A Day in the Life...

There are good reasons why few hams have big stations. It is easy to think of a few: expense, effort, amount of land, expertise, conflicting priorities (family, career) and maintenance. Let's focus on the last for a moment. As much as we try to build things to last, there is only so much that is practical. We make up for the lack of durability with maintenance. In a big station like mine there is a lot of maintenance to be done. I wouldn't be able to do it were I not retired.

Routine maintenance includes but is not limited to the following:

• Corrosion
• Loose fasteners
• Weatherproofing
• Wind damage
• Damage from flora and fauna
• Discovering and fixing what was previously overlooked
• Upgrading equipment and technology
  

Some problems are noticed but I don't react immediately. I am a serial procrastinator and my mental notes rarely make it to paper. Time is the enemy when forgotten problems deteriorate and eventually become a crisis at the worst possible time. For the cases in this article, it's during a cold northern winter with many upcoming contests on the calendar.

For a lighthearted start to the year I'll take you through a recent day: January 3. It started off ordinarily, by monitoring 6 meters for DX openings (it was open but there was no interesting DX) and the upper HF bands. I then went outdoors to inspect and hopefully repair one of the Beverage antennas. In this case it was the east-west reversible Beverage that failed to operate in the reverse (west) direction the previous evening. 

The weather, a relatively balmy -3°C. It was accompanied by winds of over 30 kph for a nasty wind chill. On the ground and in the bush, the weather was not a problem. I bundled up accordingly and took a fibreglass pole to use as a walking pole over the rough ground and as a tool to test wire tension and to straighten any tangles in the overhead open-wire Beverage line. I could come back with tools later in the day if that was necessary.

As I approached the head end I thought "uh oh." A 25' tall tree had fallen over. I had known it was dead but, as often happens, I made a mental note to deal with it and then lost the note. When I looked up to inspect damage to the antenna there was none! The fallen tree (now covered in snow) missed the antenna by inches. The trouble lay elsewhere. I walked along the 165 meter length of the antenna, periodically checking wire tension and for threatening deadwood. 

About ⅔ of the way to the east end I discovered the fault. The wind had caused an oscillation that twisted the wires between two supports. It can also happen when wire breaks but in this case the wires were fine. This type of fault is a regular occurrence so that I'm used to dealing with it. I inserted the pole between the wires and walked forward to reverse the twist. Within two steps I heard a "sproing" sound and the wires snapped back into place. That was easy.

I continued my walk along the Beverage to the east termination and all was well. On the way back I stopped where the northeast-southwest Beverage crosses the east-west Beverage and all was not well. Towards its termination one of the wires was slack. I followed it and found a break near its termination. An inspection of the break suggested a simple mechanical failure of the wire rather than being struck by a tree or animal (typically deer).

After one failed attempt that saw the splice pull apart, the repair was completed. It's a matter of loosening the tension, twisting together the aluminum wires and re-tensioning, taking care to avoid snags in the supports. Shifted wire spacers and supports are pushed back into position during the walk back.

As easy as these repairs are, I'm growing weary of the need. I'm contemplating replacing the fragile open wire reversible Beverages with coax Beverages similar to the north-south Beverage and the more recent short Heliax Beverage. I would use inexpensive RG6 taped to a steel messenger wire; RG6 with an embedded messenger wire is relatively expensive. Although there would be no more risk of twisting, repairs due to falling trees and deer antlers would be more expensive. The positive trade off is that the latter occurs less often.

During my walk back to the house I passed through the hay field containing my tall towers. There was a rhythmic metallic banging. It took a while for it to catch my attention because it wasn't loud. At first I thought it was from a neighbouring farm; mechanical sounds can carry long distances over terrain in winter. I paid it more attention as I continued walking and realized that there was a distinct high frequency component to the sound. That's evidence that the source was nearby; obstructions such as trees behave as low pass filters for sound.

I looked up at the nearest tower and saw nothing amiss. The sound repeated once every 10 or 15 seconds. I lifted my toque to hear it better and confirmed that it was coming from far up the 150' tower. I walked across the field to see the other side of the tower and looked up. With growing alarm I saw a problem far more serious than a twisted or broken Beverage wire.

The picture was taken a few hours after the repair was complete; I was too preoccupied and cold to take one before or during the repair work. Two of the Heliax runs up the tower (⅞" LDF5) from 70' to 140' up had broken all their cable ties and were swinging loose in the wind. That could not be ignored. Any delay would wreck the cable and damage the side mounted yagis (3 of them) and the 80 meter inverted vee. In short, it was an emergency.

How could it happen? I have had multiple poor experiences with cable ties over the years. Many so-called UV-resistant black (carbon infused) products discoloured and failed within months. Others broke despite being well within their load capacity ratings, or fractured from bending stress around the formed triangular tower legs and angular struts, or became brittle in winter's deep chill. 

When I climb towers I take note of broken ties and I may wrap the cables with tape if that's what I have in my tool pouch. I then take a mental note to deal with it later. As already mentioned, I tend to lose those mental notes. I climbed that tower only a few times this year so I was unaware of how much the deterioration has progressed. 

When a cable tie fails there is additional stress on the adjacent ties. Then they fail and an even greater stress is put on the ones adjacent to them. That's why a wholesale failure like this can appear so suddenly. 

I've avoided purchasing professional grade cable ties due to their expense. I've confirmed the brands and models with the tower pros of my acquaintance and I know where to buy them locally. I am now paying for that neglect. My only excuse is that there are so many maintenance tasks and new projects in a large station that many things get pushed aside or forgotten. But that's an unacceptable excuse so please don't ever use it!

Well, I had an emergency on my hands and I treated it like one. I went inside to warm up with a coffee and plan the work. 30 minutes later I was on the tower, wearing another layer of clothing, carrying a new bag of 100 14" cable ties and tools. It was a late winter afternoon with a cold air mass rolling in so the temperature was quickly falling. It was -5°C when I started the climb and the wind and wind chill increased the further up I went.

I worked from bottom to top. The bundle of loose Heliax cables had a lot of horizontal force on them due to the high wind; at their maximum the cable arc bowed outward more than a meter; it was really that bad. I had to fight the wind load to hold the cables against the tower face while encircling them with a cable tie and threading the tie through the socket with my bare hands. Worse, there is only one climbing face on these ancient LR20 towers so it took some gymnastics to position my body and fall restraint equipment to work on the adjacent tower face.

It was miserable work. Meter by meter I worked my way up the tower, working around the various antennas until I finally reached the top. It was fortunate that the hangers at the top had loosened but held firm against the stress of the weighty Heliax. There was no damage to the Heliax, rotation loops or phasing lines (10 meter stack). That was very lucky indeed.

On the way down I tightened the ties to hold them fast against the tower. It was now far easier to flatten them against the tower. The process was slow since by then my hands were half numb. It wasn't only due to the need to work the ties with bare hands. Even with well-insulated gloves the chill of the tightly held tower steel is penetrating. The only relief is to tie on and let go of the tower. As warmth returned to my hands I would resume working.

There was a lot of litter on the ground. Snow flurries gradually covered the broken ties that I let rain down. Scraping the ground with my boot the following day uncovered one of many. That sufficed for the picture. I can collect the rest after spring thaw. I prefer to carry down broken hardware but not when I'm fighting that frightful weather!

Back on the ground I dumped my gear and raced indoors. My fingers recovered after holding them under the hot water tap for a minute. That was a miserable job and I was happy that it was done. It should have not been necessary, but it happened and I dealt with it. After the current bout of very cold weather abates in a week or two I will climb the tower to tighten the cable ties, perhaps add a few more and confirm that the hangers at the top are in in good condition. In the spring I'll look into replacing all the cable ties with the expensive ones the pros use.

After all of that my day wasn't quite done. That evening I confirmed that the Beverages and the yagis were working fine. However, the 80 meter vertical yagi was not. There is an intermittent connection that I repaired twice last year. The next morning I visited the antenna with a screwdriver to chip away the ice from the base of the tower and tighten the retaining strap for the radials. That worked but I'll have to come up with a proper fix in the spring.

January 3 was an unusually hectic day but I've had others like it and (unfortunately) more are likely in the future. The bigger the station, the more things there are to go wrong. No matter how diligent you are, mistakes happen -- Murphy never rests. Errors by design are legion since time and money are limited -- what appear to be acceptable choices turn out otherwise -- while temporary repairs are forgotten until they fail. I hope when my climbing days come to an end (hopefully many years in the future) that the station will have have enough inertia to take me across the finish line. 

It's two days later and the temperature has plunged. Tower work would be dangerous in this weather. Luckily I can contemplate the enormity of the undertaking in the warm comfort of my house. Big stations are impressive to visit or operate from when they're owned and maintained by others. It is no surprise that only a small minority of hams build a station as big or bigger than mine. 

There are days that I pine for the simpler time when I operated QRP with wire antennas. It was fun and I did pretty well working DX and with my QRP contest entries. The majority of hams I know seem perfectly happy with headache-free small stations for which maintenance tasks are easily dealt with. That said, I would find it difficult to return to those days. 

Performance has a price that I'm willing to pay. One day that might change. I wouldn't be the first to make that decision.