[TowerTalk] Tower Inspection/maintenance

[EUGENE SMAR]

TT:

     I did a tiny bit of maintenance on the shunt-feed for my Trylon this
afternoon and thought I'd pass along this note, mainly as a reminder to do
some tower maintenance yourselves.

     I took a break from lawn mowing and thought I'd un-do the shunt-feed
radials from the tower and clean up the connections.  The radials are seven
lengths of #18 insulated wire, fastenend with small stainless steel hose
clamps to three tower lightning ground radials (12 copper rods plus appr.
135 feet of #2 solid tinned copper wire buried appr 2 feet deep).  I
loosened the hose clamps, removed the wires, cleaned them off with sandpaper
and reconnected them.  I put a bit of copper goop on the wires before I
retightened the hose clamps.

     I'll probably go up the tower in a few days and install a more
permanent coax feed for the 80M sloper wire.  The existing one isn't
weatherproofed (I installed it at dusk one evening last fall and ran out of
daylight - you know how that goes!)  I'll also check on the bolted
connections between the sections.  Last year I reported that I found a few
loose connections when I did an inspection climb.  I thought I might not
have tightened them sufficiently when I had constructed the tower in 2001.

     Can't wait until dark so I can test drive the cleaned radial wires on
160M!  Turn down your RF gain controls, folks!

73 de
Gene Smar  AD3F