Sunday, May 25, 2008

Radio Repair and Antenna Lifting

Hello everyone. I hope you all have been having a wonderful Memorial Day weekend. We have been having a wonderful weekend ourselves. I took a half day off of work on Friday, and I don't have to go back to work until Tuesday. So we've done a few projects so far this weekend. Yesterday, we worked on the little Yaesu FT-90R in mom's car. The receive was really broken so we took it out the car and hooked it up in dad's shack. Upon doing that we found that the radio was fine. So then we started looking at the antenna. We found the problem was in the small coax extender from the feed point was disconnected from big coax. So we pulled out the soldering iron and made the patch. The radio is now in good working order and in time for our trip down to Panama City.
Our other project for the day was to raise dad's 2 meter vertical antenna another 7-9 feet and guy it. His mast for that antenna is a three section mast and the middle section has not been raised in some time. Anyway, we sat around and did the math for how long to make the ropes for guying the mast. Once we had the measurements made we cut the ropes and prepared to raise the mast. Once it was all said and done, we raised the antenna another 7 feet or so and he was able to hit Mount Mitchell with no problem.
Today we have just been sitting around cooking out steaks and burgers, having a good ol' time listening and talking on the radio, and celebrating the start of my 33rd year in life. At this moment we are on the 147.360 repeater having a wonderfully odd QSO with Rick (KG4BGF), Cathy (KI4YPO), Dennis (KI4ZVU), Karen aka Mom (KF4SSI), Robin aka Wife (AJ4IJ) and myself aka Computer Monkey aka Tim aka Me (KJ4DLD).
Anyways, I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe Memorial Day.

73 to all.

Tim

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