Standing in a Canadian custom …
August 17th, 2010Standing in a Canadian custom line that is at least a football field long….
Standing in a Canadian custom line that is at least a football field long….
Taking off at 6am tomorrow, flying to Montreal for a week with Rosie’s family. I can only hope it isn’t any hotter then Seattle right now…
Nice weekend in Seattle = low traffic weekend for work e-mail….
Wishing tonight I was like Ben and believed in air conditioning – damn it is hot!
Last summer I started having a problem with my rotor, basically it was ‘getting stuck’. I knew the end was near and started looking for a replacement. About the time it finally died with the beam stuck pointing due east, I had ordered a replacement rotor. I spent a weekend getting everything ready, including re-wiring the rotor cable and testing everything out. I scheduled a big antenna party for the following weekend and attempted to ‘plan’ how to-do the swap.
I’ll stop here for a second and point out that antenna parties are a long time ham radio tradition. There is nothing more fun then having a bunch of ham friends over for a little antenna work and then some good food. Many people today seem to forgo the antenna party, trying instead to-do the whole thing themselves. I hope it doesn’t die out like other parts of our hobby. (I firmly believe that hamfests are dying as well) There are many aspects of putting a new antenna up which can be made easier and more importantly safer, by having several extra sets of hands. Anything having to-do with towers pretty much requires some helpers, unless your one of the lucky few which can ‘lower’ the whole thing down to ground level.
So back to my sad story, I had invited a bunch of helpers over for the rotor switch, bought a dozen racks of ribs for the BBQ and made sure plenty of pop, water and beer was on hand. Of course the day of the party it started raining cats and dogs. Fast forward a month to the second attempt and pretty much the same thing happen. Eventually the summer was over and the real rain started and gone were my hopes of replacing the rotor.
When summer started this year, I immediately began the process of planning the antenna party again. Since this year was particularly wet, it wasn’t until the end of July that the right opportunity presented itself. I had a Friday off from work due to them relocating our entire group to a new building. I scheduled the small group of friends to come over and stocked up on the necessary food. With all the extra time to prepare, I had really started to stress out over how this rotor swap was going to work. I had even climbed the tower a couple weeks earlier to take pictures and attempt to plan things out.
The primary sticking point was how to drill this hole in the mast, which allows a bolt to pass through to keep the mast from slipping when it turns. The Yaesu rotor is designed to not use lots of force for mating the rotor to the mast mount, unlike the HamIV I was replacing. Since my original plan was to replace the rotor without pulling everything down, I had forgot about the need for this hole. I pretty much convinced myself that there was no way to drill the hole on the tower and that everything would have to come down.
Something I have learned the hard way is that when working on the tower, you really need to think through every step of what your going to-do. Some stuff is easy and sometimes you can’t quite know ahead of time how your going to-do something, but most of the time lots of planning can really make things easier. Since I was sure that the only way to accomplish this rotor swap was to pull everything down, I actually wrote a ‘project plan’ for the activities. I share it with the guys coming over and of course got the smart ass feedback I have come to expect and enjoy.
I’ll leave the actual details of the day for another post, since of course my plan and reality were two different things….
Rotor Swap Plan by KU7M, comments and edits by K7DEH….
0.5 Kenny disconnects 6m beam coax and A3 coax from base of tower. (I think both are short runs that reach the roof and then attach to longer runs into the shack) Need to-do this before climbing tower and trying to remove beams. This includes probably snipping zip ties which attach coax to tower legs running up tower. 1. Pull down G5RV (will try to-do before 10am) Completely remove or pull out of the way the leg in the backyard.
1.5 ‘Look in wonder at antennas’ wondering how we are going to get the antennas down.
2. Kenny climbs the tower and pulls up the gin-pole
3. While Kenny attaches the gin-pole, everybody else figures out how to get the A3 beam down. It only comes down one way, which Scott and Kenny figured out the hard way when putting it up. Kenny no longer remembers which way that is….
4. When gin-pole is attached, Kenny climbs up and ties the rope to the A3 and then unbolts the A3. (After removing the feedline)
5. When A3 is lose, team lowers the beam in the one way to the ground. Sets up on saw horses in back yard.
6. Kenny now attempts to attach rope around the 6m beam (which is at top of mast), so it can be tied off to the gin-pole rope. When this is done, Kenny loosens the thrust bearing and then rotor, allowing mast to be pulled out and lowered to the ground. What is your exit criteria? Since you are only ‘attempting’ to attach the rope, does that mean you can just skip this step and go straight to loosening the thrust bearing, if you get behind schedule? (just kidding of course)
7. Ground crew figures out home for 6m beam and mast, then removes the 6m beam. (This is necessary to drill hole in mast for anti-slip bolt which attaches to rotor)
8. Kenny now ties off old rotor and removes it from the tower. Attaches to line to lower to the ground. I Assume you want the ground crew to lower it down after you get it attached.
When everything is safely on ground (don’t want people to just drop thing or abandon you on the tower for lunch) , time to break for lunch.) Lets home hope this doesn’t take longer then than a couple hours.
9. Identify location for hole in mast, probably use new rotor as template. Kenny has 1/2″ power drill, so this shouldn’t be difficult as long as holes lined up. Test fit mast and new rotor on ground.
10. Kenny climbs back up tower and ground crew re-attaches the 6m beam to mast, which includes the coax. (need to leave room to attach VHF/UHF antenna at top, which will be installed later?)
11. Kenny pulls up new rotor and attaches to tower. (when climbing up, he also pulls up the rotor cable to attach and test out before attaching mast/antennas) Are you sure you want to haul this up by yourself? You are going to be really tired after this. Who is bringing the video camera?
12. Kenny pulls up mast & 6m beam on gin-pole, drops into tower. Lines up mast and mast anti-twist bolt, finger tight. Then squares up thrust bearing and tightens down. Then goes back and applies lock tight to rotator bolts, so they don’t vibrate out and finger tightens. (Per instructions, nothing on rotor is twisted super tight) Looks like you are going for a upper body workout, first the rotor and now the 6m beam. What does this thing way 50 lbs? 100 lbs?. You sure you want to pull this up by yourself? If you were not tired at the end of 11, you will be now. We will defiantly have to video tape this part.
13. Ground crew attaches A3 beam to gin-pole and Kenny hauls up in reverse order of how we got it down. Swings into place and Kenny attaches to mast. (make sure coax is attached before lifting off ground). Forget the upper body workout, you’re going for the Supper Man award. Took the whole ground crew to get this thing down, and we had gravity in our favor. Now we get to watch you haul this thing back up. We defiantly need to film this!
14. Test everything out again to make sure antennas / rotor move.
15. Collect extra bits and lower to ground. Remove gin-pole and lower to ground. Kenny lowers himself to the ground.
16. Look in wonder amazement at antennas.
17. Eat yummy dinner, drink beer….
Tower work done, dug up weeds in a section for landscaping and in-earth 4 boulders. Time to chill, heading to Amazon picnic soon…
Last day of work before two week vacation!
Just jailbroke my iPhone and finally got the wifi tethering app to work. All set for my trip to the great white north next week!
@rosiesgrosso Yes – you have issues sitting still…. ;-)
Finish the weekends yard work in the rain, now off to get Isaac so Rosie can get her hair cut. Wonderful rainy weekend in Seattle!