Yes, that is the focus of my days now… finding an overload of nothing things to do… Great life if you can afford it.
Wednesday it was a very nice, cooler and very little wind day so I started early on the roof taking some antennas down to move to a higher spot on my tower…
The stuff on the right came down. doesn’t look like much and that is they way it is suppose to be… it was a 160 meter dipole and some other stuff… once that was all down, some minor maintenance had to be done and then I let the tower (on the left) down. (nice that it is on a winch and hinged at the base so it just lays out on the parking area for maintenance…
I left the small tri-pod on the roof in case I need to put up a TV antennas or bird house? but other wise that is all cleared out…
Now the tower on the left of picture 1 looks like this… a bit more cluttered up but not a lot… I ran out of time to get the UHF/VHF halo antennas up as I would need to run another coax and all that but I did get new stand-offs built for the ladder line and the 160 meter dipole is near the top of this tower now… actually almost make that dipole and Inverted V antennas. will do some testing to see if there is any difference at all. I do not expect much but maybe a little less noise and a slightly different radiation pattern on both it and the 160 meter windom. The windom is just below the dipole but runs north/south and the dipole runs East/West… I had to move the standoffs for the windom coax feed to the SE side of the pole from the SW side… turned the support for that 180 degrees and then mounted the dipole above. I also put insulators on the guy wires so I can now load the pole as a vertical… it is a little over 43 ft tall but with a proper Un-UN and tuner It should load all bands… right now it loades 160 through 20 no problems… next after that is to lay out some radials from the base of that pole and see how that works out… This set of changes will give me a few months to check it out and if necessary do any more maintenance before fall and winter when I hope to do a bit more on 160 meters when it gets cold… and use the vertical to get a bit more DX in the log…
Now none of that looks like a lot of work but it took me from 7:30 to 5pm pretty straight other than a break for lunch to get it all done and paint the standoffs the same color as the tower… put all the parts together for the new stand-offs on the ladder line, etc…
Yesterday was a busy day but not much really worked out right… late Wed I had set an appointment for the doctor to look at my ear… I had been having extreme pressure and blockage in that ear, left over from the cold and all, and I had a lot of horrible echo when I talked… that was to be at 11:30 and late Wed afternoon the dentist called and said they had an open spot at 9:30 on Thursday… ok, move that up a week and get them both in one day… at 8:30 am the dentist called and said they could do the cleaning but the dentist would not be in the office as he was called out for an emergency… ok… I can go on with the cleaning and if they find a problem then I go back? and just before I was to leave for that one the other Doctor called and said he was called to the hospital for an emergency and could I come at 2pm… ok not a problem … by at noon I got another call and they Dr would not be in the rest of they day but if I needed to come on in and they would squeeze me into see one of the other Dr… well by then my ear had quit hurting, no more pressure and pretty much back to normal… may have cooked it out the day before? anyway I just cancelled that appointment. I also had an appointment at 3 for a haircut as I was really getting shaggy… that is the only one that didn’t cancel but he couldn’t fit me in earlier either… so I wasted the whole day chasing appointments and Dr’s and other mundane crap…
Toda was a normal slow day… I got my long walk in. I thought I walked pretty fast and my wife always complained I walked too fast even when “strolling” but today… I got passed by a guy that had to be 10 years older than me… (maybe)… he was crouched over, swinging his arms and picking them up and laying the down… actually he was walking nearly fast enough to keep up with a slow jogger… But it was a really nice morning – cool with a lite breeze and just right but a hour later it was getting a but muggy… I got done with the walk, set on the back deck and cooled with my juice and breakfast bar… then set out to “whack some weeds and bushes” got out the whacker and took after a bunch of the over growth of small cedars and thorn vines in and around some of our trees.. I intended to get the brush cutter off and put on the grass trimmer but never got to that… found enough brush to cut that I cut till noon… went in for lunch and got back and finished up on some more thorn vines… got a bit hot so laid it all down and cooled on the back deck again… had thought I might get the front power washed but just never got to that…
Played a little with the new antennas but with varying condx it is hard to tell if it is any different but at least they all work and I didn’t screw things up… yet.
WD0AJG