Rain 1 / Antenna 0.5 / Isaac 3
It was quite a weekend, so much that I’m in need of a rest to recover from it. :-)
So this was Isaac’s birthday weekend and we totally lucked out and had amazing weather. My mom and dad got up on Friday, so he got to spend a bunch of time with the grandparents. Isaac really likes my dad, Isaac was following him around all weekend.
My mom heard about my aborted attempt to get the antenna work done two weekends ago and told me I should just do it on Saturday afternoon. So I called up Scott and he was looking for an excuse to not work on paperwork, so he came over around noon on Saturday. Getting the old antenna and mast down actually went pretty quickly. We ended up having to-do a little antenna repair on my 6m beam, the boom was slipping in the host clamps. We got the new mast and 6m antenna up in the air, but it was already after 4pm at this point.
We made one attempt to raise the new HF beam (Cushcraft A3S), but it was pretty much a failure. We some how missed the fact we were raising the beam on the outside of the ginpole, so to attach it to the mast, we’d have to rotate it completely around. Which sounds easy, except I’m up at 45 feet and trying to man handle this beam which is 15 feet long and 25 feet wide.
I eventually called uncle, we lowered the whole thing back down to the roof and cleaned up. My forarms were killing me from hanging off the tower and my bad elbow was starting to twitch. (Which means it was about 30 minutes from locking up) I eventually got everything cleaned up, took a shower and then I took everybody out to dinner.
More on Isaac’s birthday party later….