444.425 Coverage issues: TX and RX seem not to have regular coverage

[mgenelins]

S7/S5 in St. Paul now. No longer can hit this reliably on a HT. Matt K0LWC reports drop outs in Plymouth. John KA0KMJ reports nulls or dead spots in home in Brooklyn Center.

• [x] @ke0whg has a polyPhaser and tape to replace as a first step.

[mgenelins]

Replaced the polyphaser lightning arrestor on Friday, October 4th at 2:00pm CT. SWR now is 1.3:1, power up to 72 watts. Several hours of usage was observed by John + AJ, then Matt observed two beeps on the air around 5pm.

[mgenelins]

• [x] Another site visit and cleaned caked on dust out with aircompressor on october 5th at 4:00pm.
• [ ] One fan is spinning slowly. Ian recommends a replacement from Ax Man 12VDC at 0.6 Amps.
• [x] Vacuumed moos 19-140 site, clean now.

[mgenelins]

• [ ] Antenna is leaning after wind storm of 2024 (all antennas on site are leaning east). Needs to re-bend or replace the pipe mast. Appears to be 10-20 ft thick-walled EMT conduit from hardware store for replacement. See 10 ft pipe (1.5 inch diameter?) in Matt's Garage for an example pipe.
• [ ] Top half of antenna is now 45 degrees off of perpendicular. Normal omni configuration of this DB444 dipole antenna has bottom half radiators facing one direction, and top half radiators offset 90 degrees. This achieves an omni pattern, currently top half antenna is only 45 degrees off bottom half. (This creates nulls in the radioation pattern, which are being observed by KA0KMJ in Brooklyn Center.)