[TowerTalk] Refurbishing an A3

[Terry Hines]

I am in the process of refurbishing an old Cushcraft A3 that was in service
about 14 years and then in protective storage for about 5 years.  Two
problems have come up.  

1)      The old A3 used pillow blocks to hold the elements to the boom.  The
pillow blocks stayed in line with the boom by a small set screw that pierces
through the boom material.  I plan to use A3S hardware that does not employ
pillow blocks.  Instead, the A3S uses aluminum brackets and backing plates.
Does anyone if the old boom will be too weak to support the new hardware
configuration?

2)      I removed the plastic end-caps off the 15 meter director element
trap and found an unbelievable amount of debris inside the trap.  It hard to
describe the debris but it was primarily tiny, brown colored fibers, small
pieces of what look to be black colored bits of paper, and dust balls.  Is
this possibly some kind of dielectric material that has broken down in the
trap or is possible that some kind of animal colony took up home in the trap?


Terry, N4ZH  

 



--
FAQ on WWW:               http://www.contesting.com/towertalkfaq.html
Submissions:              towertalk@contesting.com
Administrative requests:  towertalk-REQUEST@contesting.com
Problems:                 owner-towertalk@contesting.com
Search:                   http://www.contesting.com/km9p/search.htm