment was to weed, mow, prune, and increase the size of the cages of the growing trees and remove and store cages from trees that did not make it.

 

Looks like our work paid off.  After a cold and dreary winter where it was not real obvious how successful we were, the onset of spring really highlighted what a difference was made.

A perineal job at Allatoona Lake is the collection of discarded Christmas trees.  Most places that take trees like this generally grind them up into mulch.  But the COE repurposes them by making them into fish attractors.  There are numerous spots around the lake that have long cables staked to the bottom of the lake.  These spots are dry in the winter when the lake is at its winter low level but are submerged anywhere from eight to fifteen feet at summer full pool.  Trees are collected from drop-off spots all around the lake and transported to a location scheduled for rebuilding.  This year (2/21) a fishing jetty at one of the popular boat ramps.

As luck would have it, the truck Cyndee and I were using got a flat on one of the duallies.  And that same luck put us at the absolute farthest point from where the maintenance guys would be dispatched from.  It was going to be hours before this truck would be back in service.

But there were plenty of other trucks and trailers to be loaded.  We just paired up with them and went on about our business.  On this day we moved a little over 200 trees to their staging area where the tree trunks could be drilled in preparation for heavy aluminum wire to be threaded through and then tied off to the anchor cable.

Volunteers John (me) and Tony pose for a quick pic by Cyndee.  Some of these trees were big, there must have been some folks with really high ceilings.  Or maybe they just Clark Griswald it.

 

Once all the staging and prep work is done the installation can begin.  People on this day are a variety of park rangers, DNR (Department of Natural Resources) and fishing clubs.  Other than Cyndee and I there to photograph the event, no other Volunteer Villagers are there.

Another of Allatoona's finest, Ranger Jones, walks a couple of trees down from the staging area to the anchor cables.

Ranger Jones telling Ranger Pingle; "I caught a fish thiiis big".

More trees coming down.

Anchor cables secured to concrete "curbs".

Making the connection.  Using an aluminum wire to thread through a hole drilled in tree trunk and then wire-tied to anchor cable.

Three of six sections loaded up with trees and ready for the coming summer's crop of fry

In late 2020 I was asked to submit photos to an internal Corps of Engineers photo contest.  Here are the ones I selected: (If you follow this blog, several of the photos have been previously published and may look familiar.)

CLICK PHOTOS TO ENLARGE

The contest is focused primarily on water related activities but they did have some non-water categories.  That was good for me because I had almost nothing on the water that met the contest's criteria of it exemplifying safe practices, i.e. wearing life jackets and if rangers in the shot that they are "properly uniformed".

Much to my surprise one of my least favorite photos took first place in the non-water sports category - The guy in the blue shirt playing disc golf.

I'll finish this post with a project that was done entirely by other volunteers, all I did was photograph it.  The Chimney Swift has seen a decline in population in recent years and loss of habitat seems to be a contributing factor.  To that end, the Corps of Engineers have provided land, building materials, tools and supplies to build a chimney swift tower.  A condo for birds if you will.

This is not an off-the-cuff project, it is following exact requirements for the location and construction of the tower.  It is hard to tell just by looking at it but there are a lot of design features that must be met in order to attract the swifts.

Pre-build work began in the depth of winter in our on-site shop.  As much construction as possible was done where there was easy access to power equipment and a warm building.

Two volunteers, Cindy and Clista, drill pilot holes.

The "gang-pusher", volunteer Rick, has three sections ready to go.

Once the weather warmed enough to make pouring concrete in an off-grid location possible, the foundation was poured and the tower base was fixed in place.

Foundation and tower base in place.

Hefty foundation.

At first glance the foundation looks like it may be suffering from a little over-kill.  But there is a lot more to go.  It will be much taller and need to be able to hold fast in a stiff wind.

To close out here is an animated group of photos of the tower build: