Managed to get some work done! The record cold, by the way, was in Atlanta, a region of our nation not usually associated with freezing temperatures. But I digress, let’s talk about the work.
As previously noted, WA7QED’s Rohn 25G tower had lost two of its legs–rusted away completely. The only things holding up his 90 foot tower were the one remaining leg and the Z-bracing. This is (ahem!) testament not only to Rohn’s design, but Tom’s environment, which is well shielded by trees. Add to this the fact the tower was never adequately guyed (it had only one guy bracket, at 50-ft), and one of those guys had been taken out by a falling tree. Again, I digress, we fixed the tower on day one of this trip. And then went on to build the replacement beam for his old ailing TH-6, a new F-12 XR-4. We trammed the TH-6 down in a rag-tag fashion, bouncing and rolling and yawing to earth, but it made it safely.
Day two found us taking down all the remaining “old junk” up there–the water pipe mast, the old Ham II rotator, and the other rusty parts (AS-25, machine shop bearing, and worn out cables). Then, it was on to tramming the new XR-4 up in to position. One of the most perfect trams ever, even considering I elected not to use the tried-&-true tiller, just some extra slings to pull it straight. Right up and on the mast perfectly. Oriented North and then tightened down, the analyzer looked exactly like the beam did on the sawhorses–just damn near perfect on 20 – 10M. With the old cable ends pulled through the house, we ran all the new stuff in and Joe got that squared away while I installed the PolyPhaser box and grounding. In-shack VSWR checks were indeed good, so Tom is once again back on the air. Some pictures as problem-solving examples:
The finished base & grounding (PolyPhaser) box
The new Force-12 XR-4 at height
Next up…NE3Z base work
stay tuned…
