The quad folded dipole antenna in use by the club was thought to be faulty and so a replacement antenna needed to be installed. The repeater is located at Eric’s home and so on Saturday Feb 11 a few members of the club met at the site to help Eric replace the antenna. Eric had prepared the new cross bracket for the day to reduce time needed for doing the roof work. It was decided to leave the old antenna in place for now in case we needed to revert back to it.

Hugh arrived first followed shortly after by Jim, helping also was Eric’s son Nick. The first task was to detach the current feed line from the side of the house. Then to pull it up and separate it from the pig tail attached to the old antenna, this meant that the feed line had to be longer than currently used. Fortunately, there was sufficient coiled up next to the repeater unit.  Next up Eric and Jim climbed on the roof and began disconnecting the feed line from the old antenna. It proved harder than expected and a second set of pliers was needed to be sent up.

Once separated the new cross arm was attached to the existing mast. Unfortunately, it was thinner than the clamps-on the cross arm expected and the threaded portion was too short to tighten the clamp. Jim descended to the ground and with Nick’s help they rummaged through some of the spare nuts and bolts collected by Eric over the years. Finding some washers and nuts Jim returned and with the additional spacers the clamp was made secure. Next the feed line was fed through the cross piece and attached to the new colinear antenna. It was then attached to the cross arm and the feed line taped to the mast.

The antenna was now in place, the feed line reattached to the side of the house and excess recoiled. Over all it went quite smoothly though despite trying to bring all the supplies needed on the first climb to the roof, one still needed to go get more items. Now that the antenna has been replaced, we can test it out to see how it performs. The first test will be to see if we can work with the transmit tone turned back on.