Step One was to take down the damaged OptiBeam 80M rotary dipole. We’re getting pretty familiar with these OptiBeam repairs at this point. Jay must have experienced a fairly hefty wind surge of some sort, considering the bend in the element. The tricky part of ALL the work there in Texas was not having access to my truck–with the right tools for the job at hand. We managed to limp along through the kindess of K5RT, who loaned us some 3/16-inch EHS (for tramming) & some ropes. Unfortunately, neither were quite long enough, so we ended up splicing in slings & come alongs & so forth to get them to work. Once the 80M was on the ground, we climbed down to 120 feet to deal with the CAL-AV 40M Yagi, which was showing an intermittent. Unable to find it, we trammed the beam down. The following day found us over on the 100 foot self-supporting tower. It’s a homebrew (albeit commercial) tower, which has unconventional braces only on one side, making climbing (for me) awkward & pretty
uncomfortable. On this tower, the job was to low existing 10 & 15M beams, replace them with new models, & then sidemount new antennas lower down. Then we hauled the CAL-AV back in to position (the hairpin had somehow worked itself loose).

The next day, we trammed the repaired 80M OptiBeam back up. Despite the tool shortage, the high heat (it was 97 yesterday) & humidity, we persevered & managed to get everything done in the span of 33 billable hours. Not bad when our original estimate was for four work days.

Jay’s happy, the station is back up & running. A lunchbreak visit on Friday to the world headquarters of
Array Solutions was a brief respite from the hea!

Next up, local work, delivery to K7BV, & so forth…then Dayton!

stay tuned…

We’d cleared the towers on a previous trip. Ken had received and begun assembling the new beams, so with this prep work accomplished, our goal was to finalize, balance, and test the antennas, prior to the arrival of the crane. We’d scheduled 1.5 or 2 days of crane time, Thursday and Friday. We had a plan.
It all more-or-less went to hell when the crane company called on Tuesday to say they couldn’t be there on Thursday. Scrambling and using 12-hour work days got us ready. But Friday, after gearing up and getting ready to climb, the crane operator suggested it would be prudent to wait, since the winds were gusting up to 30MPH. So Friday was a stand-down day in terms of crane work. And the winds only increased, up to 40MPH, so we’re still around to talk about things…

Having already gotten set up the previous day, Saturday found us in the air by 8AM. We got all the Yagis up on the 185-ft tower (7 of them) in 3 hours, impressing even ourselves. As the crane moved over to the big tower to begin re-setting, we began climbing down and installing the coax cables, setting the truss tensions, putting wire-ties on them, and taping the cables. The crane re-set was finished while we were working on the lowest beam (10M), so things more-or-less worked out. Ken had gotten some sandwiches, so while we had the proverbial “tailgate” meeting, we ate lunch, too. The crane operator suggested he haul us UP the 200-ft tower in the man-basket, saving us from climbing yet again. It certainly saved some energy to simply step off at 180-ft, rather than hauling ourselves up there.

With the jib now added, the crane had 277-ft of pick, so it was super simple to pluck the OWA up and drop it smoothly right overhead and into the K0XG ring rotator’s trough. Of course, this simple task was upset when we found the supplied bolts wouldn’t fit! Richard had sent us carriage bolts in lieu of regular hex head bolts and the slots in the trough were too large–the carriage bolts simply spun around loosely! Sigh…such poor quality control. Luckily, we were able to remove the shims from the end U-bolts (required to hold the top-half of the trough ON the beam as you lift it, and secure the vertical truss support mast), and use them with some hex head bolts (which we had, but were a tad too long). All in ail, it took longer than expected, but was finally secured in place. Then I climbed down to hook up the Green Heron controller while W2GD wired things up and oriented the cables for the upside-down rotation loop (needed for ring rotators). Getting the GH box going took longer than anticipated, as we made the first calibration pass with the beam pointed South, not North. Obviously this resulted in an OT (over travel) error in the GH. Not noticing the error cost us more time. (The two driven elements are perfectly centered and nearly equal length, so it’s easy to confuse the two, plus 200-ft high staring into the sun makes for easy confusion.) But I digress…all worked out and the beam turns smoothly and appears to work well. Ken got some excellent reports into EU (with the beam left North, as he’d not yet wired the control lines to the shack from the tower base), running barefoot. All good news.

The trip home was mostly uneventful. Although DELTA had some folks wondering when I transferred to my Charlotte connection in Memphis. They’d already boarded the First Class passengers, and those with small children or requiring assistance, and had begun general boarding, when they announced we were changing planes and needed to walk half the length of the concourse to a new plane. Seems one of the coffee makers was leaking water! There but for the work of a plumber goes the airlines….

This week, down to Texas, for repairs to WX0B.

stay tuned…

Anyhow, the story gets more complicated, since Jim’s backyard is a veritable garden, with exotic plants, shrubs, trees, walkways, & a pool. I spent several hours wandering around with my trusty tower layout tools, trying to figure a method of fitting a real guyed tower in to the available space. Finally, in a fit of
inspired desperation, I decided to violate the rulebooks (my own as well as Rohn’s). I would put the tower in, but it would be short-guyed, & the angle on one guy anchor would not be a true 120-degrees. To make this bastardized plan work successfully, I elected to go with 55G tower, counting on its higher strength to compensate. New antennas included a SteppIR, along with 6/2M beams, & a 2M vertical.

Once the base & anchors were in, it was time to install the tower. Thus, we found ourselves in Aiken, along with the pre-painted-black tower sections. Indeed, everything was to be painted with flat black or “camo” color to help hide everything amidst the vegetation. Jim’s home is in an historic part of town, & while he’d had the previous tower for all those years, the idea was not to call attention to this new, larger version, although it was only going to be 60-ft tall.

Right away, I ran into trouble. The used sections would NOT mate, despite twists & turns & trying to coax them together. Luckily, there are options–careful but tediously slow man-handling aloft while tugging & pulling with the comealong & ratchet straps. It took all day to assemble the damn tower. Then there was painting the antennas, touching up the tower sections, installing the grounding, installing the newly built Hoffman box (which holds the PolyPhasers), et cetera. All in all, a good start. And the tower really isn’t visible from the street (flat black paint works wonders).

It was surely slower than anticipated, however, & made for a few awkward moments atop the tower, fighting to get those section mated. This afternoon, off to Stillwater, OK,where W2GD & I will be working at rebuilding K5KC’s station–all new Yagis going up to replace the storm-damaged OptiBeams.

stay tuned….

If needed parts come in, we’ll be down in Aiken later this week, working on the N2ZZ rebuild.

stay tuned…

Trying to rent suitably-sized trailer to haul 200 feet of 55G to K7BV’s new NC home…
Building PolyPhaser-filled Hoffman box for N2ZZ & prepping Heliax…along with
several other aspects of his installation…
Honey-do chores that never got (or seem to GET) finished, due to being on the road.
Gathering parts for AI0O’s 160/80M vertical matching network…
Making parts for K5KC…

Nice note from old DXpedition pal, K4UEE, who I referred to the webpage…

Oh let’s face it, there simply aren’t enough hours in the day! Where have we heard
this before, huh?

stay tuned…

New Heliax phasing lines went up on the tower the following day.

stay tuned…

It’s the state of mind when reviewing today’s 150 spam count. One message says I’m writing in a boring fashion, when I used to be wonderful; the following message says my writing is just swell & I am to be congratulated for posting useful & usable information.

Oh yes, yesterday client K4ATX compared me to Robert Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance), in terms of writing style. My feet have not touched the ground since! Pirsig was a
unique writer all right, & I spent much of 1974 reading & re-reading this epic work. I was just entering film graduate school (always a time to question one’s values & life decisions), getting divorced, &
changing a myriad of other significant details about my life.

Spent the afternoon working on K4ATX’s US Tower crankup tower. Kim had wanted to change out the rather heavily rusted base T-bracket, but the newly arrived version is radically different from his original model. We’re waiting to see if US Tower can supply one that matches his original base.

In the shop today building things for up-coming jobs. Next week W2GD & I will be back in PA working.

stay tuned…

The trip (with W7WZ along to help) began by traveling to Union City TN, where WB4YDL faced needed repairs to his crank up, along with the installation of a new shunt feed system on his 120-ft tower, as well as the installation of an 80M four square, supported by that same tower. Jamie had convinced me to give a short talk at their local hamfest on Saturday morning, which was only attended by 17 folks. It’s convinced me doing these things (except for Dayton) is probably not worth my time. Anyhow, after that, we began working. Overall, things went well, with beautiful weather, and only constant high winds to contend with. The four square resonated nicely, later tests with the shunt feed show it near the middle of the band, and the crank up repairs worked out fine (although the motor was reluctant to go up afterward, but I’m sure that’s un-related). When the electric motor shop guys showed up, the guy tapped the switch and the motor reversed perfectly. Go figure!

Then down to Byhalia MS, to install K4EAR’s new tower and beam. Mike put up 90-ft of 45G, with a 4L 20M monobander. Rain and wind delayed us a day, but got done overall on time. His location is superb,
from a radio perspective–flat, isolated, with no apparent electrical issues. Mike’s running a Flex 5000A, and I had a few moments for him to point out its features and spin the mouse (okay, he has the knob encoder setup for it, but you get the idea…it’s an SDR driven by a computer, there aren’t a lot of knobs).
I was very impressed! It may not be a contest setup, but it’s very nice.

Then a short swing up and over to Nashville, where WD4K was experiencing a number of problems. I was only able to diagnose them, however. His old Prosistel has given up the ghost, after turning a 3L M2 40M Yagi, a C-31 and an 80M rotary dipole. Suggested he go with a TIC Ring for the 40M and turn the rest with an old faithfulT2X.

Then further East, to Kingsport TN, where N4TG wanted his antenna and tower taken down. I convinced Ralph he could realize several more years of service from his 55G simply by painting the tower, rather than paying me to take it down, the put it back up after re-galvanizing. It’s 50-ft of UN-guyed tower and while 55G is very strong, it still whips around a lot while up there working. The TH-7 came down with no problems, despite 20 years of tree and shrubbery growth in the interim. Mast and rotator came out next, no issues whatsoever, although the clamps were the most rusted I’ve ever seen.

Home this morning, whew~!

stay tuned

This Saturday was the “bigger” day of the Charlotte Hamfest, where I was selling off estate items from old friends W2YV & WD0FES. Interesting crowd. Interesting questions (some totally off-putting, like “Would you take $25 for a Mirage 220mHz brick marked at $200). Interesting observations–what we used to call voyeurism. Later that evening, the annual CDXA dinner event. Sat w/K4ATX & N4ZC & xyl.
Radio conversations interspersed w/history stuff. Quite nice. Food okay but the baby-back ribs were
kind of miniscule. But overall a good time. Back to Hamfest this morning where the only sale of any real consequence was the F-897 of Dave’s. Guy spotted it & RAN for the ATM machine! Delivered the cash to
Dave’s widow on the way home. Now to store remaining items in storage shed until I have some time to photograph them & post on QTH or eBay. Then the hassle of shipping, but so it goes.

One comment: Chastised for not posting daily here on the blog page after the dinner last night. It would be great if I had the time or energy or exciting thrills to generate that much traffic. Perhaps this week will provide something like that, as we’ll be back down in Texas, doing repairs at the NR5M station. It is raining heavily there now, so there are concerns we won’t be able to get the crane safely set up next to the big 80M beam tower. But I think by Wednesday, that shouldn’t be an issue, & some extra timbers should ensure nothing gets stuck.

stay tuned…

Made a quick trip to Lexington, NC, where K4MK lives, who called with a referral to a real estate company, which is trying to sell a home with another old crank up tower in the backyard. Turns out, it’s a Mosley Tower Master. Interestingly enough, I never knew Mosley ever MADE or sold a tower. It must be at least 50 years old. But it’s still in excellent condition–with good galvanizing & cables, etc. Had a 4L cubical uad up top. Talked with local crane company & a small truck-mount crane readily available.
Waiting to hear from the real estate folks.

Charlotte Hamfest this weekend. Will be trying to sell W2YV estate items. Then off to Texas on Monday morning for repair work at NR5M for a few days.

stay tuned…