Blackstone Antenna Repair Trip, May 2018
By: ksterne on: Fri., June 29, 2018 02:44 PM EDT (6227 Reads)
Following the April 2018 overnight trip to Blackstone when many of the transmitters were repaired, a trip was needed to make some repairs to the antenna array. On leaving the radar during the April trip, there were more transmitters in working condition that there were antennas. A trip was organized in order to make repairs to the antenna array including antenna feeder cables, antenna wires, baluns, resistor boxes, and reflector wires. Dr. Mike Ruohoniemi, Paul Kennedy, and Kevin Sterne made 2-day trip to the site in order to make these repairs and investigate any other issues along the antenna arrays.
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Repairs to the antenna feeder cables and known problems along the main array went quickly with replacements of some cables with newly cut and connectored ones. However, on the first one that was repaired, we found the balun had lots of water within the balun. This balun and another were eventually replaced, but all of the installed baluns were drilled with a two small holes in the bottom to allow water to drain and not collect in the enclosure. Only one other balun of the 20 had water in it during the trip though a separate balun showed evidence of previously being full of water.
With these repairs the antenna arrays are fully operational! During the evening of May 3rd, all 16 transmitters were left running as well! However, one transmitter was found to be bad the next day, so more repairs will be necessary.
Otherwise, some other minor repairs were completed including 3 CADWELDs that had broken and tieing down the ground coax and grounding wires to prevent cattle from pulling or rubbing too much on them.