[TowerTalk] Ice storm experience with antennas this week

[Tom Whiteside]

We are just thawing out from an ice storm in central Texas - not as bad as
one 4 years ago but the second worst one I've seen and sufficient to knock
down power lines and break many large tree limbs - sigh...   Thought some
data on how the beams faired might be of interest...    Forgive me if you
deal with ice storms frequently in your area but places like here, it is
news.

The beams in use here are of various pedigrees - we have large M2 antennas
for 15 and 20M - the 44.5 foot boom varieties - 3 on each tower.   We have 2
Cushcraft XM240 beams and 6 of the Force12 elite monobanders for the 10M
tower and for fixed multiplier antennas.    After a night of freezing rain,
they all looked pathetically wilted with a heavy ice load...   I had taken
advice from this reflector and turned them all 90 degrees off from the wind
and maybe this helped - dunno.     The droopiest was the F12 EF320 with the
Cushcraft coming in second.   The great news is that all fully sprung back
when the ice melted...

Another observation was that all the wire arrays survived despite heavy ice
loading.   That dacron rope and flex-weave wire from Davis RF is tough stuff
and has now lived through 2 of these storms over the last 4 years.    My
Beverages were another matter...  One of 4 Beverages survived intact but the
other 3 could not take the large limbs falling across them and broke...
Same thing happened 4 years ago.    The good news is that they are made with
the insulated version of DavisRF's flexweave and this stuff is virtually
unkinkable and will be easy to repair...    I've ended up moving all these
Beverages at least once over the last 4 years and the wire is easy to work
with and is like new...   I highly recommend this stuff...

Not affiliated in any way with DavisRF or any of these manufacturers but
very pleased with all of them - especially given this latest stress test...

Tom Whiteside
N5TW Georgetown, TX


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