Author

Terry Ebdon

I've been inspecting my radio masts, to asses how much work they'll need in the spring.

VHF Mast

My VHF mast carries a dual-band colinear and a 9 element Tonna beam for 2m. The rotator is at the top of the mast, though I can’t remember why. At my previous shack I put the rotator at the bottom of the mast, using a thrust bearing at the upper mast bracket to allow the mast to rotate through the mount. I have a new and unused Yaesu GS-065 thrust bearing sitting on a shelf behind me, so I obviously intended to do the same here. Having been in place for 20+ years the rotator looks rusty and the Tonna mounting bracket has failed, it’s resting on the rotator and tilted at a crazy angle. Come the spring I’ll have to drop the mast and fix things. Not looking forward to dropping it with that weight on the top, so really regretting not having the bottom mounted rotator. Fortunately I have a “hard cap” (like a builder’s hard-hat, but looks like a black ballcap) so that & my heaviest boots will be required. I also have a spare “tilt-over”, so it’d be good to add that, and the thrust bearing, to the setup before raising the mast again. Assuming there’s enough room on the small boiler house for another bracket.

HF Mast

For HF and 6m I used to have a Diamond CP-6. That worked OK, and didn’t require radial wires. But it couldn’t take the wind here, and snapped off just above the mounting point. The bottom of the mast has a satellite dish with dual LNBs. The HF and sat cables run along the washing line towards the back door then hop up to the eaves. I have a double loft. A small one over the attached garage that’s walled off from the large one over the house. The sat cables runs down into the garage then through the wall (at around knee height) into the lounge, courtesy of a big drill bit and a Dremel plasterboard bit. A roof-height gap in the wall between the two lofts lets the HF cable snake across. That all looks fine, except for the lack of a HF and 6m antenna. I'd like a more robust version of the CP-6 but I'm not aware of such a thing.

23-NOV-2019 👈 Top of page 👉 10-DEC-2020

© 2020 Terry Ebdon.

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