Eric and Ralph install a new club antenna

It was a lovely day to be doing outdoors antenna work. The week-end had been a relaxing three event and today – Monday- saw a continuation of the dry weather. So since we had the new pre-owned antenna, all we had left to do was to put it up. I gave Ralph a call and despite having a sore back he braved the challenge and was over shortly after lunch. After some discussion with a map planning the correct angle for the antenna we were ready to take it up.

The first task upon getting up on the roof was to set up a safety rope to grab on to should ones balance get a bit off centre. Once the line was in place I loosened the bolts on the base station vertical and gently lowered it to the roof. Next I attached the two dual dipole units to the mast. It was a bit tricky getting them aligned and basically level. Once attached, I secured the coax with zap straps and made sure all was snug. Next it was double checking everything; I really don’t want to have to be back up there any time soon.

Our next task was to take down the current vertical antenna and attach its coax to the new folded dipole antenna. Taking down the pole went very quickly and soon we were back up to the roof attaching the coax to the length that was part of the new antenna. Once attached, we gave a quick test of reception and were pleased that all seemed to be in order. So off Ralph drove back to his home while working me through the repeater. He seemed to have decent coverage with his handheld with about two watts for the entire trip. So there is good hope that it will perform better than the old antenna.

Total time for the replacement was about 1.5 hours. No injuries or fatalities occurred. Our next repeater antenna project would hopefully see us install it atop a 200+ foot tower closer to down town White Rock!