Soldering in 70km/h wind

Winter is still making its presence felt his weekend.  Winds up to 90km/h are ongoing, but it is at least relatively warm, if again very wet.

I decided to give my delta loop a rest from the endless winds, and took it down a day ago.  My standby 20m antenna is an elevated vertical, which stays up permanently.  It's flown through winds in excess of 130km/h. 

I decided to have a rare check of the vertical at the end of yesterday afternoon, when winds were already up at 70km/h.  I found several sun-cracked cable ties that needed replacing, cracked insulation on one kevlar-cored DX-Ultralite wire radial that was fitted exactly six years ago, and the solid copper wire connection to the radiator at the SO239 badly cracked and ready to fail completely.

The repaired vertical, during a less windy moment...

 

Great!  Repairs in a gale force wind!  The radial was easily sorted with a generous application of self-amalgamating tape, which will see it through until calmer weather allows a replacement to be fitted.

I removed the whole feed point assembly and coax connector, cleaned everything up, applied some conductive grease to the SO239/PL259 contact points, and sealed everything up with self-amalgamating tape again.  

Undoubtedly the most useful tool in the shack!

 

A spade connector had to be soldered in the strong wind, which was effected using my endlessly-useful butane pencil torch.  These are not always easy to find, so if you do come across one, buy two or more!  With the flame held downwind, soldering is possible with this torch where any other system would never manage it.

There was practically no moisture ingress to the coax after several years, although I will cut the first few centimetres off and fit a new PL259 on a future sunny day, as I suspect some light tarnishing of the braid has taken place.  I've now arranged the RG-213 coax feed so that it points downwards, not upwards, essentially eliminating the chances of any moisture ingress in future.

So, about an hour later, I was ready to send on 20m again!