Well, home from the road. Seems as if I have been on the road working for some time, which is true, but not as bad as it might seem, or could be, or whatever….
For those half dozen readers who inquired after my health or otherwise wondered why no posts since late September, I apologize (including the starving Pygmies in New Guinea…), but things simply fell by the wayside or wherever good intentions go when unrealized. All is well, it’s just that blogging seemed not-so-important, hi hi…
Joe & I went West in early October. Lots of work, including a visit to mid-MO, with a variety of interesting jobs: N0AX’s three-in-a-row insulated base Rohn 25Gs, the U of MO@Rolla (now called Science & Technology, excuse me) for their W0EEE station, plus some other work (nice to see old friend AI0O, albeit briefly, once again). Home for a few days, then down to the Florida panhandle, for K4PV’s install. Quite possibly the hardest physical install I have ever attempted. There were four Yagis going up on 100-ft of 45G. All had to be trammed. Yet there was, literally, no room to do that properly.
Normally, tramming is hard work, but fun. I truly enjoy the rigging, & then watching the beam
glide up & in to place. Here, we were faced with a veritable forest in Jim’s backyard, which meant nothing was really suitable for normal tramming. The easiest part was taking down the C-31 & then the MOXON converted XM-240. It was going back UP with the MOXON & then the WU2X tribanders, that proved so taxing & troublesome. It took a full day to do the top two, which are on the mast, & rotate. It took another full day to do the bottom two, which are fixed on sidearms, at 75 & 50 feet. The tram lines had to be “jumped” from anchor to anchor on these Yagis, one four times, the other three times, which of course takes a whole lot of time, & is, frankly, damned hard to do, at least so nothing gets damaged in the process.
I drove home from Florida, stopped off to do laundry, pet the wife & kiss the cat, & headed North to Maryland, to W3LPL’s. Somehow, over the weekend, milling about the basement filled with other fervent contest types, I managed to pick up some sort of bug. Sunday afternoon, it was truly hard to breathe & I could “feel” my heartbeat within my head, seemingly amplified by the headphones, as W3UR & I struggled to work our way through the watery, whispery JAs calling in on 10M. K3LR beat us, but the margin was very, very close, & we felt good about the 35M+ scores.
Monday, I decided, despite the cool temps (22-degrees) & pounding head, to do Larry’s repair work (KA3SDJ), since he’d been waiting patiently for a few months. He has 50-ft of AB-105, unguyed, with a broken A-4, needing some attention. It took three hours but finally got everything squared away, & headed home. Trip took way longer than anticipated, but home at last, & just basically doing nothing but napping & drinking the proverbial fluids & taking Vitamin C & waiting for this mess in my head/chest to clear itself away….
LOTS of work in the queue, including those jobs I didn’t get to in the VA/MD area on this trip. Plus travel, back to Chicago, to various other VA/NC clients, et cetera. Weather not looking good, plus those pesky holidays confuse scheduling…oh it’s good to be busy, said Mr Scrooge!
stay tuned…
