July 28
Lightning/power surge got me last Saturday. A freak thunderstorm (is there such a thing) struck and lightning hit somewhere nearby. There was no noticeable time lag between the bolt and the crash so I assume it was really close. The surge took out the power supply for the computer and who knows what else in the box as well as the serial control port on the Kenwood TS-2000.
I will be using my laptop as the station computer and will send the TS-2k back to Kenwood for repair shortly. In the mean time I will be upgrading the grounds and protection circuitry before putting the backup Yaesu 857 on line.
So today the chores were to knock a 4 inch hole in the concrete block garage wall and line it with a length of 4 inch PVC pipe. Tomorrow it is off to Lowes to pickup a NEMA box big enough to hide the bricks that spalled when I drilled the hole. I didn’t know brick was that hard.
Once I have the box bolted up, I need to bolt some sort of support for the several aerial runs of Heliax that needs to be run to the antenna farm. Then I can mount the ground bus and the surge protectors on the transmission lines. Hopefully I will have all of this done before the middle of August.
Of course, once I get these little chores done it will be winter and time to start on finishing the basement so I don’t really know when I will get a chance to operate before next summer.
It will all work out-eventually.
73 de ND2E