Catchup On Some Things

This is going to be a sketchy week around here so let me clear a couple of things I've meant to report on and then get into The Sketchy.   

1. Monday, Jan 23, is looking like we could see the long awaited first static firing of the stacked Booster/Ship24 at SpaceX Boca Chica.  The likely road closure for the day has been accompanied by a warning about overpressure to Boca Chica Village and a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) filed by the FAA to avoid the area below 14,000 feet above the test area.  The NOTAM starts Jan. 23 at 0601 UTC (2:01 AM Local) and runs 24 hours.  Likewise a Marine Safety Information Bulletin (MSIB) has been issued (pdf warning) for the day, mostly affecting boats offshore Starbase. 
   
   It sounds real.  Things could always go wrong that cancel it or it could be a more prolonged Wet Dress Rehearsal that doesn't end in firing engines.  You never know. 
   
   
2. Tuesday, Jan 24, Rocket Lab is expecting to launch their first orbital launch from the Wallops Island, Virginia launch facility at 6:00 PM local (EST).  The mission, in keeping with their practice of coming up with clever/cutesy names for missions is Virginia is for Launch Lovers.

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The Sketchy

I mentioned back at the start of the month that I have surgery coming up for a hiatal hernia repair that will include a thing called a LINX device that will be implanted.  That's scheduled for this Thursday.  I anticipate being grounded and unable to do much for at least Thursday and Friday. It's possible that can extend longer, but I'm scheduled to only spend Thursday night in the hospital.  Of course, while the chances of Bad Things are as small as can reasonably be assessed, and depending on after-surgery pains, consider this very preliminary. 

The adventures have been building for a while, and tomorrow will have an increase with a pre-surgical evaluation and probably at least a blood draw.  Probably half the day with the doctor and others.

Which brings me to the next big adventure I'm working on.  Regular readers will know I posted a lot about problems I had after Tropical Storm Ian (TS here, hurricane on the SW coast).  The storm broke elements off one antenna that I had to repair, it damaged my tower and the house bracket that helped reinforce it.  Then, when I thought it was done, I found the other antenna on the tower also got broken.  I only got my station fully operational at the start of December.  

Knowing the surgery was coming and that I'd be restricted by that in my ability to work for the heart of the best time of year to work on towers and such hardware, I came up with a workaround: a short term and a long term fix.  The short term fix is up there now, but I need to improve that a bit and that should be done before the mandatory time off.  The long term fix is to change my whole method of cranking the tower over.  

The company I bought the tower from has a solution they offer called a mounting pole, or MP-2.  This is the drawing of it they post online.  

The MP-2 is rated to crank over fully loaded towers many times bigger than.  Mine is a light duty 20' tower; this is rated to crank over fully loaded, heavy duty, 75' towers.  I have surprisingly few pictures that show the pole I use but there are two big differences between this pole and mine.  First, their pole is 13 feet long, 7-1/2' feet above ground, of 4" schedule 40 galvanized steel pipe while mine is 10 feet long, 7 feet above ground of schedule 40 aluminum pipe.  Second, their pole is designed to be mounted without concrete and instead held by four plates extending the cross sectional area of the part in the ground, digging that 13" diameter hole and filling it with wet sand, while mine is mounted in poured concrete, 2 feet square by 3' deep. 

I think my pole will work. 

Unfortunately, converting my pole to take the place of theirs is going to be quite the exercise.  There are things in the drawings they give away that I didn't understand properly, and I only know that because I asked around for opinions of how people like the MP2, pictures of the way the tower attaches and as many details as guys cared to give.  Hams, being generally helpful, voluntarily sent me pictures of the way the MP-2 works.  Both my tower and my pipe will have to be modified.  This is the essence of what I'll have to duplicate. 

The job will entail first taking down my tower and taking off all the antennas for relatively long term storage (weeks at best).  After that, I'll need to add the plate on top of the pole, the aluminum channel (if the pipe is 4" OD, that looks to be well under half, so maybe 1-1/2" channel).  Clearly, my pole can't be removed from the concrete block to work on so someone will need to attach the plate and channel while up on a ladder.  The there needs to be another piece of channel added to the tower at the right height at both top and bottom, and all that hardware you can see.  Did I mention I can't weld?  

Once the tower and pole are modified the tower will need to be lifted into place and mounted to the mounting pole.  After cranking it up and down a few times for tests, I'll need to mount the antennas and crank it up for good.  Hopefully the story will have a happy ending then.