Busy Day So Pardon Me

I was well into getting the new antenna mounted and put into operation today when the job suddenly got bigger and stretched into tomorrow.  

By way of summary, my tower installation is a bit unusual.  As in I've only seen one sort of like it and that was one a friend of mine (N4RFC from the blog list) helped me design and put up back in the late '70s.  I've described this system a couple of times, mostly back in February of '16 when I was doing a major repair and upgrade to it, but it's a 20 foot aluminum tower that cranks over from its base so I can remove antennas in the event of hurricane or otherwise work on them.  

In the last week, I built the antenna I've talked about having ordered, and yesterday I cranked the tower over, removed the previous antenna along with all of its coax (some of it just about 40 years old).  It was time to mount the antenna on the tower leaning over in the yard, and I did that mid-afternoon yesterday.  Ordinarily, I do this with my antennas pointing north.  That's because when I crank the tower over, the feed points are close enough to ground to sit on a small seat and work on them.  Yesterday, I mounted the new antenna facing south, which is pointed up (well, 15 to 20 degrees off the vertical).  This allowed me to verify the antenna is performing as it should; at least in terms of its match (SWR).  

I haven't had the tower over since the aftermath of our lightning strike in August of '19, replacing a couple of damaged cables, so while today's main job was finishing the antenna installation, I thought I should really check the rest of the installation and found some rot and rust that needed to be tended to.  That ended up taking the rest of the daylight, so the antenna won't be operational until tomorrow.  I'll hedge my bets and say late in the day.

That said, I actually wore an N95 mask today.  And rubber gloves.  Not Covid; I was spraying paint that I'd rather not inhale with the wind swirling it around me.