Saturday dawned calm and mostly sunny as predicted. But we were slow getting started and the weather was going down hill quickly. We finally got the ground crew assembled (W1TO, N1SR, and Chuck Wood, then W1EQO near the end). When we were getting ready to lift the sun came out. But it quickly clouded up and the wind picked up. There were showers in NY, but they were far enough away and shouldn't make it here till we were done. "Shouldn't"... famous last words as it started dripping on me as I went up the tower to secure it on top of the tower.
The sun is out, the ground crew is assembling.
Ground crew still waiting, not sunny any more.
Finally, LIFTOFF! The lift started by taking up tension on the tram wire, this lifted the antenna 25-30' straight up. Note the perfect tilt angle on the element, just right to slip over the other guy wires.
Hard to tell from this angle, but the perfect angle at lift off has turned into an upside down antenna. But we press on anyway.
The other guy wires and the 160m V help us out and stand the antenna up vertically, of course now the new 10m antenna is in the way. But here it is just about at the level of the star guy bracket.
Me, on the way up... just to put it all in perspective. Right about now i started to feel the first few rain drops.
Here I am, just about up to the antenna... taking a good look at it and figuring out how to get it in the right orientation. The wire on the right that is helping to straigten it up is the 160m inverted V... I had lowered it out of the way to make sure it wouldn't get in the way of the element had it come up the way it lifted off. Instead it helps out a bit tipping it the other way.
Here I am up at the top, starting to maneuver it around to get it flipped over the right way.
It took me 3 tries to get the 10m antenna to stay on side and out of the way after this. I thought I could just flip it up and it would stay there, but the wind had other ideas. I finally had to tighten it down to make sure it stayed put. Now it is almost vertical and picked up to above the ring, we had to release some of the tension on the tram to let it into the tower to settle down in the boom cradle.
Now its sitting in the cradle, but still on side. At this point I cut off the wood and the extra saftey rope.
Finally, in the cradle. The wood pieces are removed and both clamps are installed.
After this I just tied the boom brace ropes to the tower and untied the lifting rope and big tag line. The two positioning lines were left on for removal later. Then I came down a very wet tower.
On to Part-4...