Well, W2GD & I made our first trek out to Illinois last week, specifically to begin work at K9CT’s new installation. First flight with US Airways/United in many a year, & they managed to lose my bags. Luckily, they finally showed up Monday afternoon.
Anyway, Craig has a very fine plan to set up a contest station, with everything from VHF/EME to rotating 195-foot 55G towers, 11 of them in all. Very impressive, indeed! And while he has jumped through all the bureaucratic hoops required (& secured a building permit), some of the local residents are more than a little upset. So much so that the construction work was a lead story on WEEK (Ch 25 in Peoria) on Tuesday evening, including video of our tower assembly & so forth. The story then ran for the remainder of the week on their webpage, & the comments were (as one might expect), all over the place. Totally wrong, some supportive, emotional, mis-guided, confusing–literally a roller coaster of reactionary ridiculousness in large measure. So, we’ll see what happens out in the Midwest, I guess. We’ll be going back to put the assembled towers up with a crane in early December–probably four days of work, if the weather cooperates. Antennas (OWAs) will go up later in the spring, once they’re all built, et cetera….
Home again in NC & waiting for the weather to break a bit here. Rain & high winds (predicted to hit gusts of 60MPH this afternoon) prevent much climbing & the like.
stay tuned
