[ADXA] bright ideas needed

[Dennis Schaefer]

My rotator quit indicating.  It rotates, but the pot in the motor unit has
opened up.  I can run outside and see which way it is pointing, but that
isn't very elegant, especially since my back and neck are still a little
messed up.  I need a way to temporarily tell the direction until I get it
fixed.

I thought about a camera, but the way our house is arranged, the only
window I can put one in faces West and gets direct sun into the lens
several hours a day.  Its a cheap camera, and it might not hurt anything,
but it would make the camera unusable for that time.  I could probably get
an outdoor-rated camera and point it somewhere out of direct sun.  That's
the only real solution I can think of.

The antenna and rotator are on a Hazer that only comes down to the garage
roof.  I can't climb on the roof anymore, so I think the Hazer is going to
go away in favor of a more standard configuration.  Someone who knows way
more than I do is coming by later in the week and will advise me.

I will probably put the Force-12 C3 back up but I sure wish there was
something I could do to make it work better, or at least have a better SWR,
on 12 meters.  I guess a QRO antenna tuner would be the best option.  The
4.5 SWR on 12M doesn't make the amp very happy.  I have a Dentron tuner
that is stout enough, but it does not have a bypass switch.  It would
probably be easy to rig something with two switches, but that would have
the possibility for accidentally running power into an open feed would
always be there.  The C-3 has two direct coupled elements for 10 meters,
and one is for operating FM above 28.9 Mhz.  I wish I knew what would
happen if I extended that element to make it resonate on 12 meters.  I plan
to get help to get this all done in one shot, so I don't have the luxury of
time for antenna experimentation.

Ideas or comments are welcome!

73,
Dennis
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