Nightmare "f-ing Hams!" story from this weekend: I went to a site this weekend, and the "new" Amateur repeater in the new building the hams are moving into had 200' of 1/2 Andrews hardline on it that I don't even know how it was operating... it looked like someone had taken a ballpeen hammer to it at 5' lengths all the way across the ice bridge and up the tower. The hardline run was done INSIDE a tower leg instead of properly up the outside cable tray/unistrut with no hangers, and no grounding kits on the run of 1/2" anywhere.
There was a ham grade Comet triplexer bolted to the back of an open rack, with two ports terminated, and one open, and three mobiles and a mobile duplexer for the "repeater" sitting on a shelf, everything connected with RG-58, plugged into the triplexer so the link radio could be connected to the same feedline/antenna, and then 9913 for the jumper from the diplexer to the polyphaser panel (amazingly, they used a polyphaser!)... then a dual-band ham-grade antenna (also looked like a Comet - we didn't send the tower climbers up there) at the very tippy top of the tower that was already looking like it was loose in the sites regular 50+ MPH winds. The power supply looked like maybe it was a Micor supply, but more likely was homebrew to run someone's gear at home, years ago. The whole repeater cabinet was plugged into the tool power outlet on the wall, and not to the overhead 15A twist locks at the site that are supposed to be equipment power. No grounding cable was attached to the cabinet or to the overhead halo system. Meanwhile the two groups that went up were installing brand new 7/8" hardline and connectors on the new tower, putting that hardline into the cable trays, new polyphasers, RG-400 or better jumpers from the panel to their enclosed cabinets, new Sinclair antennas, grounding kits on all hardline, etc. We also ripped down all the abandoned 7/8" and "chunks" in the hangars, took all the clipped and abandoned wire ties on the tower and ice bridge off and threw them away, removed "extra" hangars and stored them in the building, removed three runs of #8 bare copper wire strung down the ice bridge as a "ground" from the tower to the building, which would just be an intermod/noise-maker, reattached the tower ground the both the ice-bridge and the ground rod temporarily, (were going to do a cadweld, but it was raining and no one had a grinder to clean the surfaces properly), picked up all site trash, etc. There are GOOD ham radio tenants, and bad ones... that's for sure. If it were up to me, I'd have made ONE phone call to this guy saying his repeater was no longer welcome at the site, disconnected it, changed the door code, and set that "mobiles in a cabinet" hunk of junk out in rain under a tarp for later pickup, along with stripping his virtually destroyed 1/2" hardline and noisemaker antenna from the tower while we had the crew up there. RG-58 for duplexer connections?! WTF??? Politically, I have to be a little careful here... I actually know the ham that put this junk up, and if he reads this, I hope he's not too offended -- but it's a nightmare waiting to happen for the rest of us on the site. It's so far from "commercial grade" it just shouldn't be up there. A backyard is a nice place for a "repeater" like that. The above CRAP jobs are often why hams aren't welcome at commercial sites. I hate it when hams do this. Had to vent. There were some "newbies" along on the trip, and I think they got the point when I stated, "If you ever install anything that looks this HamSexy at a commercial radio site, and don't keep the kiddie-show to your back-yard repeater, I'm personally coming to your house to kick your ass." Nate WY0X -- Nate Duehr [email protected]
