On 2/21/07, Kevin Custer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > If you hit it hard enough, it would have fixed itself without taking it > apart. Nate knows how hard you have to smack it to break the whiskers > off, don't you Nate? <grin>
Actually I've never done it myself... just knew it was an option -- one of those "crap, the repeater's down and I don't have time to work on this" options. I hate those. (GRIN) I think if I were presented with info that someone had done it to one of our systems I would start immediately into the cussing stage... but not at that person, more that I'd know we would have to find another VHF and go swap it... and there's a LOT of screws in a station to take out to do that swap... and I *always* seem to lose at least one of them... The swap is easy -- if you show up with a receiver already aligned... but if you don't have extra ICOM's with the crystals already in them you usually can only do a rough alignment on with whatever closest crystal set you have. Once you're done keeping track of all the darn screws in a dark room at a site, dropping at least three of them on the floor and hunting for them... then after getting it all put back together -- then you still have to align the darn thing... In all, a multi-hour project, that's still worth doing... just to get the stupid casting out of there that's causing all the grief... Heck if you bang on the casting to "fix" it, you're probably going to whack the thing hard enough that you might have to go back through the helical alignment anyway. Since all of our repeater sites are quite a drive from home (mountains), the whole prospect sounds not fun, no matter how you slice it. I visited a friend in Indianapolis last year after Dayton and he said, "Want to go to the repeater site?' He wondered why my initial reaction was "Huh?"... of course, the repeater site is on a huge tower only 3 miles from his house... you drive over, open the gate, open the door and do whatever you need to. Must be NICE! I'd have our "re-connectorize everything" project crossed off my list if our sites were that easily accessible... a couple of hours over a couple of months of Saturdays... and it'd all be done... Digital photos are a lifesaver for us, when we remember to shoot them... now was that a male or a female DB-9 on that???? What kind of clamps are holding that antenna again??? Ahh... right here in the photos... Of course, on my last three site trips to one of our sites, I either couldn't find or didn't take the [EMAIL PROTECTED](^#@ digital camera... and as I'm pulling out of the site in the Jeep I remember... and the cussing starts again... So ... Fred's right... all good projects start with cussing. :-) Nate WY0X
