7/25/04
Today tower work was done at the home of W8TVC. This work involved adding hard line and several new antennas and a dual side arm mount.
After brunch we headed to Dave, W8TVC's. Johnny, KF8KK had planned out the tower climb to perfection.
We rolled out the sections of hard line to be installed and made final inspections of each of the antennas to be installed.
The first item on the climb was to replace the RG-8 that was feeding the repeater antenna with 7/8 inch hard line.
This item was probably the one with the most impact at the end of today's activities.
John added a side arm bracket that permitted an additional dual band antenna, a six meter antenna and a UHF antenna to be side mounted together down about 18' from the top of the tower.
Dave had purchased 800' of nylon rope that the roll committed suicide and created an 800' backlash!
Man, what a mess! Betty worked for several hours with spotty help from the others (as they had other chores to attend to) to untangle the mess.
John added a rope to a pulley on the new dual side arm bracket which will suspend Dave's HF wire antennas. John also added a UHF beam which had been at about the 18' level at about the 65' level. This is really for a later stage in the project. One of the final things Johnny did after hooking the hard line to the repeater was tie the "Lucky Sock" to the hard line! This sock has been with the repeater project for some time and originally provided an insulating substance between two items that were causing desense to the repeater system.
As you can see, the weather cooperated very nicely for today's efforts. This is the first stage in a series of upgrades and changes for the wI0OK/r and W8TVC/r repeater systems. The hard line to the repeater antenna has provided quite an increase in the coverage of the W8TVC/r system. Here at the cottage (about 20 miles away) I had been using a 170 watt amplifier to get into the repeater reliably. I can do so with 5 watts now! Incredible! Congratulations to Johnny for a successful tower climb and productive improvement in the first stage of the project! 73, Keith!
A special thanks goes out to John, KF8KK; Betty, KC8PCQ; Dave, W8TVC; Mike N7LMJ; and Keith, WA8ZWJ
7/26/04
This evening John, KF8KK; Keith, WA8ZWJ and Dave, W8TVC did the finish work to yesterday's tower project.
There were actually two projects going on at once. Johnny (being quite in digging mode having recently moved lots of dirt for a driveway project at his place) made digging the trench to bury the hard line and other cables look like short work. At one point, when he was working grounding the shield of the cable to the tower ground system, it looked as though he was lifting up a prayer and saying "Please, God, let this work!" While he dug and buried cables, Dave and I worked on getting the 40 meter dipole and the G5RV antenna up into the new position on the tower. The center supports for both wire antennas are suspended from the same tie point and pulley and are separated vertically about 10 or 12 feet with the 40 meter antenna on top. We were able to use the same end tie points for 3 of the 4 ends and took the west end of the G5RV a bit further south than before to keep the leg away from the tower. All initial RF tests indicate that the antennas are resonant where they should be. We shall see how they perform as the next series of IOOK schedules present themselves!
More information to come!
