|
|
MonstIR #1 Arrives 2.11.05
Pictures of the New Arrival may be seen at: http://wwwKy6la.com/monstir1/
Well you have to believe that I am still a
kid in the candy store... I have been following the UPS track on the 7 boxes
(317lbs) for 3 days now... and, of course, it is raining [it never rains
in San Diego].. so my original plan of just leaving it outside just got
flooded out... Fortunately my wife's gym has some space ..especially since she
is due for ankle surgery from too much exercise....
I was following UPS on the computer
when the dog barked so I knew that UPS was here... and of course with 317
lbs to deliver...our regular 6' 4" 250 lb UPS guy was off today... and we
had the very pretty 110lb UPS Lady...dragging the boxes in... 7 neat
manageable boxes... not too heavy or too long...by the way ..the 317lbs
includes the packing and 150' of control cable..the antenna is only 225lbs
First I unpacked the biggest box...it had
the Element Housing Units (EHU) units in it... the units were well marked on
the bubble wrap but for peace of mind, I relabeled each EHU so that we would
not mix them up.
As you can expect there are a lot of other
kids who live vicariously in my candy store.. so within about 30 minutes of
arrival, along came Harvey K6QK and Bruce WB7BHT to "Help" with the
antenna...
Now you have to understand that we are not
installing it today... mainly because Mike has not finished the instruction
manual (he promised to email the final draft .PDF this weekend) and Mike did
not ship the controller or the Icom Cable...why... well this is Unit #1...
yes... I am on the Bleeding Edge again... and Mike was making final changes to
the software and did not want to ship the controller until everything was
100%.. but without the instruction manual or control unit or a packing list to
confirm everything is here.. its hard to build it... so probably next
weekend....
So the helpers were really just kids
coming to play with my new toys....We quickly unpacked everything... it took
about 10 minutes...There were peanuts in only one box.less than one back
full.. everything else seemed sturdy enough packed to survive without them.
First impressions..
Boy...is this antenna well built..I have
owned Hygains and Comets which are toys by comparison...this is like that old
fashioned US Engineering you used to find before all manufacturing went
offshore....really heavy duty parts and connectors everywhere... Solid heavy
duty boom and elements.. I can now understand why Mike Mertel was able to
stand on the boom...Really heavy Phillystran cables for boom and element
trusses.
Quality, Quality everywhere... Harvey K6QK
is a mechanical engineer and really understands the mechanics of things...
Harvey was impressed with the construction .. and he rarely is impressed with
anyone else's construction... he had originally thought we might upgrade some
of the hardware to stainless to protect it from the ocean... but after seeing
the quality heavy duty parts, he felt that the quality was beyond even his
high standards.. so much so that he is now thinking of getting a 4 Element 20
M SteppIR... I suspect that I could sell a lot of these units just
by having people see the quality of materials while it lies on the ground...
This stuff is significantly higher quality parts than the usual "Ham
Grade" junk we see on the market...
First surprise.. the connections ports
where you connect the Element Support Units (ESU) on the shorter 36' arm EHU
were larger than the 3 long arm EHUs... But there were also 3 large Metal
Element Support trusses for the 70' arms... and support truss phyllstran
wires...
This thing is big and strong ....it
is not going to sway or droop a lot in the wind..
Still have not exactly figured out where we will build it or how we are going to get it onto the tower as my tower is very close to the house and there may not be enough room to maneuver. I am waiting for the manual so Harvey can figure it out... I have been looking into either a cherry picker or a scissor scaffold.. which would mean that Bruce would be driving the machines again...But Harvey may come up with a way to do it without machines... I may also change out the terminal strip connection for weather proof connectors... Bleeding Edge Again.. I can never leave well enough alone... Next trip.. Home Depot for Penetrox for the Aluminum joints and likely some paint to protect the aluminum from the salt air...
As usual I have done a photo shoot of the
arrival and unpacking... it can be found at:
MonstIR #1 Arrives 2.11.05
The other MonstIR Project photo shoots are
at
http://www.kleega.com/towerbase for the tower base construction http://www.kleega.com/erection for the tower raising http://www.kleega.com/MonstIR for the actual MonstIR assembly (under construction literally) I intend to keep this as up to date as possible as we go through the installation and testing... |