October, 2006. The 685 machine has new hardware and has been moved
to New Boston.
Well, it happened again - a guy wire broke. We got a call from Lou,
WA1HGE that Lisa Campbell had reported that a guy wire was flapping in the breeze so a
call went out for a repair party.
Turns out that Bob KB1QV, Lou, WA1HGE and yours truly were the only ones
available for the party. Bob, K1MLR graciously offered some hardware, climbing belt
and Gorilla hooks. So here's about how it went:
Saturday morning Bob showed up in his new Toyota Prius to provide
chauffeur service for me and we headed down to good old Hardware Depot where we picked up
wire nuts, thimbles and another "doo-hickey" that I didn't recognize but that
Bob said was crucial (who was I to question Bob's experience!).
We arrived on site around 10:30 and began to assess the problem.
Turns out that the guy wire had landed in just the right place so that we (Bob, that is)
only had to climb the leantoo that the tower is based on. The rest of the job was
relatively easy Lou and I wrestled with one end of the 3/16th guy wire that K1MLR
had provided to loop it around the eyelet of a new turnbuckle that Marc NI1E had bought 3
years ago for the repair that hadn't been done while Bob, QV did the work topside.
Long story short - the repair was successfully completed. Yup.
The "doohickey" that Bob QV had said was crucial was, indeed, crucial and
we finished the job handily.
The guy wires are really rusty but should hold for the rest of the winter
but we must go up this coming spring and complete replacing the guys with some new
galvanized 3/16".
Here are some pics that Bob, QV took with his new Olympus C5050 camera -
nice job Bob in both the repair dept and the photo journalist dept! Just click on
the thumbs and you'll get a larger version. Hover over the thumbs and you'll get a
short caption. Enjoy!
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It took a long time to get around to revisiting the 685 machine. When we
did we had decided to move the repeater to Jim, KA1SU's QTH. This move happened in
September (actual date to be supplied later). More details to follow.
We noticed that the repeater was a bit deaf so Bob KB1QV and Al, W1VTP
made a "house call" and decided that the cans needed retuning. More to
follow.
Bob, QV brought his network analyzer and we did some tweaking. We
didn't find anything definite to point to - the cans seemed to be pretty good but we
tweaked them anyway. Some tweaking of the receiver was done, mostly in the front
end. Here are some pictures. Click on the thumbs for larger pics.
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