Once again, we found ourselves up in the NC mountains. Where it was a ridiculously cold 31 degrees, with 15MPH winds on the first day, & about 5-10MPH on the second day. Somewhat unpleasant, to say the least. Now what ther forecasters predicted; I should have known better…
Regardless, the work was to complete construction/assembly of KZ5ED’s new Force-12 legacy beam, a 6BA now made by JK Antennas, along with getting the old broken & battered 4L CUBEX down on the ground. While Eric had done a good job of assembling the beam, there were a myriad of little things to do–the elements were “not quite spaced right nor perfectly level,” & so forth. So began Day One, having driven up there that morning. Day Two was spent fine-tuning everything, including figuring out a way to test the beam that close to the ground. Eric’s tower is literally on a hillside, so the whole affair was hampered by the inability to level anything. All seemed fine other than 40M, which showed its dip at 5.5mHz. But being so close to ground, JK said that was okay.
Saturday Boone Crane showed up & the old broken quad was down in short order, resting on the already-installed scaffolding. We lifted the 6BA up with our usual length of RG-8X & it read fine. So, up to the tower top. A few minutes fumbling as the SS U-bolts on the boom-to-mast plate galled. (We’d tightened & loosened them numerous times throughout the previous two days, so despite lubrication, it was likely inevitable.)
Eric reports it’s working great, which is always good to hear.
The following day found us at K4MK’s, stacking 25G sections to replace his old tower which suffered a huge oak falling across one of the guys. Seventy feet went up in the daylight we had. And of course, the weather has been impossible ever since. Joe’s back home in Florida, & I’m negotiating new jobs every day. Simply amazing…
stay tuned…
