> How often do you go to the top of your tower and do maintenance on the
antenna, rotator, coax, antennas, etc? Just when something breaks? Or more
often?
In my UP THE TOWER book, there's a chapter on maintenance. Many
commercial sites have annual inspections, sometimes mandated by their
insurance carrier.
> When you get up there, do you have a set routine? Do you look for
anything
special, other than obviously misplaced wear-and-tear?
You want to push and pull on things. You want to put a wrench on some
of the nuts and bolts. In a real tower inspection you'll put a wrench to
about 10% of the nuts and bolts but for a ham array, I'd put a wrench on
everything I can reach. This includes antenna, feedlines, appurtenances,
rotators, etc.
> Do you go up more often when the tower is new, for reasons other than
something being broken or obviously wrong?
If everything is operating properly, an annual inspection is plenty.
A ham in VE7 with a 3-tower contest station used to have problems of
some sort every year. When we started doing an annual inspection, his
problems dropped to zero.
Cheers,
Steve K7LXC
TOWER TECH -
Professional tower services for amateurs
Cell: 206-890-4188
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