The View From The Tower

Sort of like D-Day, only 66 years later….

Home late last night from another road trip.

Here’s a summary of the work. Began at K4VV’s, where the focus was to replace a series of damaged baluns on the HF Yagis. I specified a crane with a man basket, but Jack rented a brand new 141-ft JLG manlift.  Cranes, beings self-leveling with their out-riggers, are much more usable on uneven terrain. And that’s exactly the situation we found ourselves in with the manlift. It’s built-in protection sensors would either limit travel, or shut the functions down totally. So, we spent considerable time digging in the dirt, to allow an even footing for the lift. Needless to say, Jack’s xyl wasn’t too happy with the condition of the yard surrounding the bases of towers one, two, and three! But that work was accomplished okay, and we went on, only to find that there was no continuity between the shack and the StackMatch units at the tower base on tower one. Finally, in desperation, I suggested we install all new control lines, and Jack agreed.  Who knows where/how the cables got damaged or broken underground, but this was the simplest solution.

Friday saw me back at WN3R’s place, where I was hanging a new 16-conductor control line for the MonstIR beam. I’d assumed one of the two splices we’d made when patching the system together back in February had failed, but it turned out to be a case of simple cable wear—apparently caused by the wind slapping the line against the tower. The rotation loop is large enough so that the cable cannot hit the top place of the SSV tower (which is very sharp-edged). In any case, a new control line solved that easily enough.

Saturday found me at W3HXO’s, where the task was to remove his antenna system. I arrived at 7:02 to take delivery (sometime between 7-9AM) of the manlift, required here as the tower was unsafe to climb.  Sunbelt delivered it at 7:30. Turns out, it was another terrain nightmare. The soil was too soft, and the lift kept sinking in, either right or left, front or back, limiting me to 40 feet of lift. After three hours of digging up the yard, I gave up, and decided to simply fell the tower. I’d already sold the beams up top, so wasn’t keen on the idea, but there was no choice.It came down about where I wanted, sliding a bit to one side as the water pipe splice he’d used at the base twisted as I sawed through it! All in all, spent 10 hours there, getting everything down, on the trailer, and hauled away. John Hite and his xyl, Chickadee (!), K3SGB and K3SGA, were there the whole time, providing not only moral support, but labor and ham sandwiches for lunch, making the experience pleasant and memorable….

Then Saturday night, went back over to WN3R’s place and basicallly crashed. Sunday morning bright and early,  it was over to the new 25G tower, installed last summer, with a C-3 and 6M beam up top, that Dick wanted to use as an 80M vertical. I’d already installed 100 radials, and the shunt feed arm. It’s 60 feet of 25, so I simply put the shunt arm at the top of the tower, spaced out about two feet. Nothing we did could cause us to find anything close to resonance! Yesterday, by going super slow with the tuning, I noticed a dip at 3 mHz. So, I climbed up, moved the shunt arm down nine feet, and slid it in closer to the tower, to about 12 inches. The result? 1.2:1 at 3.8 mHz immediately. Sort of anticlimatic, but hey, I’ll take it…! Dick was pretty happy. He showed me the remote control functions of his station (set up right now for his 706), but now that the MonstIR is working again, he’ll be using the K3 & 87A, going full tilt boogie, I’m sure.

While on the road home, my cell rang. A voice says, “This is George Carpenter…” Which was amazingly surprising, since I’d just written about George’s Dad, Archie, in this blog a few weeks earlier. Archie, who was then WA8FTX, later to become NS8D. Somehow (and I wish now I’d gotten this info from George), he’d read that post, and decided to call. Talk about the old small world cliches…I was immediately flashing back 45 years or so to when George, WA8FRA, Archie, and a whole slew of hams in that part of Ohio would gather on 6M AM.  Truly amazing, all mostly accomplished through the ease and access of the Internet, of course.  “Boy,” as Joel McCrea exclaims at the end of Sullivan’s Travels…indeed!

The WX in mid-Missouri looks pretty bad for this week, so planned trip there is doubtful. Lots of local work beckons. Giving a presentation to the QCWA this Saturday, up in Raleigh area.  Then it’s back up to N VA/MD, for FD with the PVRC brethren (W3AO), then working at W3LPL’s and others!….

stay tuned….

K1TO called me in to help w/the K4TD OptiBeam 80M Yagi problems.

The boom was showing signs of coming apart. Dan had installed some stop-gap fixes, but the decision was made to try & get the beam down, on to the ground. Then repair it, & re-install it atop a new, dedicated 80M tower, to be 200 feet of 45G. So…I headed to Alabama.

The boom was in worse shape than the emailed photos demonstrated. It had continued to separate. I suggested we use a crane & remove the beam, but… for a variety of reasons, the decision was made to try removing it the old fashioned way—-by tramming it down.

Despite serious & hard-fought efforts to get a splice attached (a simple crutch surrounding the square boom, made from two 6ft lengths of aluminum channel), along with a newly-made & installed self-contained truss system, when I unhooked the existing truss system from the tower siderail, the boom nearly came apart.  It took all my strength to hold the damn thing up there, while I attached a sling to the Z-bracing. Then, for safety, I added the little Mini-Mule comealong, as well as attaching the new truss line. It’s still bent over & looks pretty precarious.

After de-rigging everything & climbing down, I convinced Rick we could get a crane in there, take the elements off the boom from a man-basket one at a time, & then take down the damaged boom. That’s the order of the day for today, Monday—getting the crane guy on site & ensuring we can get in close enough & high enough to reach the boom. (The antenna is at 187ft or so…)

While I wish I’d stamped my feet, cried, swore or otherwise raised a serious temper tantrum fuss, so we’d have gotten the crane going first, it’s understandable. Folks are reluctant if/when they’ve never worked with one, the added expense, the sheer size & scope, et cetera, all work to frighten them away from the idea. In the meantime, the busted boom sways gently to ‘n fro, & we’re all hoping no serious winds come up until the damaged beam can come down.

This is the third OptiBeam 80M Yagi to suffer similar mishap. That’s not a condemnation, merely a simple declarative statement. I remain unconvinced, however, that their four-section boom design (used on 40M Yagis on up) is a viable approach to big Yagi construction.  While climbing up, the section splice bolts on the 40M beam were also found to be loose, for example. I much prefer round booms, with telescoping tubing inserted inside, to this threaded-stud insert system. With the telescoped tubing style construction, even should the through bolts fall out, the tubing is still supporting the splice. With these studs, once the bolts come loose (let alone fall out, as four of these had done!), the integrity of the splice is gone.

In the meantime, I’m falling further behind on other jobs. That won’t be helped now that recently-hired helper Shaun moves on to a permanent, “real job,” et cetera. Ahhhh, the life of the itinerant tower climber…~!

The crane company is coming today; we’ll know more shortly….

stay tuned

Heading back to Alabama Tuesday morning; crane arrives Wednesday AM.

Apologies to SNL…

Marti’s doing okay, although suffering a bit from nausea from the antibiotics prescribed for her. But she’s navigating around the house just fine with her walker (!), which I must say, surprises the shit out of me every time I see her with it. We ain’t that old. Yet. But it’s more of a safety & security thing–the doctors want her to keep full weight off her left side for a while, therefore they’ve provided this device. It’s just a tad disconcerting….

If all goes according to plan, work will resume on local jobs on Monday….

stay tuned

A few readers sent “get well soon” emails in response to my reported bug. Thanks~!

Today, the xyl had her back surgery, to repair three problematic disc areas. The Doctor was very optimistic after the operation, so we’ll see.
An expensive & dangerous procedure; we’re hoping for the best, of course. Thanks for those who’ve sent notes & prayers on Marti’s behalf.

I will be hanging pretty close to home the next two weeks, while she recovers. Then will be off to Dayton, then a quick job in Ohio on the return leg of the trip home. Then another extended worktrip up to MD/VA area for multiple client jobs.

stay tuned

Or, to be more specific, back home again. Off the road, as it were…

W2GD & I spent two weeks traveling, doing tower work. Here’s a brief recap:

First, flew down to Houston, headed to the NR5M radio ranch, where we loaded up on tools & gear, then headed to Austin. We were going to take down (again) & finalize the repairs needed on N5CQ’s 2L 80M Yagi. We had taken it down on a previous trip, but there wasn’t a suitable hunk of coax available to test with before hauling it back up to 200 feet! This time, I’d prepared a hunk of RG-8X just for testing & shipped it to Austin. We were surprised to find 12 feet of the reflector tip missing upon arrival, so the beam would needed to have been taken down anyway. I climbed up & installed the EHS tram line, while John did the ground prep. Things were going great until the last (of four) U-bolts. I simply could not hold the Yagi in place with one hand, & remove that U-bolt with the other! So…we spent some considerable time with the beam twisting in the wind & me straining mightily to move the 250 lb beast enough to allow that bolt to come out. In the process, the Yagi slid vertical, then upside down! No amount of cursing, prayer, or muscle power would help.  High winds & heavy rain squalls did NOT help! So, I secured it with some slings & we left it hanging on the tower side overnight. We decided to take it down in this upside-down configuration, & that worked just fine. We removed, turned, & rotated the elements once on the ground, & made the needed repairs. The main feedline was defective—the primary problem all along. Tramming the antenna back up went well, & w/both of us atop the tower, we had it bolted into position in no time.  A tighter tramline this time allowed us to easily clear the guys. We headed back to Hempstead.

At NR5M, the worklist was long & involved. We began w/changing the 10M stack tower (140 ft of 45G) to a star-guyed tower, installing our “standard” K0XG hardware right below the existing orbital ring rotators. The topmost 10M Yagi was on a mast, on a PVRC-mount, so there we had to install both the star-guy bracket & an orbital ring.  Once they were in place, we shifted that top 10M Yagi down, on to the rotator, removed the mast, and then hauled up 18-ft of solid, two inch fiberglas rod to replace the mast. The antenna then going on the mast (a 2M X-beam) was trammed up & into place. The rain we’d encountered over in Austin continued to plague us in Hempstead, along with unusual high winds out of the NW, opposite what we usually experience there. Moving from the 10M stack tower to the 15M stack tower, we took down the existing 2M beam (stored it carefully atop the 15M beam elements), & then trammed up the pre-made 1296 & 432 stacked Yagis, carefully storing them on the 15M beam elements. By this point, it was impossible to stand, let alone work, at the tower top, w/o impaling yourself on an aluminum rod, or cutting some portion of your anatomy or clothing on the hardware. We then hauled out the 12-ft mast, moved the rotator down lower in the tower, & installed a 24-ft mast! Then began the arduous task of stacking the various beams on to the mast (carefully pre-labeled), moving it up inside the bearing, securing it, then repeating the process. Installing the phasing lines & duplexers, along w/the required weather-proofing of every connection, slowed this process to a crawl. It took us two 11-hour days to accomplish everything, with nine of each of those days atop the tower. Other trivial tasks? Building new chain drives for up-grading the transmission speed of an XG-ring rotator, trouble-shooting the top 80M beam rotator. fixing the TIC rings on the 15M stack tower, & considering what might be slowing the lower 40M stack Yagi down….

Then it was time to fly to Oklahoma, where K5KC’s 2L 80M Yagi awaited our attention. The weather was actually worse:  higher winds, & then rain. But I climbed Ken’s 200-ft 55G tower & rigged the line to lower the Opti-Beam. It turned out to probably have had the boom-to-mast plate installed incorrectly, & was critically unbalanced. Luckily, we had a tag line, which I was able to secure to one side, & with some careful juggling, we manged to get it past the topmost guy & trammed down. We configured it as a simple dipole, installed a new relay set, & trammed it back up the next day, with W2GD climbing that day. Then it was time for a collective sigh of relief, packing, & flying back to Houston, where we boarded separate flights for home….

Next up? Staying close to home while the XYL recovers from back surgery. Local gigs, including some video production work (I think I recall which buttons to push on the camera…).

Then, back on the road, to MO, IL, TN, et cetera.

stay tuned