Putting Spirit Back Into 6 Meters

One Dark and Stormy Night, a good swift wind decided to lay the smackdown to the ACURA Ham Radio Network’s 6 Meter input on top of the Holy Spirit High School in Absecon, NJ. Literally! The crazy part was that the input seemed to still work flawlessly and retain its significant foot print even while laying down on the job. Although it worked in this Picaso-esque configuration, we just couldn’t leave it that way.

Enter Acura Ham Radio Founder Tony Giardina (WE2D) and myself on a brisk Saturday Afternoon with a couple toolboxes, some coax, a new antenna and the determination to put the Spirit back into 6 Meters in the Area. Literally! After a couple of trial and error sessions of trying to reuse the previous mounts, that now resembled some post modern art sculpture, they seen better days and a new mounting solution must be implemented. We determined that in the interest of giving her a more solid chance of standing up to the sometimes harsh winds of the Jersey Shore we would remount her in a new location on the roof.

An hour or two and a couple of busted knuckles later we had her mounted, wired, guyed and fired up. Two brave souls had braved the cold and my newly acquired, vertigo induced fear of heights and gotten the job done. A few kerchunks and a quick QSO solidified her readiness for duty and we packed it up and left her to it.

Alas, if you feel as though I have written this post in the stylings of an action movie script writer, well then you are probably right. I don’t quite know why I chose to tell the story in such a way other than it lended a mildly humorous tone to the adventure. After all, isn’t that why we all got into this hobby in the first place?

Check out the Photo Gallery below to see just what we were UP to yesterday!

73’s