[ADXA] winter storm - all is well :-)

[Roger]

I was lucky
The connector on my 160 had worked out of the antenna switch.
Must have been the high power it was receiving from just north of me.
All is good now
Roger

On 1/25/2026 12:52 PM, Roger via ADXA wrote:
> Jussi
> I would suggest a good 4 wheel drive side by side for going to the shack.
> I use a John Deere Gator that has heat and air for hot or cold weather.
>
> My 160 antenna stopped working just as I was working W5ZN in the contest.
> I plan to send my drone up to look at the balun today if I can 
> tolerate the cold and move it to another port on the antenna switch.
> with luck this will get it back.
>
> I had a similar noise I think it was Friday night. It just started 
> like turning on a switch. I tried to trouble shoot
> but failed and concluded it was in the shack because it continued when 
> the antenna was disconnected.
> The next morning it was gone so am hoping it will not come back.
>
> Roger
>
>
>
> On 1/25/2026 11:47 AM, Jussi Eloranta wrote:
>> Hi Everyone,
>>
>> I hope that everyone is OK and no broken antennas. My antennas 
>> survived the storm but there were some unfortunate events yesterday 
>> (when the storm was at its worst):
>>
>> 1) The tower stopped rotating. OK, now that is scary. Then did some 
>> testing and it turns but the pulse counter from the tower is not 
>> sending any signal to the Green Heron box. It was rather unpleasant 
>> to start debugging this at the tower base with the cold, wind and 
>> small pieces of ice coming down. Finland can get cold but there is 
>> minimal wind and certainly no ice coming down. Anyway, the Hall 
>> sensor had gotten loose, fallen off of its bracket and landed in 
>> front of the rotating arm that turns with the tower rotor. Of course, 
>> one of the leads had broken off from the base of the sensor so that 
>> it could not be repaired. But I had another Hall sensor and started 
>> installing that. Eventually got everything working again. Did 
>> probably ten different trips to the tower base because it was not 
>> possible to work continuously there. Recalibrated the controller and 
>> all was well again. Well for a while...
>>
>> 2) Then just after working kp5 on 60m last night, the radio started 
>> going crazy. Noise level S9+20dB with loud pops and A/D converted 
>> overflow warning blinking. This was late yesterday evening and the 
>> conditions outside were really bad. Anyway, it looked like something 
>> was possibly arcing and I had to jump in the car and drive to the 
>> shack. I am glad I have 4x4 truck but even that was struggling. In 
>> the shack everything looked normal except the radio was about to go 
>> through the roof. The first thought was that it is coming perhaps 
>> from a nearby power line (but that was repaired very recently), so 
>> turned the antennas a bit to see if that affects anything. Except the 
>> antenna did not turn - again. Started going outside and the lights 
>> outside my shack did not come on. And of course the flashlight had 
>> disappeared. Tried to check the tower base in the dark but nothing 
>> strange going on there. The breakers seemed OK too in the panel. 
>> However, then noticed that one of the space heaters that is powered 
>> from the same outlet as the tower rotor did not seem to have power. 
>> Checked the breaker again and looks like that breaker is defective. 
>> It had tripped but not all the way. So, disconnected the heater from 
>> that circuit and turned it back on. At this point the tower started 
>> rotating again but the terrible noise was still there. No change in 
>> noise level when turning the antenna meaning that it is coming most 
>> likely from my shack! The suspicion is that one the breakers was 
>> arcing under the heavy load of heaters that I had to run to keep the 
>> shack warm. I was done at this point and powered everything off from 
>> the panel for the night for safety. To be continued in the morning.
>>
>> 3) Turned power back on this morning and the noise is gone. Tested 
>> breakers one by one, turned the heaters on one by one. No noise. One 
>> of the heaters refused to turn on however. It is one of these fancy 
>> digital controlled heaters. That is the only thing that is not 
>> powered on at the moment and all seem good. So, either that heater 
>> was arcing or it took the load overboard so that something else was 
>> arcing. But the exact source of this problem is still unknown. By the 
>> way getting to the shack was not trivial. The snow situation was so 
>> bad that I almost got stuck in the pasture with the truck (I don't 
>> have chains). Barely made it back.
>>
>> To conclude, none of this was really caused by the storm directly. 
>> Poor design, construction etc. will bite you immediately and 
>> especially when the conditions get bad (variation of Murphy's law). 
>> It is certainly no fun to debug and fix things when the weather is bad.
>>
>> But otherwise things are going well here in the sticks. I am going to 
>> spend to day by - sleeping! Hope that everyone is safe!
>>
>> Jussi (aa6kj)
>>
>>
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