If you had a Sterba curtain or a rhombic you could just plug the coax into
110v and melt it off!
Chuck W5PR
----- Original Message -----
From: "K1TTT" <K1TTT@ARRL.NET>
To: <towertalk@contesting.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 08, 2011 10:30 AM
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Inspecting or even de-icing antennas from the
ground
>I use a telescope for inspection, does pretty good except you have to move
> it around the tower to see all sides of some things.
>
> As far as shaking off ice, forget it... ice forms on the antennas because
> it
> sticks hard! The only time that may have any effect is when it is just at
> freezing or there is enough sun to melt the interface from aluminum to
> ice,
> and then rotating the antenna or shaking a guy wire may have enough effect
> to break it loose. But just a degree or two colder and it just won't let
> go. I have seen ice hold on for days of wind that were flapping the
> elements all over the place... small chunks break off but most of it would
> remain in place. Take a look at some of the pictures from the telescope
> at:
>
> http://wiki.k1ttt.net/2011%20Maintenance%20and%20Upgrade%20Blog.ashx#jan_19_
> ice
> http://wiki.k1ttt.net/2011%20Maintenance%20and%20Upgrade%20Blog.ashx#novice
> On the November 24'th pictures the ice has been on the antennas for 24
> hours
> and is cracked but still mostly there. It didn't finally come off till
> after dark when the temperature went up above freezing.
>
> Click on the pictures for the full size image to see all the details.
> Like
> this one of the bottom 40m antenna:
> http://www.k1ttt.net/images/2011_nov_23_ice_0009.jpg
>
>
>
>
> David Robbins K1TTT
> e-mail: mailto:k1ttt@arrl.net
> web: http://wiki.k1ttt.net
> AR-Cluster node: 145.69MHz or telnet://k1ttt.net
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jim Lux [mailto:jimlux@earthlink.net]
> Sent: Thursday, December 08, 2011 16:10
> To: towertalk@contesting.com
> Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Inspecting or even de-icing antennas from the
> ground
>
> On 12/8/11 7:58 AM, John W wrote:
>>
>> Santa is bringing my nephew a radio controlled helicopter for
>> Christmas. It has a camera built in, with 4 GB of memory.
>>
>> It just occurred to me that being able to fly a camera up to the top
>> of a tower could be a handy way to inspect to see if something is
>> broken or amiss without having to climb. It also occurred to me that
>> perhaps one could suspend some sort of a loop under the helicopter
>> and, if it's highly maneuverable, maybe even use it to gently shake an
>> element that has got ice building up on it, as a way of maybe knocking
>> some ice off.
>
>
> Photography yes, manipulation of elements, much, much trickier.
>
> It's hard to tell from a distance, but the position control tolerance of
> most R/C flyers isn't all that wonderful. Not that it can't be done, but
> it's pretty hard. Little bits of air turbulence, etc. The things move
> around a lot more than it seems from the ground.
>
> There's also a sort of problem that the helos with good
> autopilot/stabilizers tend to be more expensive than ones that don't.
> There are really high performance ones used in things like film shoots
> with
> gyrostabilized cameras and VERY good autopilots. They're in the many
> kilobuck range, though. A blade strike on an antenna element with any of
> the
> R/C helicopters is almost certainly going to be an expensive episode.
>
>
> However, technology is ever improving. My Parrot AR-Drone toy is
> remarkably
> stable (although hard to use in any amount of breeze outdoors). You could
> easily use the onboard camera to fly it along an element to look at stuff.
> It's light weight enough that if you did get a blade strike and it
> plummets
> out of the sky, it would probably not get too damaged (and there is repair
> insurance available for it, as well), and it probably wouldn't break
> anything else on the way down.
>
>
>
>>
>> Wondering if anyone has ever considered using a RC helicopter for this
>> purpose, and wanted to throw the idea out there as a suggestion in
>> case it hasn't been tried yet. I plan to give it a try. I assume a
>> telescope, or at least a good pair of image-stabilized binoculars,
>> would need to be used by the pilot, in order to be able to see exactly
>> what you're doing from the ground.
>
>
> A good pilot with a good machine could probably do it 100 ft away without
> too much trouble without binoculars.
>
>
>
> What I want is a R/C flyer with enough range and speed to do far field
> patterns of HF antennas...
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