[AMRadio] Winter

[Todd, KA1KAQ]

On Thu, Sep 30, 2010 at 6:57 PM, Rob Atkinson <ranchorobbo at gmail.com> wrote:
> Todd,  that's a downer.  I was planning on trying to join you all tonight.
>  I have to work in the morning so no 2 AM operating here for me, but I took
> today off because the wx was so wonderful and tried to do a little winter
> prep work on the "antenna farm."

I'm heading back out in a bit to start reassembly, but I won't have it
done until tomorrow because I can't find my crocus cloth and need to
go get another sheet. CRS is setting in.

> I decided to use the existing wire until
> it breaks and I _have_ to fix it (which will probably be in January, you
> know how that goes).   The old wire works okay--I should have left it alone.

When I got back on 75 in 2005 I used the same old aerial that was up
in '94 but came down. Wire was okay but the feedline sure did stink.
Was so lossy, I could tune up anywhere without issue. Finally built a
heavy duty replacement half-wave, coax-fed, utilizing large diameter
mil surplus wire from a buddy. Now it's bullet-proof. I'm taking the
B&W center insulator from my 40m dipole up to NEAR-Fest and we're
going to rebuild it there during the event. Got some nice egg
insulators, all ready to go. True, it would probably work best if I
waited until January.

> Do you use 872s in the KW1 or have you put in the s.s. replacements?

Neither. I went to 4B32 xenon replacements years back. They're a drop
in sub, look like the 872s, make a nice glow that you can't see with
the panel on, and have none of the extended warm up/arc over issues of
MV. Solid state tends to slam everything pretty hard, giving up the
slow(in comparison) warm up time of tubes. At least a little bit of
soft start.

We'll look for you over the weekend, Rob -

~ Todd/KAQ