The Ice Storm

[W3MM at aol.com]

Schools are closed here today due to a bit of freezing rain. Well
this storm is certainly no killer of an ice storm, but it seems
that every other year we experience a killer of an ice storm. This
is the kind of storm that loads 1/2 inch of ice onto the HF beams
making them totally useless and the packet backbone beams ice
up and the nodes drop like flies. The 80 and 160 dipoles stretch
2 or 3 feet and now the ant resonance point is somewhere that 
makes them useless after the ice comes off.

At the FRC meeting this past Tuesday evening Stew, K3ND, 
gave an interesting talk on the design of his station and ant's.
Stew said "I make all of my wire ant's with Teflon Insulated 
wire. Water does not stick to the teflon and the wire ant's do
not get loaded with ice."

I just thought that I would pass this GEM along.

VY 73 de Dave W3MM   m3mm at aol.com




>From paul1 at wizard.ucs.sfu.ca (Paul Erickson)  Thu Dec 14 18:10:56 1995
From: paul1 at wizard.ucs.sfu.ca (Paul Erickson) (Paul Erickson)
Date: Thu, 14 Dec 95 10:10:56 PST
Subject: Voice memory keyers
Message-ID: <9512141810.AA11246 at wizard.ucs.sfu.ca>

I am planning to build a voice memory keyer. So far the W9xt contest card
looks like the best bet. Any other suggestions? I am also looking to build
an outboard one for portable purposes (ie. field day). Any ideas other
than the k5fog chiptalker?

cheers, Paul
VE7CQK
email: paul1 at wizard.ucs.sfu.ca