Made the long drive (it’s getting further away…) to Chicago area, where I was to help W2GD with a Silent
Key (WA9KHT) crank up tower takedown. A tad frustrated to find two cancellations from other IL/IN clients once I got there. So it goes.
The takedown went fine. His daughter, Andrea, was on site, and certainly made the project more enjoyable.
Then down to N2BJ’s New Lenox IL QTH. Old pal Barry wanted us to replace the cables in his US Tower crank up, but had neglected to mention he could no longer completely crank the tower down! The little maple tree next to the tower is now 30+ feet tall! Obviously, not being able to take the weight or load off the sections makes cable replacement (while the tower is still vertical), next to impossible. We cleaned and lubed the cables; Barry says he’ll get the tree topped out, ready for the cable replacement sometime in the future. His smaller crank up (holding his 2L 40M beam), was next, and that was an easy replacement.
Then GD flew home and I continued East to KC9QQ’s place. The XM-240 we installed a couple years ago was reading a tad high in the band, so we’d decided to lengthen the DE just a bit. Plus Fred wanted to install SLIPP-NOTT clamps on the beams and the Orion rotator (the XM had turned a few degrees). Obviously, to do this with the beams remaining in-place required a crane, and we were lucky to get RH Merlin Cranes to come on Saturday.
I predicted the work would take an hour and a half, and it required exactly that. Everything went off without
a hitch, to use the old cliche.
Even managed to work NH8S on a couple bands while there. The drive home was also further than ever, for some strange reason. I must be getting old.
Local jobs this week, then up to Ohio, to finish N4REC’s install.
stay tuned…
