The AM Forum

Ever since the big storm I have been cleaning the yard. today we finally dropped the giant widow maker so the yard is safe. now I can drop the rest of the tree and pull the 80 meter dipole back up. We can see most of the lawn now. Two days a week cutting wood sucks.

Although we didn't have much damage to trees in the main part of the property we did have some "widow makers" on the back side.  I took them down last weekend and cut them up.  Got about a cord or so out of the mess.

Glad to hear you got things under control after all this mess.

Glad to hear you are getting things back up and running Frank. Congratulations on dealing with the widow-maker! I have nearly everything cleaned up but still have a few leaners in the woods behind the yard. They need to come down since kids run around in there at times. It will be an interesting project as a few of them are much bigger than what I like to mess around with.

I had the tower down and tilted the past couple of days and got it cleaned up, re-cabled, and pretty much squared away. There are a few minor things to finish up tomorrow and then it should be ready to crank up again. Much to my surprise the bent elements on the 6 meter beam were much stronger than I thought. They showed no signs of weakening when I straightened them back out so that's now restored and working fine. I also removed the beat up and largely unused 2 meter beam and temporarily installed a 10 meter rotatable dipole until the 5 band hex beam is ready to go. That only needs one replacement spreader which is on the way. Hopefully, there will be some nice weather around to get that installed in early December. At any rate, the tower is tilted upright again and nested. I did make one contact to New Mexico so the rotatable dipole is working fine even though it's sitting at about 30 feet right now. If everything goes well it'll be at around 50 feet tomorrow.

The last thing to play around with depends on whether or not I want to bother with 160 meters. I really like the way the new higher and in-the-clear center-fed plays on 75 and 40 meters and am considering not adding the extended ends for 160 meters. They take a beating from random falling branches and often pull the entire antenna down because they are strung through tall spindly trees. It's a pain to keep repairing it after every wind storm. Maybe simpler is better?

At any rate, it will be nice to be able to simply turn things on and play radio when everything is done!

Rob W1AEX

Rob I have never seen this damage in the 35 years living here. The good thing is the woods is cleared almost as well as the job I did in 78 when the neighbors let me thin things out.
I have the 80 meter ant up about 30 feet until I drop the rest of the tree the widow maker came from. It is a monster a lot taller than the 70 foot tower.
I finally got a 60 foot run of open wire feeder down. The wire had grown 2 inches into a branch. It has been stuck in the air for over 10 years.
I still need to clear a branch to get the 160 meter antenna back up to full height.
I delivered the old snow blower to the guy next door. He changed the oil and spark plug and is very happy with it. He is letting me use his trees for antenna supports. The  neighbor behind him is dropping trees so I will have new open spaces for wires.
We finished around 4:00 and was too pooped to get on the PW net.

Mother Nature's QRV for you Frank...

You bring up some good points Frank.
There have been a number of BIG limbs and STUFF that have fallen to the ground lately and IF I was playing with my antennas, I wudda become a widowee.
"Someone" is watching me.................

My first time to have a relatively good performer 8 band antenna is about to happen and with the upper bands coming back to life, I can troll around without messing with switching cables or tuners. Compromise antenna........probably.....not a Yagi.....don't have to mess around with a rotor and miss the action. If I make contact .........Great........FB OM.

AND Rob::::::::you will love the HEX beam. Is it the original Traffie Beam?? He is a lot more $$$, but he claims it is much stronger and the F/B ratio is better than the copies. Still, you will enjoy that antenna. I bought one of Mike's first creations and in 4 yrs the fiber glass rods started breaking. So, it was Zchit-canned. It really did work and there was a real F/B performance. Traffie was run into the ground by the ARRL and they would not test it coz he couldn't produce any technical documentation on the HEX. Computer modeling, etc, etc. If a computer cannot show you what's going on, then you are full of crap.
Funny how there are copies of his antenna.
He wanted an arm and a leg for replacement parts. And the poor guy who put that up didn't want to take it down. A real beast if you cannot tilt the tower.
Fred

People in Connecticut are nuts about trees--time to kiss them goodbye?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203935604577064523750721722.html

It makes no difference unless that computer program says it works!  Make sure you understand that Fred! 

C