A Long Dry Summer
It has been a long dry summer, I design and build Joomla-based web sites for several organizations. I am really quite new at web site design and operation so it should not be a shock when one of the sites was hacked. It has taken me a long time to understand how it was done and what was needed to slow down the attacks. The version of Joomla that I was using was really easy to hack, as was this blog. So to cut down on things I was forced to turn off comments and do several things that made several sites less useful. I am slowly returning things to normal after rebuilding, modifying, and adding security to the sites. The web security activities have not left me with much time to do Ham radio things.
I was able to work Field Day from home. I think I did better this year than the last two years. Hopefully I have learned a bit and become a better operator.
Just before Field Day I noticed that my hexbeam was not looking right. It was slouching off at a strange angle and the beam was not facing the same direction as the rotator. I managed to get through Field Day without everything falling down but my main antenna definitely needed a lot of work.
So this month I have made it a priority to get the radio things in order for the winter season.
I lowered the antenna and found that the fiberglass mast I was using had been eaten by the mast clamps on the rotator. I had expected a bit of wear but the clamps had removed enough material that the antenna was almost falling out of the rotator.
I modified the clamps and mast by epoxying an aluminum protective skin to the clamping surface. I also shimmed the spider to the mast and epoxied it in place.
So far the modifications seem to work. We have gone through one major wind storm and the antenna stayed facing the proper direction and there was no apparent wind forced movement of the various parts. Hopefully, that will solve the problem for a couple of years. I expect that the antenna will need to be rebuilt in a couple of years but until then I think it will survive.
There has been some recent solar activity and there is a chance that the higher bands will come back this coming year. Thinking that 6meters might be a useful band again, I built a 6meter dipole to be added to the short mast that carries my NVIS 40meter hamstick dipole.
I also want to finally get my 40ish foot vertical working in time for this winter. I had been using that aluminum mast as the 2m/70cm mast for the J-pole. I was having doubts that the vertical and the J-pole could co-exist without putting a lot of RF back on one or the other of the feed lines, so the J-pole had to come down.
The solution was to get my four-band mobile vertical out of storage and mount it on top of the short mast. I knew that the 2m/70cm sections would work as they were complete antennas but suspected that the 6 and 10meter sections would not be really effective since they were 1/4-wave sections. I was hoping that the 20ish foot mast would be enough of a ground for the 6- and 10meter sections to be somewhat useful but knowing that I had 10-meters available on the Hexbeam and a new 6-meter dipole gave be a chance to play with the verticals. I am running out of feed lines to the antenna farm so I put the 6meter and 40meter dipoles on the same feed with no attempt to phase them. So far both tune up well using the autotuner in the K3.
The aluminum vertical is now up but has no feed lines and the SGC coupler has not been mounted nor have the radials been run. If we have a couple of sunny days, I will get that done before the winter rains start.
Hopefully, all the antennas will survive the winter and I will have time to play with the radio.