Rampage may be a bit strong, but yesterdays' thunderstorms did blast hard through Cox's Creek on their way east.
The winds ahead of the storm were 60 mph, and I was in the middle of listening to NOAA weather radio's broadcast of a thunderstorm warning for neighboring Bullitt County when all hell started breaking loose here.
Due to an A/C outage, we had a number of windows open in the house, and the inflow through some of the windows was significant. The winds slammed the bathroom door shut so tight it was nearly jammed. The winds in through the bathroom window were so strong the shower curtain was actually flapping like a flag out the bathroom door when it slammed shut. The wind blew everything off the back of the commode and everything off the shelves in the shower.
Upstairs the gust cleared my daughters night stand and desk before her door slammed shut. Both of those rooms had windows facing north, and that was the predominant direction from which the winds were coming.
The storm took down half of my dipole, nearly 3 years to the day I put it up after its predecessor was felled by another severe storm.
The dipole I put up three years was actually a dipole I made nearly 20 years ago for our club's first Field Day efforts. I had the two dipoles stored for years, then put them back in Field Day service 4 years ago.
I always told myself this Field Day antenna would be a temporary, stop-gap measure, but as the old adage goes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
This antenna is fed with 300 ohm twinlead, and I usually use 450 ohm for my HF antennas. Interestingly, the TV twinlead (a quality type, not the flat ribbon cheapo stuff), still looks fine. Its holding up better than the 450 ohm ladder line I typically have used.
One leg of the dipole broke off at the feedpoint, apparently because the tree was doing the hootchie-coochie in the wind and there wasn't enough slack in the ends to compensate.
I learned long ago to always use a spring in the support rope, and that's kept me from needing to replace support ropes so often. Since I have the antenna down, I'm going to replace the nylon rope (its suffering from exposure to the sun, and where it goes over a limb its gotten rather frayed) and also install at least one spring in the end support rope to give it some additional “give.” I'll have plenty of rope between the end of the antenna and the spring.
Otherwise, the old antenna looks fine. I'll measure the legs to keep them equal before I put it back up. I would prefer to do this when the leaves are off the trees, but I don't have that luxury.
I need to get this job done before dark, so I'm off to Tractor Supply. … 73