Saturday 3 October 2015

Antenna issues....

We have had a heck of a gale blowing here in Kingston for the past 24 hours and it is expected to continue into tomorrow.  Winds are gusting to 50 kph and are expected to die down over-night.

Well, after three years up 50' in a maple tree my centre support line for my 80m OCF Dipole finally broke.  The antenna is still up the tree, either the balun or the coax has found a branch to hang on to, but I could pull it all the way down using the coax.

Oh well, I can't complain after having to do little to no maintenance to it over the past 3 years.  I'll have to get one of the guys to shoot a new line over the same tree with their compressed air cannon and I'll be back in action in no time.

The plan is to replace the current rope with UV resistant and to also use a piece of aircraft cable attached to the balun for extra strength.

The fun of amateur radio!!


2 comments:

  1. In the meantime, I guess you could put the Skywhip vertical into action. I works quite well actually: I made a QSO with Hungary with mine last weekend and on 20 meter.

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    1. Hi Yves.......the OCF dipole is back up in the air and we're back on the air. The winds were gusting over 50 kph here so I could not have put up the Skywhip as it would have been destroyed in a few minutes.

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