Yes, I've always found hams to be "creative" in many ways. Thanks for
sharing your story.
73
Bob, K4TAX
On 5/29/2019 9:54 AM, Wayne Burdick wrote:
Bob McGraw (K4TAX) wrote:
Based on the Tour of Hara video I saw a few years back, the place is a fire
trap and was filled with junk, pollution, dangerous chemicals, and garbage just
to name a few....
Bob,
I have a Hara story.
Several years ago, while setting up to demonstrating the KX2, I was cursing the
building's steel construction. The only signals I could hear on HF were the on-site
demo station, RTTY from an Elecraft XG4 sig gen at the QRP Works booth, and a bunch
of *&*#^%@ from nearby computers.
I was determined to install an antenna outside.
First, I traded "future considerations" for 100 feet of coax at one of the
antenna vendors. Next -- and this took about half an hour -- I convinced a guy on the
Hara ground crew to drive the elevated lift truck over to our booth. I handed him the
coax, which he strung through the rafters some 20' off the ground, with the final
catenary terminating near the exterior wall. At this location we had discovered a hole
just large enough to accommodate a PL259.
The problem was getting the coax up to the hole, which was at about the 15 foot
level, directly above a nice display of screwdriver antennas. Again the
groundsman stepped up, bringing us a ladder. Unfortunately we still couldn't
reach the hole, so we taped the coax connector to the end of a push-up mast in
such a way that, when it was poked through the hole, the tape would break,
dropping the coax to the ground on the other side. At least that was the plan.
It took several tries.
Once we had breached the wall, we redeployed the ladder outside and attached
wires to form an OCF dipole. Lord knows what the resonant frequency was. We
didn't care. We'd be using the internal auto-tuner in the radio to tune it up.
One end of the dipole sailed cleanly into a tree after several tries by
different Elecraft staff members. One of us was almost but not actually injured
by the attached weight. The other end flopped uselessly on the metal roof, so
we sent Bob Wolbert (K6XX, a veteran of many precarious antenna installations)
up to fix it.
The kind folks at Hara allowed our coax and antenna to remain in place for the
next two shows. No doubt it is still there, part of the ancient infrastructure
kept that wing of the building from collapsing in the tornado.
73,
Wayne
N6KR
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