I read Steve K7LXC's report on Vasalia with great interest. Its one of
those historic amateur radio conferences I dream of attending some day.
Thanks for the
intersting review of the new stuff around the corner Steve.
I found the description of the device US Tower had that lowers the tower when
threatening winds arrive with amusement. Such a device has been around
for some time. Its basically a standard wind indicator attached by relays
and delay circuits to the cranking motor. The problem is that many have
told me that you can be in the middle of a breaking a pileup and up comes a
wind. The tower starts its decent and suddenly you dont hear the rare one
any more. And its happened several times no matter how carefully owners set
the sense point to lower the tower. Of course you can have a bypass for that
circuit but you have
just one more thing to remember to do when entering the shack.
Or, then there is the guy who in Northern Minnesota forgot to bypass the wind
indicator to lower the tower and climbed the tower to do some work. You
guessed
it. The wind came up.....he jumped to the roof as the tower top was just
above the
roof going lower by the second and approaching the second section. (Could
have lost a few toes right there!) The beam smashed into the roof and not
only
totaled the beam but the new roof was a bit expensive too!
No I think I might pass on the wind sensor to control a crankup tower.
But since I dont have a crankup I will forgo the pleasure of buying the device
for anyway....hi!
See you in Dayton!
73
Mike
K0BUD
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