Last year I went to CT3 (Madeira) to do CQ WW CW. This year, as my wife is donating one of her kidneys to my oldest son, and the transplant operation is on 3 Dec, I am probably not going to be be making a serious entry.
I have spent the last two weekends working on getting the antennas at home up to spec. The list of problems is long:
Both beverages are broken, both Ewes are broken, the 80m vertical is lying on the ground with broken guys, the top band dipole is broken at three points with the balun also disconnected, the Prosistel rotator on the 20m antenna tower is broken, and the reflector on the WARC beam is lying on the ground.
I spent last weekend lowering the big Westower with the 20m yagi, and removed the Prosistel rotator. The rotator controller is indicating 112 degrees all the time and the antenna appears to have spun round at least 3 times clockwise - the coax to the 20m yagi and the WARC beam are both damaged and will have to be chopped and re-terminated. I unwound the antenna by spinning it anti-clockwise 3 times - the limit stop didn't prevent me. Having removed the rotator I opened it up - it was as clean as a whistle, and the pot was working as it should. The Prosistel uses a 10 turn pot - you could turn it 5 times in either direction without damageing the thing. The controller has an electronic stop to prevent that happeneing, but it doesn't always work. Even when the rotator was off the tower the controller was still indicating 112 degrees. This is OK (I later calculated), but the manual incorrectly says it should indicate 000 degrees. The manual is rubbish, but this is made up for by the rotators ability to turn a house. To cut a long story short I eventually found that the cause of the wrong indication was due to a break in the cable underground. The cable runs for about 150 feet in a pipe, and unfortunately, I had to haul it out to find the break. It was an old join that had corroded. Moral of the story is never use a cable with a join, in a pipe. It will corrode.
This weekend was spent mending the feeders to those antennas, realigning the rotator, replacing the rotator cable, replacing the 160m and 80m dipole uphauls and getting the tower back up. Added to that I also lowered the 40m yagi tower because the 402CD SWR has gone up over the last year. The point of resonance has gone down to 6940kHz - why...? I lowered the tower, shortened the driven elements by about 2" and found that the point of resonance was now 7120kHz. This always mystifies me! I ended up extending and shortening the damned thing until eventually I had to add 3 inches of WIRE to the end of the driven elements to make it resonate on 7040. Next November I will have to remove these because the thing will decide to resonate on 6940 again.
As light faded today I was out there fixing the 160m balun, but it got too dark to see so I'll have to haul that up next weekend.
Still, what else is there to do at the weekend!? Rag chew with your old mates on 80m I suppose.