4 Oct 2008 - NEW ANTENNA INSTALLATIONS
New Antenna Work
A great turnout of club members (who deserve a vote of thanks) meant that we almost completed the work in one day. We started by connecting the colinears mounted on the trailer tower to the GB3KL 70cms repeater and wound it up to a safe height. This immediately made the improvements we hoped for on repeater coverage.
We split up into teams to work on the assembly and tuning of the new 4ele tri-band HF yagi & the 3ele 6mtr yagi. Utilising the heliax feeder which was already in place we mounted and connected the dual band 2mtr/70cms colinear on the top of the stub mast with the 6mtr and HF beams in a christmas tree configuration below. The length of the stub did not provide sufficient space to mount a 'T' bar with the 2mtr/70cms beams at each end. These will be mounted elsewhere using the rotator off the trailer tower (probably on the pole where the old APRS antenna is currently mounted).
We encountered some problems at the end of the day (as light and energy were both failing) in connecting the old and damaged control cable to the main tower rotator. In the end we mounted the stub mechanically and raised the tower to vertical. The following weekend a few diehard members returned to the work and managed to run and connect new control cable and aligned the antennas. They also raised the wire dipole for 40 & 80mtrs in order that the JOTA weekend has maximum band opportunities. A great job by all concerned.
A few pictures taken on the day by G4OZG Ted appear below but if anyone has more taken on the day could they please email them to G1IZH.
