Hi,
During the recent ice storm, my Explorer-14 folded at the boom so that it
now looks like an Inverted-L. The driven-element / director half is still
horizontal, but the reflector half is hanging down. I just came down off
the tower (no, there was no ice on the tower legs, etc) for the first time
since the storm to see exactly what happened. It looks like the boom
folded right at the point where it exits the boom to mast bracket. I know
that I'm going to have to go up again and take the reflector half down.
Any repairs will have to wait until Spring. My questions are:
1) While I'm up there, should I take the driven-element / director half
down also, or would it be OK to leave it up?
2) If I leave it up, would I be doing anything to the rotor by having an
unbalanced load on the mast? i.e. only half the antenna up. The rotor is a
Ham III about 5 feet down from the point of the tower. There is a thrust
bearing about 2 feet above the rotor and the antenna is about 2 feet above
the point. The rotor is stuck at 240 degrees (for now).
I checked the SWR and it normal across all three bands. Any advice /
opinions (I'm sure there will be a few) would be appreciated.
73,
Chris VE3FU / VO2AC
cada@cyberus.ca
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