Steve's Radio Page the cat

This page is under my MARS page because I used this event as an opportunity to test my MARS deployment setup. I learned a lot about preparing and setting up. I will be making a lot of comments here later about the problems that were discovered and solutions that were tried as a result of this effort.


We started get to the site at 6:30 am. Here I had unloaded most of the truck.	The mast was set up first with the six guy ropes. We needed four people to set this up. The mast is fiberglass and it bows a lot and the people at the stakes needed to stabilize it as I lifted up each section. Note the Arrow 2m/440 j-pole at the top and a dipole a few feet below that.

This is the base for the mast. The small holes are for #4 rebar stakes.	Here the mast is up and straight. The dipole is up about 35 feet. It is a fifty foot mast but with the wind and the weight of all the antenna stuff I did not want to go higher. The antenna worked very well. You can see the ladder line going to my maroon canopy.

	Note the ladder line support.

Note the pink Dacron corner guys for the canopy. The wind was catching the half side panel. The Dacron corner guys are at 45 degrees to the corners and were insufficient for stabilizing the canopy which was twisting in the wind. I was afraid that the frame was going to get damaged.	Note how the ladder line (in this case 300 Ohm) was supported just before the canopy.

Here we are operating. Note that I replaced the 45 degree guy ropes with two guys that are in-line with the sides of the canopy. This made the frame stiff enough to survive the wind. Note that the stakes are too far away from the corner posts of the canopy. The canopy was still lifting because the angle of the rope was too shallow. I suggest the stakes be driven into the ground at more of an angle and about 5 or 6 feet from the corner posts.	The stakes that came with the canopy and the optional 5 pound weights did not help much. I know that a friend uses a 5 gallon bucket filled with water at the beach to stabilize his canopy legs. That's about 40 pounds of salt water. This approach is more problematic if you are not 20 feet from the ocean.