Wednesday, the 16th, found me on the road to Dayton, Ohio, home of the annual Dayton Hamvention. And then there were two jobs scheduled in Ohio, and then a couple over in PA to deal with, too. So it promised to be a full week of not only fun but serious problem-solving.
I managed to wander around MENDELSON’S LIQUIDATION OUTLET on Thursday, and found a huge bearing (complete with mounting base, etc.), suitable for a rotating tower. (I have a commercial 80-ft tower I would just love to modify to a rotating version…) Picked up a few other small items for KF4TP, then headed to Hara Arena, to pick up the parking pass and badges for the Antenna Forum–where W2GD and I would be presenting a paper Friday afternoon. The presentation was well received, and I may have gotten a new client from an audience member. We’ll see. We met with a myriad of vendors; we met with KE4V, who is buying a LUSO tower next year, and wants us to install it. I was surprised by
W3TX, who had his new rotating tower base and rings (along with the orbital ring rotator), ON HAND, for display. Scott wants me to install the tower, then provide feedback and reviews, et cetera. While this is a wonderful idea (and I’m pretty excited about the prospect), I was NOT expecting his offer (or suggestion), that I cart the stuff home with me. Naturally, the truck was already jammed with tools and gear for the up-coming work, so getting it loaded made for some interesting maneuvers (to say nothing of sailor language) out in the parking lot. But I digress…it was worth it.
Sunday I headed back to Athens, stopping briefly to visit with old friends, then on to N4REC’s QTH, just East of Athens. Peter has the top half of a Rohn SSV, which we’re going to put up (100 feet), along with a log periodic and 40M rotary dipole. This visit was to choose a location, lay out the base, and the elevated guy posts (yes, we’re going to guy the tower, since the top sections are pretty small). A suitable base plate is required, along with the posts.
Then I headed further East, over by Wheeling, to N8GP’s QTH, where we had given up on installing his 4L SteppIR, amidst freezing temps and swirling snow. The plan was to simply tram the beam up from his neighbor’s adjacent hayfield (conveniently baled that weekend). But once we were set, it was pretty apparent this plan would be tricky–we only had about a foot of clearance between two trees on the property line. And naturally, Murphy’s Law prevailed, and the beam yawed just enough to get caught in the branches. So, Haven got out his chainsaw and cut the trees down in about 60 seconds. Then the beam came right up & I had it on the tower after a few minutes fumbling with the supplied U-bolts (which did not fit the boom-to-mast plate, of course). Once the cables were dressed, we were disappointed to find only error messages on the control box. I climbed back up and checked the connections inside the SteppIR breakout box, but found nothing amiss. After trying a few things in the shack, Haven and I decided the heavy lifting was done, and whatever was wrong, would likely turn out to be something in the cabling, so I headed on over to State College.
Meeting up with WA3FET out at the K3CR station, I prepped the tower base and surrounding area (meaning I cut the grass using Jim’s new weed whacker, so we’d have a place to work), and hauled the K0XG hardware over to the tower. Wednesday morning, we decided we would give the newly-supplied TIC RING motors another chance, to see if they would work better than the originals, in order to save time. Alas, more visits from Mr. Murphy–the TIC RING itself was found to be suffering a bit. One of the support brackets ws broken, another weld was coming apart, and the entire RING was missing lots of hardware. Obviously, this newer model RING is not as heavy or robust as earlier models, and the 40M OWA is apparently too much of a load. So…we hauled the Yagi up and out of the way (using two LUG-ALLs, which worked perfectly, providing plenty of control over the big beam), then dismangled the TIC and sent it to earth. Then began hauling up the K0XG orbital ring hardware pieces. Imagine our surprise (we’ve installed 30 of these things), when the ring itself did not fit! Apparently, during manufacture, the wrong mounting tab plates were used. These tabs were off by at least two inches or more. We wasted several hours trying to come up with an on-site solution, until Jim finally resolved to simply get the proper material from K0XG, which is what he’d ordered, paid for, and expected, in the first place. A wise decision. So, despite two previous trips to K3CR, we’re STILL without a rotating 40M Yagi there. While everyone was pretty disappointed, we certainly have given this job/client our best, which Jim
fortunately understands. We were then faced with the problem of securing (completely), the big 40M Yagi ON the tower. Once again, on-site building of some clamps and brackets was the order of the day.
Luckily, the K3CR towers are surplus VOA curtain array, solid rod leg, towers, and they have mounting tabs sticking out every 10 feet. Luckily, we could rest the Yagi on these, then secure it with three clamps and brackets to the tower siderails.
Yesterday, I drove home. A near record time trip, until I got within 39 miles of Charlotte, only to have I-77 shut down for some reason. That last 30 miles took 1.5 hours. A pleasant surprise was Haven calling in, to tell me he had discovered a bad relay in his SixPack box, and that the SteppIR was working perfectly after all. His first QSO had been a ZL2 on 10M, so he was pleased.
Outlining the work ahead. Catching up.
stay tuned…
