Dave, WB8WIQ has a problem. Prior to a wind storm a month or two ago, one of the cables broke on his crank up/down tower while in the process of lowering it. Needless to say, it came to a thundering halt when it reached the concrete base. The sudden stop impact broke one element on the tri band beam and several other antennas were severely damaged as well. Thank goodness, no one was injured in the process.
Saturday morning. April 16th dawned with severe clear conditions. By the time the crew arrived at the site the weather was beginning to warm up nicely. The crew consisted of Top Man Lou, N8KXM, Porta Power Bob, WD8ROE, Gopher Keith, WA8ZWJ and Supervisor Dave, WB8WIQ! As you will see in the snap shots, the antennas took quite a jolt and several got bent. Also, the rotor plate got bent and dislodged the rotor from the tower supports. The objectives for the day were to strip off the old antennas and rotor, raise the collapsed tower enough that cable repairs can be made, assemble a new TV antenna (used for receiving local news broadcasts) and install the TV antenna temporarily.
Thank goodness Bob brought his porta power unit! What a great tool. It made for a safe way to raise the tower back above where the original stops had been. Actually, the tower has minimal damage. The inside of the glide on the tower leg that rests on the stop was cut through during the fall. It will be a fairly simple matter to install new and better stops for each section of the tower.
Dave was quite grateful for the group's efforts! Stay tuned for Phase Two at a later date.
8/6/05
OK, a couple of weeks ago Lou, N8KXM went over to Dave, WB8WIQ's and replaced the broken cable with new stainless steel cable. They discovered at that time that one of the tower pulley supports needed to be bent out slightly to totally clear the tower as it went up and down. So, Saturday morning the item on the agenda was to remove the temporary stuff from the top of the tower and then using a porta power, bend the bracket back to it's original position. That completed the assembly of the new stuff to go on top of the tower was pretty straight forward. One of the most demanding moments was when the new mast with three vertical supports was lifted into position. Lou gave us the IOOK salute once that task was complete! Then the vertical antennas for two meters, two twenty and four forty went up on top. Finally, the TV antenna for local channels was added to the array.
Then it was just a matter of taping coax and assembling the coax support arms as well as attaching the 40/80 meter double dipole. A G5RV will be added to the station for complete coverage of the HF bands. It certainly was a great site to see the tower fully extended to it's near 60 foot height!
Even though the weather looks poor in the pictures, the cloud cover provided us with fairly mild weather to do the task in what would normally be the "dog days" of August! No, the tower doesn't bend in the middle - that is just a poor assembly of two pictures to give the effect of the raised crank up tower. Of course, "Super Lou" took off his cape for this activity and appears larger than life next to the fully erect tower!
Dave, WB8WIQ thanks all the folks who assisted in making this project come to fruition! Best 73!
