After almost 2-1/2 years of kvetching, moaning, planning, scheming, and
teeth knashing, I FINALLY got a wire up in the air here at the rental last
Monday.
There may be nothing more frustrating (for a ham) than looking out every day
into a nice back yard on a hill, knowing that it's the perfect spot for a
vertical, and being unable to put one up (why? lots of reasons -- had to
sweet talk the wife, persuade the landlord's maintenance guy, worry about
the neighborhood kids who use the back yards woods behind them as one big
play lot... and that big tree that they dropped in the middle of everything
last year that made access to the whole antenna area impossible didn't
help). But finally, the day was nice, the weather cooperated, the wife
wasn't around to have second thoughts, the coax got buried, and the wire got
in the trees.
Of course, it wouldn't load. Went over the coax connections, the wire, and
so forth. Finally figured it out this morning. I plugged the PL-259 into
the Dummy Load SO-239 on the tuner instead of the Antenna-2 one. Figures.
But it now loads. Haven't heard a bloody thing yet, it's touchy on 10 12
and 160, and it needs some radials, but it loads. (It's roughly 70 feet up
to one tree, and across to another. I'd hope to hang it as an inverted-L,
but it's more of an end-fed inverted-V). Now comes the fun part!
I'd like to publicly thank three people for all of their assistance in this:
-- First, Bill W3WH, who's provided moral support and the occasional use of
his shack (love that Orion!) to keep what's left of my sanity intact.
-- Second, Larry K3VX, who gave up an afternoon on Monday to help me get the
wire up in the trees, dodging slingshot weights (until we lost them all) and
rusty mobile antenna coils until my aim finally righted itself.
--Third and by no means last, Larry K4WLS, who last year was unexpectedly
kind enough to have AES ship me some new coax, paddles, and connectors.
Screwy circumstances didn't permit me to use any of it until now, but now it
will all be put to good use!
Now let's see if I can work some people!
73, ron wn3vaw
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