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Best base antenna for skip
- Thread starter Last man standing
- Start date
Why? It would have been a dream to climb. Big enough to climb INSIDE the structure giving one a better feeling of being secure. Everything is so big that a crane did all tbe lifting. Safety rails and tethers were installed along the boom.
My climber would love to climb it, as long as the install was done correctly!! He loves what he does and I love what I do, ground tech!! 15 years and the only climbing I have done is for rescue training. It isn't that bad, you have to trust your equipment! But I would rather be on the ground. I should have said that my climber would have bitched about having to audit that tower lol. A lot going on there. Anyway god bless.
I've seen some 'large' towers and antenna arrays before but nothing like that thing. I wish I could just afford the land it's on! I honestly can't imagine spending the cost of the thing, I don't wanna even know the cost of that thing. I took a tour through Collin's, TI's, and a Naval Air Station's antenna farms once a long time ago. They had a few antennas and towers that I'da killed for, but no idea what I could have done with them if they gave them to me. Climb that thing? You don't wanna know what I would tell someone who wanted me to do that. Not just NO, but hold your breath till I do, and what kind'a flowers would you like me to send to your survivors?
- 'Doc
- 'Doc
I 'm with you , done the rescue cert and only climb when I absolutely have to . That thing would scare the shit out of me, would climb it But!!!
I have worked with a lot of climbers over the years and many would go a little loopy if they didn't get their regular " fix" on the high wire.Each to their own drug of choice I guess.
From my point of view, being in all of that "structure" would have sent me straight out the door as soon as that first gust of wind hit it. The height, coupled with the wind factor would have sent me "chumming" the forest, below.
In my experience that is the best compromise of all, A 3 Element beam with a good 5/8 wave above it, I see very little interaction, and as dx signals can have polarity skewed in ionosphere sometimes the vertical hears what the beam don't even though source signal came from a horizontal beam.
As Conor also pointed out when skip dies and your talking to locals the vertical is King, unless you are talking to a single local who is also flatside, there ain't many mobiles running about with horizontal beams and most locals will be vertical on CB bands,
Switchable polarity beams are great when only one station is involved, but when many are involved its a waste of time no matter how good unless you want to sit swinginging it every few minutes.
From my point of view, being in all of that "structure" would have sent me straight out the door as soon as that first gust of wind hit it. The height, coupled with the wind factor would have sent me "chumming" the forest, below.
Yes but you said your climber not you. Most climbers look for something a bit more challenging than a little old 300 foot simple tower to climb. The riggers I used to use would climb in wind strong enough that you could hear their clothes flapping in the wind. The only thing that kept them off the tower was ice or if it was wet. Well....that and thunder in the area as that meant lightning and the potential to be fried like a corn dog while on the tower.
My thoughts too Doc. Chernobyl went bang April 26 1986 while the DUGA-3 radar aka The Steelyard operated until November/December 1989.The Chernobyl plant was finally shut down in December 2000. Chernobyl itself had nothing to do with the demise of the DUGA-5 radar aka the "Woodpecker" even though it is within the 30 Km exclusion zone as it continued to operate for a few years.
From Wikipedia: "Although the reasons for the eventual shutdown of the Duga-3 systems have not been made public, the changing strategic balance with the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s likely had a major part to play. Another factor was the success of the US-KS early-warning satellites, which entered preliminary service in the early 1980s, and by this time had grown into a complete network. The satellite system provides immediate, direct and highly secure warnings, whereas any radar-based system is subject to jamming, and the effectiveness of OTH systems is also subject to atmospheric conditions."
In Google Earth, enter
51.305294, 30.065931
and you'll see the transmitting antenna in all its splendor. Depending on measuring start and end points, the antenna is only about 5.5 miles SSW of Chernobyl's iconic chimney. There were two DUGA-3 systems; the other one was/is in Eastern Siberia. I'll have to find it.
And here it is...50.38555, 137.328297 ... not as much to see, but there are pictures and such.
51.305294, 30.065931
and you'll see the transmitting antenna in all its splendor. Depending on measuring start and end points, the antenna is only about 5.5 miles SSW of Chernobyl's iconic chimney. There were two DUGA-3 systems; the other one was/is in Eastern Siberia. I'll have to find it.
And here it is...50.38555, 137.328297 ... not as much to see, but there are pictures and such.
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...runna pile-up on 6m SSB