This winter I had a visit from a bunch of rain deer which had walked around the 4-SQ and broken two guy lines for the 4-SQ. I replaced those lines on a vertical which I was VERY lucky that it did not fall. However last weekend me and SM3JLA saw another line that had broken, with indications of the same damage as the previous one. However stupid enough we did not walk around and check the other lines, so this weekend when I arrived at the QTH I saw that one vert had fallen of the 80m 4-SQ. When we walked out the damage looked the same and we walked around checking each guy line and there was another place too with one that was almost off. My only explanation for this is that they have been chewing on the lines causing the damage, and since there has been no wind and with a huge amount of moose dropping around the place, I figure that the vertical was finally killed by a moose running through the lines.
The owner of the rain deers has promised to put up some kind of rope around my place this summer, so that next year there should be no risk of rain deer damage on my land. He seemed to be very co-operative when we explained how expensive it would be for him if he had 500 pcs of rain deer running through my yard. Apparently in SM law there is no difference in me going over to a neighbor trashing their flowers compared to a rain deer doing it.
So me and SM2XLL who gave me a ride from Skellefteå went out to the field, fixed the broken guy lines on the other verticals and made sure there was no other damage. I did remember where the tracks of the rain deer where and it was only those lines that were damaged, so the evidence is pretty clear. He also helped me to carry the vertical to the barn where I did fix it on Sunday. The 28mm tubing was the only that was broken so I replaced that part with a bit of 31mm tubing and now it is ready to be put up again.
SM2XLL also helped me to assemble the 31 and 25mm tubing of the 20m beam and most of the weekend was spent working on that. I did however also solder 2 pcs of 60 leaded cable and attached that to the wall of the switch room. These two 60 leaded cables go from a room in the basement of the house, which will contain all driver modules for the openASC system out to the switch room. During Sunday evening I felt like doing more work so I went down to the basement and tore out a big shelf that had been in the amplifier room, clearing up A LOT of more space so now it feels like a totally different place. I did however not take any pictures of that, will post that next weekend. While I was at it I decided to add the openASC bus cable from the shack down to the amplifier room and also 4 pcs of RG-58 used for PTTing various amplifiers.
Here are some pictures, divided into two different galleries
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