Seafood, sand in everything you own, beach strolls, a time with family away from the usual distractions of life.

What better to do at the beach than visit the local lighthouse… especially a big coastal light station like Assateague Lighthouse on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.

Of course being a ham makes you notice things others miss with your “hammy eyes.”

Follow along in this picture tour of our visit to Assateague Lighthouse in 2007 and see the unusual thing we found within.

Welcome to the Lighthouse...

The Majesty...

Amazing Stairs...

There is just something cool about metal stairs forged from pig iron rather than crafted from sheet metal. Lots of people were climbing and descending and these things shook not.

Superb Views...

30 Mile Lights...

A Duplexer...

Stout Machinery...

WAIT

A Duplexer in a Lighthouse !?!?!

Yes that’s right. We walked right past a repeater system run by the Fish and Wildlife service. Here is a close up of the controller…

The repeater controller on its side.

…and here is a view of the duplexer…

The Repeater's Duplexer

Six cans… three each for receive and transmit. Each can has two connectors suggesting these are the band pass type. I didn’t see any external components like you find with Band Pass plus Notch types.

That looks like Heliax between the Tee connector and the antenna… Right On! Keep that IMD and PIM at bay. The whole system is just below the observation deck of the lighthouse. I sure hope those are N connectors and not PL-259s. Hmmm, I wonder where the antenna actually is? Let’s look at another ground view photo…

View looking up at repeater antenna.

Aha, I think I see it. Let’s zoom in…

Collinear Repeater Antenna

There it is… a four element Collinear array spread out a bit for coverage. I really have to wonder how the brick of the lighthouse, and its metal stairs within, mess with this repeater’s footprint. Of course it may be plenty good enough and we all know “Better is the enemy of Good Enough.”

I guess I was caught off guard seeing this equipment just laying on the floor for anyone to bump into. Notice the power cord is “right there” and not very secure. I’m not saying the Fish and Wildlife Service is an integral part of homeland security, but it probably makes sense to secure this equipment just a little better. These pictures were taken in 2007 so who knows what is there these days. I certainly can’t argue with the Fish and Wildlife folks about their choice for their antenna position. Assateague Lighthouse is the tallest structure along much of the shoreline.

Lighthouses offer something for the whole family and, in the case of Assateague in 2007, something for this ham too.

Money was really no object since the connector is often the weak link in the system and deserves quality. I just made an investment in 240 feet of LMR-400 cable and wasn’t about to shortchange the connector.

Friends suggested the classic twist-on then solder-the-braid type of PL-259. I recognized this type would fit my coax fine, but I ignored the advice since industry (especially Aerospace) shuns shield solder connectors for a variety of good reasons.

The attributes for my PL-259 connectors were…

• Low Ferromagnetic Content to reduce IMD – This is hard to find. “Pro” connectors are made of brass and plated with silver. Sometime in the 1970s nickel plated steel came on the scene. I certainly did not want Nickel Plating. I figured steel connectors were in my future, but silver plating was mandatory.
• Solder Center Conductor
• Crimp Shield Over Connector Barrel
• Adhesive Heat-Shrink Tubing to cover the crimp

Good connectors are brass with silver plating, solder center and crimp shield plus come with a pre-cut piece of appropriately sized heat-shrink.

Fleeman, Anderson & Bird Corporation offers a good compromise connector at a fantastic price.

It does NOT come with the heat-shrink, but they sell that too in four foot lengths.

A good crimp tool is necessary with a .429 hex crimp die.

Yes, these are not cheap, but I made the investment and put it in the tool bag. It has been used dozens of times spreading its cost. I have no regrets purchasing this tool.

So anyway this post is just to let amateurs know good quality crimp connections are available today with the supplies from Fleeman, Anderson & Bird.

It has been serving as the focus of twenty-eight 33′ radials and a 16.6′ vertical antenna for over a year with great results. A QSO, a 20 meter phone QSO, with a station in Australia was the highlight. Okay he had a stack of four 20 meter beams phased and pointing straight at me, but it still makes me like my dirt based 20 meter vertical.

The old antenna has a custom home-brew mount which required an insulated ground pipe to work correctly. This pipe was a piece of PVC about 1.5 inches in diameter.

After a year of service, here is what the antenna looks like…

16 Foot Vertical

Don’t laugh… it works weeds and all.

This antenna works on 20, 17 and 15 meters, but is rather pointless for 10, 40, etc. for obvious reasons. So recently I decided to change the vertical to a new 43 foot, tuner required, model to gain access to other bands with as little change as possible. As this antenna desires to be attached to a 2 inch OD pipe, I dutifully purchased one at the local home center and replaced the smaller PVC pipe of the former antenna.

Things were going splendidly until I tried to clamp the radial plate to the new two inch OD pipe…

DX Engineering Radial Plate with 2 inch OD pipe

Hmmm, the holes in the DX Engineering Radial plate would not accommodate clamps this large even though the instructions that came with the antenna clearly suggest it would.

Could it be the current Radial Plate was different than the one two years ago?

An email to DX Engineering promptly confirmed my suspicions. They changed the design of the plate to wider slots to accommodate larger clamps in addition to the originally supported narrow clamps.

They did this without an obvious change to the model name to emphasize the difference.

They suggested the hardened stainless steel would most certainly harm all, but the toughest drill bits. My choices are to take it to a machine shop to enlarge the holes or just purchase a new one. I have access to a machine shop, but have decided to just purchase another one and save the older unit for other projects.

DX Engineering perhaps could have done something different here. On the other hand, at least they are continuing the development of their product lines. A little lesson in Configuration Management would go a long way to helping them clearly name new revisions of products something different.

Oh well. I remain a big fan of DX Engineering if nothing else for the superior materials used. The old radial plate has been sitting in the dirt for over a year and has zero corrosion issues. Bravo.

This is the story of how I constructed the ground mount for it.

First a related story…

The day after Christmas my son and I carefully replaced the current copper pipe 16 foot vertical with the pieces from the kit which includes a nifty tilt-base, 4:1 balun and lots of hardware. The details of the actual 43 foot antenna installation will be detailed in another post. For now, I am here to tell a story of how to accommodate the needs of the XYL.

While my son and I were assembling the antenna some 200 feet away from the house it appears the mother-in-law and my wife were not liking what they saw. The wild imagination expressed by by mother-in-law included statements like “It will take five people to carry that thing” and “they should not bend it like that” and “I would not have that in my yard” and, well… sigh.

This got my wife all upset, but her personal concern was actually valid… the antenna will spoil the view. Of course a view with any antenna in it is art to me, but we have spectacular sunsets in our backyard unobstructed by any buildings and my new extension from 16 feet to 43 was going to push her patience. So this article describes how we prepared a new location for the antenna behind the trees, but still in a reasonable location. Lessons learned from the previous installation are applied.

As for my mother-in-law it is quite amazing what folks will say about things they know nothing about to try and let others think they do resulting in everyone knowing they don’t. Foot in mouth syndrome.

Anyway…

When I installed the original pipe in the ground I learned several lessons and continued to hear more good ideas as time went by. Thoughts include:

• Use a 2 inch OD metal pipe for the antenna stake
• Use gravel rather than concrete
• No Weeding

Let’s explore each point in detail.

Use a 2 inch OD metal pipe for the antenna stake
DX Engineering has clamps designed for this diameter – I found black plumbing pipe 1-7/8 inch OD (1.5 inch ID) which seems to be good enough.

Use gravel rather than concrete
This is an idea learned from one of the many ham email reflectors I monitor. I considered using concrete to secure the pipe in the ground, but ran across one fellow in a post who suggested using gravel instead. His thought was gravel will continue to settle and pack ever tighter as the pipe wiggles from the load. His concern about pouring a concrete post hole pier is the dirt could loosen around the cylinder and cause antenna tilt which would be difficult to fix; Indeed a proper concrete pier involves a wide and deep foot which creates more work than probably necessary.

No Weeding
A hard core requirement for this new antenna footing is no weed trimmer to maintain it – mower only please. My old antenna location did pretty well in this regard, but grass did grow “into” the radial plate from the perimeter requiring occasional hand trimming. This time I want to extend the “no growth” zone to well past the edge of the radial plate.

So my son and I proceeded to create the new antenna base for this new vertical antenna.

Resulting in…

Ground Antenna Mount with Antenna Base

The antenna mount is ready and shown with the bottom components of the DX Engineering 43 foot antenna system.

One good idea expressed by a local club member is to define the edge of the circle with landscaping edge material. This will help keep the rocks in and the grass out. This is a great idea and I did just that. Thanks Frank!!

Another good idea is to replace the surface gravel with landscape stone or pebbles… perhaps dark brown. This is a good idea and I will probably do it, but one has to ask how much effort does one put in to “decorating” an antenna mount when the antenna itself remains so obvious.

There is currently only one thing that might be an issue with this mount… the ground pipe easily turns in azimuth. This is not too big a deal with a vertical antenna, but could be a problem if there is some kind of directional antenna on this system. Concrete would certainly solve this. I am not too worried about this issue, but felt it wise to note it.

The final result is I have a new location for the antenna which is more XYL friendly, does not spoil the view of our sunsets and is ready to accept my new 43 foot antenna, ground radial installation and coaxial cable routing.

Stay tuned for upcoming posts.