Hi gang:

Sorry to hear about some of the wind damage fellow ADXA’ers experienced.

I’ve had high winds here on this hill before, especially living in tornado alley, including tornados that have passed directly over (losing one tower years ago) and one tornado on the ground in the upper field that made the news, but I don’t ever recall having such constant high and gusting wind for this long of a period, day and night. It was brutal. Highest gust that I saw at my place was 51 mph.

Here’s my run down.

I kept going outside to check on the 200 foot tower since its guy wires are a bit weathered and they really need replacing, but thankfully it made it okay. I’ve been worried about those guy wires for a couple of years. Then this morning I realized that my 15 meter beam up 140 feet on another tower is not working so something has broken on it. It looks fine so I suspect the wind has loosened something, perhaps at the feedpoint or at the remote antenna switch. At my age, I am absolutely not looking forward to climbing that high to troubleshoot it.

On another tower, I guess the ring gear broke in the rotor. It turns about 10 degrees either way and stops. Then the same thing on the fourth tower. The antenna seemed to be stuck and turning very slowly so I had Holly go outside and watch it as I tried to turn it and she yelled back “it’s making a horrible grinding noise.” Oh, goodie.

In the 43 years I’ve had antennas up at this QTH, I have never lost a rotor until now, and then to lose two at once tells me how bad the torque must have been with the wind gusts. But, I guess that I can’t complain. Those two rotators have been work horses. I’ve said before that the item you get the most bang for your buck is the rotor, and those two have been in service for decades. One was an old Ham-M that I had back in my Russellville days. Geez, that goes back to the late 60’s, early 70’s. I’ve done preventive maintenance on it a couple of times over the years but it’s never broken until now. The other one is over 40 years old, a Ham-IV.

The other problem, thanks to the wind, is now I have horrible line noise. The wind must have loosened some hardware up on the road because I woke up to S9 line noise. It’s horrible, just horrible. And I hate line noise.

I figured I’d also have to fix some wire antennas due to broken limbs falling on them, which is not uncommon for me after a windy storm. This time the wire antennas made it okay including the 8 beverages running through the woods. As many limbs that came down, I can’t believe the wires survived, but they hung in there. (hi)

73,

Rick – K5UR