[Today’s run: rest day – Yesterday 7 miles (hot)]
Today I tackled getting the VHF antenna down off of the tower. It took me about an hour.
Things always go really slow for me on the tower. I use my old rock-climbing harness and gear to get up there, and I go pretty slow. Then I have to tie myself in at the top to do the work, usually at more than one place. By the time I was done I was sweating buckets and just worn out.
Well, we got the VHF beam antenna down. And I removed the stub of 50 ohm coax which went from the LMR-400 to the beam.
I was able to test the beam using the 75 ohm jumper that I previously made. I had 50 ohm to the SWR meter, then 75 ohm to the beam. I was able to get that down to nearly 1:1. But I don’t trust my setup. I think I’ll try again with 75 ohm on both sides of the SWR meter and see if that matters.
Also, my 75 ohm jumper is quite a bit shorter than the 50 ohm jumper that I brought down. So my plan is to make a longer 75 ohm jumper and test that with 75 ohm all the way through.
If that looks good I’ll roll out the bunch of hardline and test it with that in the picture. And if all of that looks good then it means go back up the tower and install all of this.
I’d like to have it done by the weekend for the CQ VHF contest. We shall see if the weather and the work schedule cooperate.