The past week found me up in Maryland, where three client jobs were scheduled:
1) W3LL, who MonstIR needed to go back up, once a new prop pitch rotator was installed in his ANW tower (100 foot).
2) W3IUU, who needed a simple rotator swap out–replacing his non-working T2X with one of my refurbished units.
3) W3LPL, who wanted me to tram up the new 8L 10M Yagi, now that he’d successfully gotten a new 200 foot AB-105 constructed.
These all seemed like such seemingly simple tasks. But Murphy had other ideas. And working alone isn’t usually the best approach to some of these situations, but my usual helper wasn’t available, so away I went, ever optimistic. In each case, the obstacles were overcome or beaten down (finally!) and each client ended up happy.
The plan was to come home, rest for a day, and then go right back out, up to W4TJE, in Fancy Gap, VA, just across the NC/VA line, where I’d get his new JK-40/30 up on the tower. But because of my delays in getting everything done up in MD, I simply shifted my travel homeward over to I-81 and then came down I-77, putting me in Fancy Gap on Saturday night. Meaning we got to begin work on Sunday morning.
The tower itself has drawn a fair amount of interest, because it’s not simply an ANW free-standing tower. It’s an ANW with a Rohn 45G top, because Jack wanted to have a bit more height than the ANW’s 50-feet. The attached photograph will give you some idea of how this looks or turned out. Perhaps a bit odd, at first glance, but it seems rugged enough and should provide years of solid service, even in that mountain environment. Tuning the beam took some considerable time (with numerous trips to 30 feet and back down), making adjustments, and so forth. Thank God for the MY-TE capstan winch, no brute force manpower needed to do all of that!
