Rain, rain, rain, and wind, and more wind. This was definately the summer that wouldn't start. I got lots of little things done in the shack, the garage, the shed, but not in the air. There was so much time that I decided that the 40M4LLDD wouldn't be able to get up past the guy wires from the house side of the tower... so i cut a bunch of trees down and made a new launching pad on the pond side. The tram was rigged up over the guy wires, and the cable was just barely long enough to be able to attach to the antenna when it was staged just above the guy anchor point. Finally in the middle of June a nice weekend forecast, some quickly recruited ground crew, including pulling a neighbor out of the shower, and we got to work. Then it rained on my while I was up fastening down the antenna. Loads of fun all around.
In any case, the work had to start by removing the old antennas. The ground crew (W1TO and KJ1K) was pretty busy for this so we didn't get many pictures. But here I am doing the normal method of handling a 40-2cd. Take it off the mast with the driven element down, lower it till the reflector is in reach, remove the reflector and tie it to the boom... then lower straight down. The little twist on this one is that the tram wire was below the top of the tower, so the antenna had to be tipped and tucked under it to rig it for lowering.
We got the old 40-2cd and 10-4cd off the tower ok, and then raised the 10m4dx and the 2m porcupine. I hate all those little elements, they are always poking in the wrong places. In any case, this is what the top looked like with the tram wires and rope with the 10m and 2m in place on top after we were done Friday afternoon.
After getting the little stuff up I then started rigging the 40M4LLDD to get it lifted on Saturday. This is the rigging of the pulley to the tram line and boom. The lifting rope is the white one going to the right, the yellow one going down to the left is tied to a big pry bar driven into the ground as a stake. It is holding the antenna down and back on the tripods so the lifting rope doesn't take it off before we were ready. At this point the tram wire is very loose. Note the two wood 1x2's taped to the bottom/back side of the boom, these were meant to prevent damage in case the boom landed on the guy wires. These were needed, I had to stop the lift twice to take more tension on the tram wire to pull the antenna off the guy wires. I didn't want to start with it any tighter then necessary, but as it turned out there was plenty of margin in the rigging. Also note the supervisor in the background checking out the work.
The same rigging from the other side.
On to Part-3...