TT:
A quick status report, as I'm officially on the clock at work.
Yesterday, Bill N3RR, Ed W3HXQ and I installed the CM mast and two of three
antennas on the Trylon 64-footer. We were able to clamp the Comet GP-15
tri-band vertical (6/2/440) and the Cushcraft D40 rotatable dipole to the
top of the mast and connect and tape the coax feeds. Bill then used his
come-alongs to pull the mast up through the rotator bearing, a couple of
feet at a time, with me repositioning a set of u-bolt clamps along the way.
The rains and wind came in around 4PM so we couldn't haul up and
install the Bencher Skyhawk. We have tentative plans to finish this on Wed
PM.
The vertical performs well. I now can hear packet transmissions from
as far away as Delaware on 145 MHz. (Amazing what another 50 feet or so of
antenna height will do at VHF.) The dipole seems to perform as spec'd. SWR
is below 2:1 from 6.96 to 7.16 MHz (OK for my purposes.) Received good
signal reports (+5 - +10 over S9) during and after PAQSO Party, running 50W
on 40M. OK again.
Work remaining is: installing the Skyhawk; installing grounds on coax
shields; finishing rotator control cable connectorizing and wiring; dressing
the cables on the tower and into a loop at the tower top; and misc clean-up
items.
Thanks to N3RR and N3HXQ for giving up their Sunday to help me; to Ed
W3EKT for his loan of a ginpole; and to you folks for your years of advice,
much of which can be seen in my tower project. I've been taking photos as I
go along and hope to make them available to TowerTalk on a webpage sometime.
73 de
Gene Smar AD3F
List Sponsored by AN Wireless: AN Wireless handles Rohn tower systems,
Trylon Titan towers, coax, hardline and more. Also check out our self
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