I had been soooo looking forward to this weekend, the first in a few weeks with nice weather. It was slightly cool, but sunny, clear and just a great day to be outside.

The basic plan is to use a set of standoff mast mounts to hold a 10 foot joint of 1-1/4″ EMT conduit aloft, with my Diamond X300A on the top of it, on this end of the barn/workshop, near the peak in the roof.

The workshop is sided with a fiberboard siding, which would never hold up to a 20 foot assembly attached directly to it, even if the assembly does boast a fairly modest wind load. Besides, my philosophy with this antenna is similar to the trap vertical in that I really want to do this only once, so I will try to do it as well and permanently as I can.

Unfortunately, I am having great difficulty locating the studs in this wall. Atop the ladder, I drilled several exploratory holes and grew concerned about how much resealing was going to be required before I found anything solid, even adjacent to nails. A stud sensor didn’t help, either finding nothing to report or reporting continuously. This unit has proved to be reliable at finding studs and wires in the drywall in the house, so I suspect the construction of the fiberboard siding is outside of its design specs.

So, I looked up in the attic/loft above the workshop. From a distance, the wall appears to constructed incidentally by the stringers in the end roof truss. They *appear* to be on 24 inch centers, with the wide side of the 2x4s against the siding. The plan today is to get up there and assess and replan. I think I may be able to turn the problem on it’s side by drilling a couple of pilot/indicator holes from the inside out.

In the mean time, I carried on with the mounting board, a 2′ x 4′ piece of 3/4″ exterior grade plywood.

I measured, drilled and bolted the mounting brackets to it. I clamped the board to the tailgate of my truck and proceeded to test mount the EMT to the brackets and the antenna to the EMT.

I marked the mounting locations on the EMT, made some measurements, and recorded them so that I can say with (calculated) authority how high the finished antenna is once it is up there. The base of the antenna (where the coax connects) and the tip of the antenna are 11′ 5″ and 20′ 7″ respectively from the bottom edge of the plywood. Once in place, I can measure from the bottom of the plywood to the ground and figure the height.

I ran up against a pretty hard stopping point. I signed up to provide a couple of dishes and an exchange gift for the Christmas potluck dinner and meeting of the Tri-County Amateur Radio Club. I made a pen for the gift exchange then I peeled, chopped and boiled nearly 10 pounds of potatoes for mashing and made two pans of parkerhouse rolls, though they came from the frozen breads section at WalMart. They turned out nice.

Though I have occasionally checked in on the club’s weekly net (it happens on Thursdays at 8PM and I’m usually at an IPDA match), I had not been to any meetings or club functions. What a nice and friendly bunch! Last night’s event was dinner, a short meeting and a white elephant gift exchange.

The dinner was great. The club provided smoked ham and turkey. There were a myriad of side dishes. One of the most interesting was a cornbread salad. It is a layed dish, much like a seven layer dip, but with cornbread amongst the ingredients. It was very tasty. There were also gobs of desserts. I reined myself in somewhat 🙂

The meeting was very short, introducing guests and visitors (including myself), discussion about an upcoming fundraiser, assigning net control for upcoming weekly nets and the pre-dinner for the next meeting.

There were 25 participants in the gift exchange. There were the usual mix of surprise gifts with a few hobby specific items. I had number 23, so it was a while before I was up. I chose to open a new gift and it was a neat multimeter. It is a good size for my toolbag. A previous gift meter had been stolen a time or two, but I was late enough in the game to avoid that 🙂

The pen I brought was made from a piece of Texas ebony that was cut on the heartwood sapwood line, so it came out as a two tone pen.

In the interest of time, I used a Danish oil finish, so it will be durable but is a silky smooth finish rather than the high gloss cyanoacrylate finish that I usually do with wood. It went to someone who likes and collects pens, so I could not be more pleased.

They then had a raffle of sorts for the table decorations, which were themselves gift boxes, and a grand prize, a new Baofeng HT. Interestingly enough, I ended up with a ticket number ending 023 again. While it seemed lucky, it was apparently not lucky enough 🙂

Everyone joined in returning the hall to it’s pre-party state and we went our separate ways.

Well, I have burned enough daylight making this update. It’s time to get out there and get that antenna up!