And it surely is. We got to mine this afternoon after suffering through the longest traffic delay of my life–two hours stopped on I-77, from what I assume was a capsized tractor/trailer rig near Fancy Gap, in the VA mountains.
Joe and I were up in Blacksburg VA to take down NI1N’s station. Tom has bought a new home and his tower and atnennas had to be down before the end of December. So…it was with some serious trepidation that I left the XYL (who’s recently out of hospital) at home alone to rush up there to do the job. When we got there Thursday, it was 22 degrees and there were two inches of snow on the ground. But we jumped right to work and had the 80M vertical pair down in short order, then the side-mounted 15 and 10M Yagis. Then it was dark and we were cold enough to want to warm up and retire to the motel. Friday morning we began tramming down the 4L SteppIR (relatively smoothly), and then the 2L OptiBeam 40M Yagi. Which, of course, snagged on the silly little plastic standoff insulators which support the even sillier stainless steel wire mounted underneath the elements. (If you infer I am not an OptiBeam fan, go to the front of the class…) While we were struggling, Tom drove up. Always nice to be struggling when the client makes an appearance, eh? Fortunately, I was able to have Tom jerk the EHS guy up/down while I tugged and pulled the beam up and down & it slipped up and over the guy, then came perfectly to ground. The rest of the day was spent dis-assembling the 25G tower. This morning we transported the beams to Tom’s new home, then ran back & loaded up the towers, and began the trek home to NC.
Next up? Watching the weather channel religiously, hoping to find an opening for mid-MO and Ohio jobs.
stay tuned…
