After owning a station in Aruba I am familiar with the constant wind rocking
the antenna back and forth 24 hours a day. I had to be careful when working on
the tower to keep my ropes and other light object from blowing into the
neighbor’s pool. There was no acid rain (or much rain at all during most
months) however the salt in the air caused serious corrosion issues to the
tower and aluminum antenna sections, especially aluminum was in contact with
stainless steel. I used Phillystran guy cables and I had to change the Big
Grips every four years. Most of the station in the Caribbean are pretty
modestly sized and they still require a lot of maintenance. I am not aware of
any 80m beams in Zone 8 or 9. So, I can appreciate the work and expense
involved in building and maintaining a massive antenna farm in paradise.
73
John KK9A – P40A
From: Kurt Andress [mailto:andresskurt@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, November 07, 2017 12:05 AM
To: john@kk9a.com; towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Some Unique Heavy Lifting....
That would be the obvious guess! But, what you don't know is that the location
see's 25-35 mph tradewinds almost every day of the year. And, some of the
towers are located close to the edge of a 500ft deep canyon, which creates it's
own unique wind flow patterns, which torque the hell out of the antennas/towers
on the edge of the cliff.
One does not get to appreciate these things by reading the posts of Towertalk
Pundits.....I get it because I have been up there in almost every condition it
has seen, over several years, even while repairing the broken 80M tower, in
real time, up there while it was blowing and raining like crazy.....
Your perspective may vary...mine does not, it is a very tough place to do this!
73, Kurt, K7NV
P.S. It sees wx patterns that bring sulfuric acid rains up from the active Big
Island volcano, so corrosion is absolutely maximized.....we had to replace some
severely compromised EHS cables to even safely climb and work on the 40M tower
to install the newly rebuilt prop pitch rotator to get it on-line for the
CQWWSSB contest.....we pulled that off ~3 hours after the contest started,
before the Contest OP crew needed to be on 40M......did the same with Kimo,
KH7U on the 80M tower....to get the new feedlines on the newly rebuilt and
installed 80M yagi some of you might have seen......
Message: 1
Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2017 09:54:48 -0500
From: <mailto:john@kk9a.com> "john@kk9a.com" <mailto:john@kk9a.com>
<john@kk9a.com>
To: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Some Unique Heavy Lifting....
Message-ID: <f93416dbe540554501814ba071d67fb6.squirrel@www11.qth.com">mailto:f93416dbe540554501814ba071d67fb6.squirrel@www11.qth.com>
<f93416dbe540554501814ba071d67fb6.squirrel@www11.qth.com>
Content-Type: text/plain;charset=utf-8
I am guessing that ice will not be an issue at KH6YY:)
John KK9A
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