Another exciting week on the road. W2GD & I traveled to Oklahoma this week, to remove all the
damaged Yagis from K5KC’s two towers. Ken experienced some extreme wind damage to his OptiBeams stacked on his 185 ft rotating tower–with booms & elements severely bent. His 80M 2L Yagi was split in two. All these damaged beams had to come down.
Due to their size, we suggested the simplest & safest approach was to use a crane, but we began working on Monday morning (temps in the teens!), by tramming down four of the broken beams by hand. Tuesday we managed to get the broken 80M beam down. Wednesday we shifted out attention to the mis-aligned 160M four square array, correcting that. Thursday, the crane showed up, but was unable to make the turn in the drive on to the property. Finally, after a lot of work with the bucket & blade on Ken’s tractor, they were able to turn sharply enough to get on the property. Once the crane was set, we made short work on taking down the remaining 30M & 40M Yagis.
Thursday night was a total treat, as we drove over & met with K3LR. Terrific conversations & stories over dinner at the Edmond country club. Definitely a swell time.
Friday found us installing the newly-made Phillystran supports for the 160M array, which plumbed it up properly. We bought Ken lunch & headed for the airport, knowing full well that the predicted snowstorm in Chicago would probably cause havoc with our schedules. And it did. John got bumped to Detroit, & then eastward to LaGuardia (although his car was parked at Newark airport), while I was shifted to Houston. My arrival shifted back by two hours, & ‘GD got home around 2:30, with his son driving him back over to Newark airport.
Oh the life of the itinerant tower worker.
stay tuned…
