[TowerTalk] Fwd: Lightning Damage, Crane used to replace Orion Positioner

Sat May 14 20:47:11 EDT 2016

Interesting story and situations.

One question though, I looked at the QRZ webpage, it appears that the antenna elements extend into / over your neighbors yard.
How does your neighbor feel about the invaded airspace?

James
ki5dq

--------------------------------------------
On Sat, 5/14/16, Ken K6MR <k6mr at outlook.com> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Fwd:  Lightning Damage, Crane used to replace Orion Positioner
 To: "Hans Hammarquist via TowerTalk" <towertalk at contesting.com>
 Date: Saturday, May 14, 2016, 5:28 PM

 Building permit? What’s that?

 Ken K6MR

 From: Hans Hammarquist via TowerTalk<mailto:towertalk at contesting.com>
 Sent: Saturday, May 14, 2016 13:40
 To: towertalk at contesting.com<mailto:towertalk at contesting.com>
 Subject: [TowerTalk] Fwd: Lightning Damage, Crane used to replace Orion Positioner

 Thank L-d I live in a rural town that hasn't figure out how to suck money from a radio ham (yet). My building permit to
 get the tower cost me $15 everything included. Jealous?

 -----Original Message-----
 From: W5GN <w5gn at mxg.com>
 To: 'towertalk' <towertalk at contesting.com>
 Sent: Sat, May 14, 2016 12:20 pm
 Subject: [TowerTalk] Lightning Damage, Crane used to replace
 Orion Positioner

 About two weeks ago, we had an extremely close lightning strike that surged
 our AC voltage to about 6000V (estimate based on ¼ inch
  between the two arc burns on the shell of the plastic AC plug to the chassis
 screw on the Orion 2800 Control Box), even though
  all circuits have commercial surge protectors that were installed when the
 office/radio wing was built in 1984.

 But I did NOT have a UPS between the wall and the radio equipment; none of
 the computer equipment in the other corner that is behind a UPS was not touched by this surge.

  The surge took out that Orion 2800 rotor control box, and the motor windings in the positioner was now an open circuit.

  The surge also took out the Astron 30 Amp supply, and its 12V output surge took out the transmit side of the ICOM 756PROII.

 I sent it to Icom repair in St. Joseph, MI, on a Tuesday, and they had
 finished the repairs and were ready to ship on Tuesday when I called them on this past Monday, and it arrived
 yesterday, Friday. $192 - $140 Service, $23 for parts.

 They replaced the defective IC151 and D131 in RF unit, and the CI-V remote port that I didnt know was burned,
  and replaced Q5771 Q25, D22, D23, clock battery BT3501 and, unrelated to the surge damage, replaced R1 on the phone
  board which had failed a while back and caused loss of one audio channel.

 That 12V surge also took out the 20 meter position of the Array Solutions Six Pack, and the MicroKeyer II.

  The UST HDBX-72 tower is normally nearly retracted, with the top of the tower at 32 feet, with the Cal AV 2-el Forty there,
  and the OB16-3 18 feet higher.  My first tower climber volunteer observed the first problem.  The tower needed
  to be raised about 10 feet to get the positioner clear of the next lower tower section so it could be removed.

 But the electrical control has not worked for some time, and since I had not intended to raise the tower,
  and since I added the complexity of the (useless IMO) Remote Control, we gave up on fixing that problem,
  and instead used a screw driver as a lever and rotated the drive shaft to raise the tower the 10 feet, alternating two of us for about 20 minutes.

 My professional climber could have replaced the Positioner in the tower in harness on the tower, but since
  the LMR400ULTRAFLEX was now 13 years old, I elected to bring a crane so they could be replaced, and because
  its a lot easier on the climber!

  In 2003, we had a 160 ton crane (pics at www.mxg.com <http://www.mxg.com> , lower left) because we had the old EzWAY Tower further back that had to be removed first; that days crane cost was $700.

  When I called Davis Crane, I found that a city permit to close the street would be required, two Dallas (off-duty)
  policeman that we would pay $240 each for were required, that the crane could not be here on Friday, our garbage pickup day,

 per city rules, and because our normal residential street once had a bus line, it was classified somehow higher as
  needing to be clear by 3:30 for rush hour.  He also said the crane would leave around 8am, about a half hour away,
  and it would take an hour to setup, and also it would take nearly an hour to shut down and be gone by 3:30.

 And I had to deliver 42 Notice of Street Closure to the folks who lived on
 the two streets and backed up to the  alley exit that would be closed that day, record their
 addresses and deliver back to Davis to get the permit.

  The city had put out the Detour Signs on Wednesday, by the curb.

  I had ordered 2x LMR400UF, Rotor, and RG8X Pulse cables in 200 foot lengths from Joel, at RFConnection.

 When the LMR400UF arrived, I decided to confirm its length by weighing on the shipping scale,
  and found the weight of the LMR400UF was .068 Pounds/Foot, so 200 feet should be 13.6 pounds,
  but the scale displayed only 7.7, so there must be only 100 feet of coax.
 Only after wasting Joels time, for him to confirm the actual shipping weight was 38 pounds,
 did I apologize for the egg on my face, as my scale was displaying KiloGrams, not
 pounds.  Wednesday afternoon we removed the old cables  from the shack to the base of the tower, made up the new cables, and ran them from the shack also to the base of the tower.

  Thursday the crane and officer arrived about the same time, a little before 9, and the officer pulled the
  detour signs to block both lanes, and then sat in his surburban pretty much the rest of the day.

 The crane arrived, and we then waited nearly an hour while they called back to get the man basket that had been
  ordered but not put on the order form.  Then we waited another 45 minutes for their mechanic to arrive to
  find the short in the winchs terminal block that was water-exposed and intermittent.

 Work proceeded smoothly for the coax removal for the OB16-3 which is now at 60 feet on the 24 foot mast and
  then the Cal-AV 2el 40 is at 42 feet. 
 Work was somewhat slower when it came to raising the mast so the positioner could be slipped out;
  previously, you could get two winches, so one can hold the basket while the second is used to

 raise mast those couple of inches needed, but OSHA rules now prohibit two winches, so the crane had to

 swap the basket with a strap to lift, while the climber clipped in, and then go back and get the basket,
  several times.  And similarly, since both antennas feed point is some distance from the mast, and
  with those 16 elements on top, only about 2 feet apart, the crane operator took lots of time to reposition

 out and then back in without taking off elements to move along the boom with the coax.

 Around 1pm, a city of Dallas inspector showed up and halted work because the permit required two policeman,

 which I had expected and was on the order also, but only one had been ordered, apparently, by Davis Crane,
  maybe, but this was a Keystone Cop discussion between the Davis guy, the cop, and the (REALLY NASTY) inspector,

 who finally relented, saying, well Im not stopping your work now, got in his vehicle and drove away.

 Earlier he had told me that the reason the policemen were there was NOT for traffic control, the signs did that.

 They were there in case the crane tipped over so they could call for help!.

 So both the cop and the Davis guy were worried about him coming back and giving us grief over that 3:30 limit,
  and there can be serious fines involved, so my tower guy got 5 minute warnings for the last half hour,

 and connected the last critical wire at 3:32.  The crane shutdown took only 10 minutes, and he moved the crane
  so it was now parked and only blocking one lane, and then sat there 45 minutes, waiting for the electrican to
  return to now repair the crane storage mechanism  the crane was completely collapsed, but that whole unit
  was stuck about 3 feet above its cradle.

 So that lost time really hurt; it still took three more hours on Friday for him to climb and strap in and
  finish building and sealing the Bud box with the terminal block for the positioner, tie wrapping and taping
  the cable bundles, and finishing those details.

 I had purchased the new Orion 2800 positioner only, because last year, for the first time, I actually
  won something of value at the Contest Dinner, when I got a Green Heron controller.  When we went to
  setup that box, we made some stupid error, but were very pleased when Jeff answered his phone and
  he walked us thru to correct our error.  Just love that knob to point the beams.

  The cost of this crane was $2440.

  73

 Barry, W5GN

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