Mike Morris wrote: > The IR and UV are much more intense at 6,000 feet elevation... > You can gut a sunburn in an hour in the middle of December > while swapping antennas or mounting feedline on a tower... > been there, done that.
Wow... I've just lived with that for so long out here in the Rockies, I'd forgotten to mention it. Just about anything "plastic" will be dead, cracked, brittle, and generally screwed up in about 5 years outdoors at 11,000' MSL. It also relates to why we don't use fiberglass sticks up here as much... UV tears them up too, along with the usual problems of heavy wind, snow (sandblasting the antenna with 100 MPH wind and crystallized snow can do LOTS of damage to fiberglass -- while it usually just shines up the Aluminum!), etc. And hardline... even good stuff gets real brittle up there after 'bout 10 years... Sunblock with an SPF of 15 isn't even close to what you need to do an antenna party day out here. You'd still be fried. SPF 30 minimum, and you still might be a little pink if you have a light complexion. Also after any kind of physical exertion (antenna raising), you're panting... the air's pretty thin up there. I got a little sunburn the day I took the photo that's on the front of my Mac.com website... <http://web.mac.com/wy0x/iWeb/Site/About%20Me.html> But that beautiful blue sky is soooooo worth it. :-) Just for fun I was just counting the fiberglass sticks vs. the folded-dipole arrays there in the photo (and that shot is missing a whole cross-arm. The towers are 85' high...). They're actually surprisingly about 50/50 there in that shot. But I know who's antennas are which, and none of the hams are using fiberglass up there that I know of, and the rest are commercial/government systems of one kind or another... Reviewing that photo vs. some older ones, I see at least two stabilization bars that have disappeared for the fiberglass sticks too... or were taken down/causing problems, whatever... they're missing in that photo and they were there before. You can also see one of the fiberglass sticks on the far right tower is broken... apparently someone noticed it was coming apart in the middle and they bent it back and stuffed it into the pegs on that leg of the tower, in some vain attempt to keep it from snapping in half in later wind storms. I'm sure the wind will work it loose and snap it this winter. (If I knew who's it was, I'd let 'em know but there's a lot of stuff up there, as you can see...) Plus being stuffed into the tower can't be helping their pattern or their SWR any... Nate WY0X
