first damage-finally

[KA2DZT]

Tom,

Sorry to hear you're still without power.  Don't climb the pole and touch any 3ph power lines

We never lost power here but I haven't been on the air since the storm.  I had some very large tree limbs come down in the woods out back.  Of course they took out both the 40M and 75M loops.  You're right, I got right to work putting the antennas back up.  But, it did take two days to clear the trees first.

Hope you get power soon.

Fred

[AJ1G]

Bob - my 2008 17.5 Generac is brushless except for the DC field winding..I would think the brushes last a long time.  Would want to be sure the commutator isn't oxidized - my garage gets pretty humid in the summer and I have seen some yard tools rust from moisture over the long haul in there.

[Sam KS2AM]

I expected the worst here but the only damage I had was a rope support for my horizontal loop that snapped but I restrung that fairly quickly with better rope.

Sam / KS2AM

It's funny how hams get the most important things fixed first...   I did the same thing here, even as the winds were still blowing.  

The rest can wait.

A guy from CL&P stopped by yesterday to "look" at the damage here.  I could fix it in 10 minutes if they let me climb the pole. The HV wire slipped off the insulator and is touching the ground wire.  He didn't even know what 3-phase was. Probably an office bean-counter sent out to look good.

Everyone on the street feeds off the hot outside leg - while this house is on the dead center leg. They opened the switch down the street.  I guess it makes for better QRO voltage regulation being the only one on that leg, so no complaints.

The guy had a blank look when axed when the truck would be out. I guess that means we are last on the list being the only house on the street without power. I figger by Wed-Thurs if lucky.  Sometimes we get the short lot.

T

I loosened the rope supports before the wind started but that didn't help in this case.

Many hours after the hurricane passed and the winds subsided a breaker somewhere in the neighborhood popped and we lost one phase throughout the neighborhood (we have 208 3-phase in my immediate area).  So depending on how your house was wired you may have lost half your power as I did or all or none of your power.  This has happened before here but unfortunately because of all of the hurricane related problems it took them a couple of days to get out here to fix it.

[W1RKW]

Hi Chris,
I have the same issue with humidity.  It doesn't take much to oxidize something.  WD40 is useful for that type of thing.  I spray it onto a rag and wipe things down.  Looking at the manual, Generac for this model calls the generator head an alternator.  As far as I know alternator do have brushes and a commutator so I guess they are subject to elements.  Considering I had not run the generator for at least 9 months it did perform for the most part flawlessly.  I just had that occasional flickering on 1 or 2 light bulbs that had me puzzled.

As far as ants go. I did not lower anything.  I left the dipole up under regular tension.  The vertical which lives in the woods in a small clearing survived 100%. 

We were pretty lucky here.  The winds for the most part skimmed the tops of the trees.  At the 15ft. level my anemometers recorded winds as high as 7mph.  One of my neighbors was not as lucky.  He's 50ft. higher in elevation and suffered tree damage on many trees. Fortunately, none hit anything.

Power was restored quite fast yesterday.  A team of 6 trucks showed up and worked about 1.5 mile stretch of Rt. 16 above and below our intersection in about 150 yard increments.  Three trucks cleared trees and guys on the ground did away with the cuttings while the other 3 trucks worked power lines. They worked the 1.5 miles in about 3 hours and had power restored soon after.   Talk about team work. Everyone who lived along the road was watching and amazed.  There were cheers all around. I was amazed how fast they worked. 

There's still work to be done.  They did what was necessary to get power going.  Many sections of Rt.16 have growth on the lines.  I imagine in the near future the power company will be cleaning up that mess.  They had better or they're asking for more headaches.

[AJ1G]

Glad to hear you are back on the grid Bob...Diane and I just came in from an all day clean up in the yard - small branches, leaves and small twigs were everywhere, but all up now.  Tomorrow we start cutting up the crabapple that came down and what I can of the big maple that lost one of two big trunks 15 feet up.  A tree service is going to come out later in the week to drop it and then I can finish cutting it up.  Stonington moved the brush pile at the dump to just inside the entrance - making it a lot faster for everyone to get in and out. 

Looks like Katia is going to stay well offshore...that's a relief!

[K1JJ]

Looks like youse guys in CT took a similar hit. Glad to hear thangs are getting better.

Well,  three trucks showed up today and re-tied the HV line to the insulator in 10 minutes. They popped the switch and power is back on.

Remember the CCC youth groups of the 1930's that did outside projects all over the country?  With the ecomomic depression going on now, wouldn't it be neat if Obama brought it back to convert ALL pole power lines to underground?  Make it a national project like going to the moon...

Though, I doubt most workers would be suited to do that kind of work without intense training. Just a thought anyway. We are living in the "dark" ages when 60-70mph winds on the east coast can bring us to our knees.  (pun intended)   Just imagine if this happened via an ice/wind storm and we had pipes bursting and people freezing.  It really pays to have a generator.


I haven't even looked at the beverages. They must be beaten up bad from fallen trees. I'll wait til the rattlesnakes go away first.

Sam: The 3-phase stops down the street. There is just a single line and ground run up here. The others have a different tap than me, so I can be down and they up.

T

[The Slab Bacon]

glad you guys have power. CL&P site says we are back up. Heading south to check out stinky fridge. Two partial containers of ice cream, graded cheese that is almost full. XYL bummed because she just bought it and guess what we plan to eat later. I think there is butter on the door and barbie stuff in jars.
I might be on 494 kHz this weekend.

Frank,
         If you knew it was coming, why didn't you clear out the fridge beforehand? ? ?
Isn't that kinda like closing the barn door after the horse got out? ? 

[WA1GFZ]

No stinkie fridge but the ice cream was melted and refrozen. We didn't have much stuff in the fridge, yup I was stupid. No real damage minor issue with antenna when a branch from across the street broke the end of a vertical wire. Many trees down. State park got nailed and lost about 10 feet of beach line. Our beach gained sand but the jetty took a beating holding back the waves. Looks like another repair job this year.
Loks of out of state trucks doing repairs. SE CT got nailed pretty hard.
150 wind clips and 60 lag bolts held the roof on. 

[W1RKW]

Yesterday figuring Katia was moving away, I prepped the generator for storage. Drained the gas out of the tank. Then ran the engine to get the last drop of gas out.  Put a bit of marvel mystery oil in the fuel line. Closed the choke and cranked it a few seconds to coat the innards, removed the starter battery, sealed everything up and stuffed it into the corner of the garage for the next event.

[W1RKW]

Frank,
Waterford Beach and Harkness took a real beating in the storm.  A good portion of the sand at Waterford Beach is gone.  Just bedrock showing.  Even a couple of the dunes down near Ocean Beach took a big hit.  I 've never seen that before for all the years I go down there.

[WA1GFZ]

Man, I have not been to Harkness in about 40 years. What a beautiful area.

[The Slab Bacon]

Just FWIW, this current storm (happening now as I type) has been played down somewhat by the local news media. But in the small snippets last evening about local flash flooding, they said that we have "officially" gotten more rain between tuesday and wednesday than we had gotten from Ireene! ! ! ! !  As of yesterday evening we had gotten over 5.75" of rain in the last 24 hours! ! ! !  And it rained cats, dogs, skunks and cows here last night. It literally came down in buckets all friggin night, and it is still pouring as I'm typing this. (Not supposed to clear off till the weekend! ! ) It will be interesting what the final rain tally will be from this "non event"! ! ! ! ! !

I have allready laid the keel for the ark........................

[WA1GFZ]

we had 6 inches over the road on the ride in this morning. hopefully the sun comes out this afternoon.

[Steve - K4HX]

Local damage reports continue to come in from the hurricane. Looks like at least 40 homes destroyed in my county.

http://www.wtkr.com/news/wtkr-over-40-homes-completely-destroyed-in-james-city-county-during-irene-20110901,0,7718482.story

Neighboring York county was also hit hard.

http://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-nws-irene-historical-context-20110829,0,775042.story


From this article, it likes like my locality has some of the greatest wind speeds.

"Irene's maximum wind gusts were 67 mph in Newport News and 61 mph at Fort Monroe, but as high as 76 mph in Williamsburg and 71 mph at the Richmond airport."

[AJ1G]

Finally had a chance to replace the VR in the 17.5KW Generac.  115V Line to neutral both sides of the line vs over 140!  Original VR apparently WAS fried, although hard to imagine after less than 10 hours of previous run time.  Going to do a little post mortem necropsy to figure out what failed on it.

Have been clearing up the mess left from the two dropped trees.  Tree service dropped the maple that hung up 15 feet up - had them only do that and left all the rest of the cleanup to me to keep the cost down.  They did only what I cant do with a 16" chain saw.  Should get a cord of wood or more from the effort to help offset the tree service charge.

[WA3VJB]

You want to see some high water ?

Flood shot was taken Friday the 8th.

Drained by Sunday.

Good thing the bridge is a lattice, flow-through design or it probably would have gone downstream.