At 3:30pm it was a nice hot 95 deg day to visit superham Bryon, W5FH at his QTH in Alvin. Bryon had an incredibly great condition TH7DX 20/15/10m triband 7 element yagi for sale, and we luckily snagged it to replace our tired HF yagis ontop W5RRR 80′ tower. Bryon’s shack was easy to spot, since he has two monster 100′ towers with an impressive array of HF /VHF/UHF antennas.
2m Repeater Antenna Fix (JSC Bldg 1)
Keith (KG5HOK) and I were up on the B1 Penthouse roof this morning replacing the W5RRR repeater antenna this morning. We took down the remaining half of the Hustler G7-144 and replaced it with a nice
and shiny Diamond X700HNA.
EOC/MCC Tuner troubleshooting (JSC Bldg 30)
On June 1, a trip up the roof of Building 30 was made by KG5HOK, N5FWB along with JSC Security.
Notes from a Tower Climber Newbie
After guidance at the last JSCARC meeting from Ken, K5RG, and reading on-line comments, I successfully completed my first climb of Mount Gilruth (aka the 80’ W5RRR tower). Actually, I only climbed up a bit beyond the rotator, so the actual summit measure was more like 70’.
A few comments posted here, which may aid future, ham trekkers. Some comments are reinforcing messages from Ken, and some are my own lesson’s learned.
Here goes:
- My forearms were straining as time wore on. Why? Because, as Ken advised, get a very short positioning lanyard as possible. The positioning lanyard, which comes in a variety of lengths, ties your body to the tower and allows one to lean back a small amount, and redistributing your upper boday weight from your forearms to the lanyard cord. My mistake: I bought a medium length positioning lanyard- I thought it was good enough, but for it to work effectively, I would have to really lean uncomfortably backwards for the cord became stretched out enough to share my weight. Yes, I could have used it but as a newbie, there was no way I was going to lean waaay back from the tower to exploit it’s weight distribution property. I elected instead to completely not use it (even though still clipped in) and instead relied on my forearms to assume the bear hug position to keep me safe. Buy as short a positioning lanyard as you can.
80′ tower climb
a smooth 1 hour duration climb up the ladder on June 31 5PM.
Weather was perfect and breeze was comfortable.
More photos to follow, but the biggest surprise was to find that the pulley holding up the Windom endwise was jammed.
The cord had slipped off the roller and was jammed in-between the roller and the inside shell. Previously, we thought the pulley was intentionally disabled and tied down permanently.
A couple death defying yanks
Soggy Windom Balun
are photos of the current Balun on our Carolina Windom antenna. This Balun hangs vertically in the air, and we discovered
AB5SS Observation of UAS photo
, AB5SS, has already keenly spotted some significant items after examine the recent UAS drone photography.
“… the brackets are clamped to the vertical legs instead of resting on the horizontal braces. See pic below of how they “should” be installed. As you might guess, the problem with the way they are installed is they can crimp the legs (although they are thick wall steel tubing), but worse
More UAS Drone photos
thanks to Mike, N8MTV and the Ellington and Photo team:
Final Hex Tower Work
KJ4QJW, N9RCS, KG5HOK, W5OC spent Saturday May 27, from 9AM-4PM finishing work making coax and control line connections and the guying down of the crank up tower. Using the in-place coax and rotor control wiring which runs from the tower base to inside the shack, Stu, KJ4QJW, terminated the connections at both end and discovered the “missing” connection lines behind the W5RRR service panel.
How Not to Climb a Tower
K5RG shared his wisdom about tower climbing, during our May 25 club meeting.
Ken brought in his full body harness and lanyards.