2001 saw us going overseas, if only a ferry trip across the Auckland
harbor to Rangitoto.
The team was again John ZL1ALZ, Dave ZL1AMN, John ZL1BYZ, David ZL1DK
nee ZL1TTS.
Our accommodation was in a Department of Conservation house on the
neighboring island, Mototapu.
We had to cut down on the amount of gear this year as it all had to
be carried on and off the ferry. We had made up some large crates
which two people could carry for all the gear and food. The antenna's
were bundled up and we had to use smaller portable poles, but we still
managed the tribander and the 10m yagi plus a traped dipole for 80/40m.
It was looking like a good weekend, we were all set up and the weather
was good. |
Then trouble struck.
First a acrid smoke smell, much sniffing and looking but could not
find the source. So we continued on, but it was not long before the
SB200 was billowing smoke. After some searching and much anguish
about what had gone wrong we took the SB200 out of service and made another
start but not for long before the flag went up again, things were still
not right.
To explain we had found last year at Castle Point that bonding all
our equipment together with braid connected to an earth eliminated a lot
of interference between stations, so we had done this again.
Now we were getting high currents in our earth, high enough that it
was getting hot very hot. So we started to look further.
Although the wiring in the house had been |
completely replaced and seemed
in good order we found that the clamp connecting the house earth to
the earth stake was broken. But still to this day know why
our earth was providing a path for currents high enough to heat it up.
So still not happy about things, and after repairing the house earth we
decided to remove our earth system and float everything. Including
the antenna's, which were on aluminum poles. To solve this we sat
the poles on stubby beer bottles which made very good glass insulators.
Empty of course. After that we resumed operation and the problem didn't
return. The bands didn't seem in very good shape and although we
made qso's in a couple of contests our qso count was down for this year
We had a good weekend regardless of the power troubles the accommodation
was very good and the weather was great. |
