Topband: Wednesday 160m CW Activity Night

[kq2m at kq2m.com]

Dave,

I feel your pain. I have had similar situations in Western, CT  in 2011, 
2012 and then again in 2014.

During CQWWSSB in 2011 we got a freak snowstorm starting with temps at 
34F and then falling to 19F overnight - heavy wet snow at 4" - 5" per 
our took out thousands of trees in full leaf and trashed hundreds of 
power lines and utility poles. It took many dozens of line crews from 
Ohio to ME to South Carolina, 2 weeks to restore all power.  I had no 
power for 9 days.  No antennas got repaired that Winter.

In 2012 we had two hurricanes, one in August, (antennas were repaired) 
and then came Hurricane Irene the Sunday evening of CQWWSSB, with its 
screaming 120 mph wind gusts that destroyed most of our town 
communications infrastructure.  Hundreds of utility poles, power lines 
and trees were destroyed just in my area of the the town.  171 roads in 
Newtown, CT were completely or partially blocked.  98% of Newtown, CT 
lost power. I had to chainsaw 15 trees that had fallen across my 
driveway literally trapping us here until they were all cut and moved.  
The cable/phone and internet lines were literally ripped off all the 
power poles the entire length of my 550' driveway.  We had no power for 
9 days until the final transformer was replaced on a pole above my 
driveway on November 7th during another snowstorm that dropped another 
9" of snow. All the wire antennas were down and not repaired that Winter 
for critical health reasons, the passing of my mother as well as the 
Sandy Hook massacre on December 14th.

And then in 2014, we got 61" of snow in 3 weeks with subzero temps 
in-between ensuring that almost nothing melted.  One night in 5 hours we 
got 24" of snow and with 42" of snow on the ground it was impossible to 
get to the woods. I spent all of Martin Luther King day shoveling snow 
off the roofs of my house so that it would not collapse.  Again, no 
antennas got fixed that winter.  I had given up on Beverages years 
before due to the combination of a Deer Tick explosion and the dense 
forest raining branches and trees all over the beverages with every wind 
storm.

Western CT in New England is a rough place to live. Thank goodness we 
don't get the insane cold of Northern ME.

Some years you just have to "let it go" and wait until Spring to put 
your station back together.  I learned not to bother to fix my wire 
antennas until a few days before a major DX contest.  Too many times I 
had fixed them a week or two before only to see them get obliterated 
again by another storm a day or two before the next DX contest!


Bob, KQ2M



On 2022-12-27 16:25, David Olean wrote:
> I am starting to feel "shell- shocked".   I had two storms come
> through here in rapid succession. Storm #1 produced incredibly heavy
> wet snow. It caused many trees to suffer with large broken limbs. The
> snow depth was 13.5 inches. It really stuck to the trees. All of my
> eight beverage antennas were damaged as they run though the woods and
> had all sorts of large branches fall on them, dropping the wires. 
> Then the XYL and I both got Covid and were sick in bed for a week or
> so. This past Friday, a large rain/ windstorm wiped everything out. We
> lost power for a few days and the temps dropped to single digits for a
> few days.  Everything froze up solid. Many of the beverage wires
> managed to get frozen to the ground. (Not fun) My internet connection
> was out for almost five days. The damage is quite bad to many of the
> trees and the typical scene is a 24" tree trunk (White Pine) snapped
> in half about 25 ft up off the ground. The top part then falls and
> takes out many trees around it as it comes down. I counted six big
> trees down across the beverages and many of the wires have snapped. I
> spent a day chain sawing and then followed up with another day
> repairing the beverage wire with home made splices. I use aluminum
> wire and the splices are aluminum barrels with four sets of 8-32 s.s.
> set screws. The high winds combined with huge amounts of water and the
> melting snow plus rain managed to wash out the road that goes up to my
> VHF hamshack. I had just paid to have the road repaired about a month
> ago and all the stone they put down is now gone or in the wrong place!
> 
> After two days of working in the woods, I have some of the wires
> fixed. I figure another two days and I will have the 160 receive
> antennas working again. I m  not sure what to do about the road.
> 
> 73
> 
> Dave K1WHS
> 
> On 12/27/2022 4:46 PM, Roger Kennedy wrote:
>> Sorry to see that so many of you in North America are suffering with
>> horrendous winter weather at the moment.
>> 
>> For those of you who can sill get on 160m, hope to see some of you on 
>> the
>> band this week.
>> 
>> 73 Roger G3YRO