[amsat-bb] Re: "Frustration" Solved!

[Michael Tondee]

Today I pulled a good one. I decided to go ahead and raise the mast up 
"temporarily" to see how much it improved the minimum horizon I could 
start to copy. I raised the mast and tightened the clamping bolt by 
hand. I had a guy wire a bit tight and as I started down the ladder to 
adjust it I thought, "You know, I should probably give that clamp bolt a 
turn with pliers so it doesn't let lose, Nahhh...it  will be alright." 
Sure enough, as I'm standing there adjusting the turnbuckle, the bolt 
lets lose and antenna, rotators and all telescope back down into the 
lower  mast section at a high rate of speed. Nothing was harmed but I 
ran out of daylight and wasn't able to free the upper mast section to 
raise it again. It's jammed at the moment.
 Should have listened to myself about tightening that bolt! When we get 
in a hurry we make stupid mistakes.
Oh well, there's always tomorrow.
73,
Michael W4HIJ
Greg Dober wrote:
> Michael,
>
> Looking forward to working you and glad the problem is solved. In pre-gray
> hair days, I use to make fun of the TV instructions when the troubleshooting
> section noted: Make sure TV is plugged into outlet.  Not anymore!! Just
> yesterday I spent a half hour wondering why my printer didn't print.  When
> you remove the wrong ethernet cable earlier in the day and assumed it was
> the correct one for another device...well, you know the rest of the story. 
>
> 73
> Greg
> N3MVF  
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: amsat-bb-bounces at amsat.org [mailto:amsat-bb-bounces at amsat.org] On
> Behalf Of Michael Tondee
> Sent: Monday, November 30, 2009 6:06 PM
> To: AMSAT-BB at amsat.org
> Subject: [amsat-bb] "Frustration" Solved!
>
> Well, just got through listening to a pass of AO-51. As several have 
> suggested, it was a pointing issue with the antenna.
> I can't believe my memory has gotten to the point where I couldn't 
> remember where North was the last time I had the antennas up.
>  Thing is, I actually took a compass reading the other day and 
> compensated for declination but I must have  misread something 
> somewhere. I was only about 20 degrees off! Declination here is only 4 
> degrees so it couldn't have been that. That's what I get for working on 
> stuff at dusk I guess. I'm slightly embarrassed!
>   BTW, I didn't mean to make anyone think that an 11 element yagi was 
> too narrow for LEO's. It's fine if you point the dang thing right!  
> Also, the reason why I went this route with the more complex antenna and 
> AZ/EL system is that I already had the stuff on hand from my last foray 
> into satellites. Only the preamp was new and I knew that everything had 
> worked before. I can certainly appreciate the suggestions on 
> simplification and I was about to do just that if I didn't have any 
> success today.
>  Now I just have to work out some of my cable issues and get something 
> going for transmit. My 2 meter "cheap yagi" has seen better days. Once I 
> get that, I'll raise the mast and get the antennas up to their normal 
> height.
>  I'm just using HT's right now but I hope to have a new TS-2000X 
> sometime after the first of the year. I've been quite interested in the 
> TS-2000 vs. IC910H thread. I know that Icom has discontinued the 910 
> because of the 9100 but I was under the impression that Kenwood would 
> release a new rig at Dayton this year and wonder if that will mean the 
> demise of the TS-2000.
>  Thanks everyone for the suggestions and also allowing me to "vent" a 
> bit last night.I was getting pretty frustrated.
> 73,
> Michael, W4HIJ
>  
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