Dan, my buddy, K3IXD, and I have gotten it down pretty good now. We have learned to take extra hardware as the stuff vibrates off. The winter of `97 I was in Florida with my son and at the last site on Sunday evening, I snagged some low hanging Spanish moss that destroyed a six meter element. So now we carry spare tubing and spare elements for as much as we can..and the dimensions!

Last June, Ed & I snagged a tree with the 903 beam and never felt it as the camper is noisy anyway. Luckily, it was only 10 miles from one site to the next. We backtracked, but not see the front half of the beam which had been ripped off! So we turned around, and on that trip Ed spotted the beam half. We picked it up and saw that it had been torn at one of the thru elements..mounted like the K1FO with insulators. And then Ed found the element that had gone thru that hole too..L U C K. Back at the last site we were to visit, I found a tree branch the proper diameter and forced it into the broken boom halves. Another branch worked as a splint that was taped on, and we made another 15 Q's with the mended beam!

Ed, W3EKT.
___________________________________________________________________