Strong winds take out antenna

Stong Winds

Strong winds on the 23rd to 25th November 2012 caused mayhem across England. Many people were seriously affected by the weather.

In Surrey, these winds were not so strong until the night of the 24th into the morning of the 25th when every movable item in the garden moved, except my TV satellite dish I don't use at the moment (mounted on a bit of wood on the conservatory roof). The garden swing travelled half way across the patio and the wheelbarrow tipped over. But that's not all...

Strong winds take out antenna

Antennas don't like the wind (either that or the wind doesn't like antennas). This is evident when I peered out the window to the garden and, to my horror, my choke balun (for a 20m dipole) was nowhere to be seen. Usually it hovers in mid air above a bush suspended between two trees, supported by the two insulated copper wires.

My choke balun drooping in a bare bush

What happened was one of the tension lines keeping the insulators high up snapped through wind moving the trees and putting the string under much more tension than it could handle. The ground side of the string was wrapped around a brick, so there was no 'give' there.

Hopefully all I need to do to get the antena back up is get the broken string down and 'restring' that side.

On a happier note - the other side will never break due to using grass trimmer refill line as the string. It is slightly stretchy and very strong. Maybe I should replace the broken side with this trimmer line too?

I'm not the only one affected by the winds recently; a member of a local radio society apparently had his elements toppling off, harpooning his lawn at will. Luckily there was no one out there.

That's all for now. More topics to follow.

From Alex.