The Shack at NN8L

UPDATE!! Installed a Hazer 3

On Saturday April 19th I installed a Hazer 3 from Glen Martin Engineering. Just in case you haven't heard of the Hazer, its basically an elevator for your rotator and antennas. I ordered the Hazer on April 11th and it arrived on the 15th. On the 16th I started assembling it and had it pretty much together in the evening. It was such a nice day on the 17th that I decided I should take the afternoon off and mate the mostly assembled Hazer to the tower. It didn't long at all and I had the Hazer firmly nestled to the bottom of the tower, and the winch attached at the lowest level I felt I wanted to be at when raising and lowering it. I wanted the winch low because the Hazer can't go any lower than the winch and I was trying to get away without needing a step ladder to work on the rotator, G5RV which is suspended by the Hazer, and the Cushcraft A3S with 40m extension. As it turned out, I'll need a step ladder to get to the A3S and Ringo Ranger above it. (Click photo for larger view)

On Saturday the 19th I assembled the crew to take down the antennas and rotator, and reassemble everything on the Hazer. Everything went quite smoothly since I spent a lot of time preparing for the event including staying up until 1:00 am on Friday to make sure eveything was ready for the big event. The crew showed up at about 10:00 am and by noon we had everything on the ground. I had a couple of repairs to do on the A3S and Ringo Ranger, so that took a bit of time and a couple of runs to the local hardware store. I have an old Rohn 25G tower, so the Hazer was getting hung up a bit in a couple of places. A slight adjustment on the Hazer fixed that problem. We checked the operation of the Hazer out several times going about 5 feet higher each time, just in case there was a spot on the tower causing problems. I'm not a climber and didn't want the Hazer stuck near the top of the tower. Once we were happy with the Hazer's operation we installed the Yaesu G-450A, Cushcraft A3S, and Ringo Ranger. Everything worked great. With very little effort the Hazer was carrying the payload up the 42' tower. It took a couple extra trips up and down to get the cables properly looping around the extension I built on top of the Hazer to hold the G5RV and any additional dipoles I decide to add, and the 2.4ghz wireless Internet radio mounted on top of the Hazer, but even an old man of 52 had no problem running it up and down a few times to get everything in place. I did add a padlock to lock the winch handle to the tower just to make it a bit less easy for someone to play with. I also added a messenger line to carry the weight of the cables. The messenger line isn't tied down to the bottom of the tower yet, but that will just require one more trip to the hardware store. (Click photo for larger view)

Well, I've only been the proud owner of the Hazer for three days so far at the time I'm writing this, but I love it. I don't climb any more so being able to lower the antennas to work on them whenever I feel like it, or put a new one up is such a relief. I feel like a kid at Christmas. When the weather man tells me its going to be windy, everything can come down to where I feel comfortable. The directions that come with the Hazer are a bit to be desired, but I only had to take a couple of pieces apart and reassemble them the right way.

Welcome to my humble shack. After almost 3 years of being off the air the tower has been erected and antennas have been installed. In the late afternoon on October 13, 2005 I made my first QSO from the new QTH. What a feeling to finally be back on the air. The tower is topped off with a Ringo Ranger II at about 55 ft. with the Cushcraft A3S tribander complete with the A743 kit for 40 meters resting below at 40 feet. The A3S will take over for the old, tired, Hy-Gain TH3-JRS. The Hy-Gain beam did a great job allowing me to work over 300 entities toward DXCC, but its been working for almost 25 years now, and I feel its time to retire it. Both antennas are fed with LRM400, and the A3S is turned with the Yaesu G450A. A dipole will be raised for 80m but I'm not sure what else will go up for the other bands. The Icom IC745 has been replaced with an Icom IC761. So far, most of my operating has been on PSK31, but I have managed a handful of SSB Q's.

If you've looked around my web site at all you've already noticed that my main interests lie in DX chasing. For various reasons DXing and radio in general have been in a holding pattern for the last few years. Shortly before moving and going off the air I purchased a RigBlaster from West Mountain Radio and played a bit with some of the digital modes. Once I get back on the air I'm hoping to dive back into some PSK31 and RTTY. SSTV has also always intrigued me so I'm sure you'll hear me there as well.

Even though having been off the air for the past few years I have been able to keep my hands in the hobby by maintaining the Amateur Radio Web Ring. The ring was developed to assist other Amateur Radio Operators to showcase their web sites by linking sites of the same interest together.

For the day job I'm Webmaster at a local ISP which is why this site is so much in need of repair. I enjoy having the NN8L site up, but after spending all week developing web sites its difficult to force myself to work on my own stuff. Anyway, I've started updating things around here, but who knows..... it may take years. After about 2 years of thinking about it, I finally added my HF log to the web site. I'm not sure anybody will look at it, but its kind of fun anyway. Click here to see if we've worked before.