AF4QG antenna party

Club member Jim, AF4QG, had one end of his HF dipole antenna come down recently and asked for help getting it back up after our Saturday breakfast. This Saturday after a nice group breakfast a caravan made its way to Jim’s QTH. We had at least nine club members in the work party. Combined photos are below and the individual shots will be added to a folder on a groups.io photos folder.

The first steps involved repairs to the end of the dipole that came down, replacing a crimp and installing a replacement insulator.  Then our target was a tree in Jim’s front yard with the dipole running over the house to the back which was still up. Chuck, AI4WU, determined he needed to shoot a line over the house first to get the end of the dipole over since he was not sure he had enough line for both the tree and the house. That went fine. Next was the task of getting a line over that tree. That’s when the fun started.  It turned out to be a tricky task. After two or three shots from the street towards the house (and the end of the dipole), with the tree clinging to one projectile, it was decided it would be better to shoot from the house toward the street for a better angle, requiring a double pull, mason line back and then rope with the antenna end.  It took three or four more shots to finally get a good one with several line repairs along the way, but the two projectiles that were stuck in the tree were recovered when pulling on the second stuck shot actually managed to get both of the stuck projectiles down. That doesn’t happen often.  Everyone had fun and Jim reported good signals and shortly made some contacts in the Ohio QSO party. (click on photo for larger view).