Drove up to PA on Monday, to do some repairs for KF3B with W2GD.
Tuesday dawned cool and calm, perfect antenna/tower work weather. The morning was spent finishing the assembly of the new, but slightly smaller, M2 20M beam. Once that was done, we climbed up (180 feet of Rohn 55G) and trammed down the M2 15M 6L Yagi. The rest of the day was spent trying to resolve the limited bandwidth and too-high resonance (21330 mHz) of the beam. Despite calls to M2, no solid ideas were really forth-coming. (Yes the beam was assembled correctly–leastwise according to M2’s directions). We also trammed the 20M beam up on to the tower, lashing it in place. It was an 11 hour workday, quite enough for one day. Wednesday morning found us back on the tower, where we used a comealong to lift the beam the last few feet up and on to the mast. All that went off without any problems. Then I climbed down, rigged the 15M Yagi for tramming, and we pulled it up to the K0XG orbital ring rotator (where we had stored the 20M beam). That, too, went off without any problems. And the beam, which really only allows adjustment of the hairpin match (we extended it 3 inches), showed a very good match/VSWR at the CW end of the bad, just like Alan wanted. All in all, good news, indeed.
Headed home to Charlotte.
stay tuned…
