This week has been very busy with having to work overtime the last two weekends in a row and working two hours overtime each day.  Some point this week, my HF antenna fell from the tower and landed on my next door neighbor’s power line.  Both the antenna and her power line were insulated so it was not a big deal for it to lay there a couple days because I just have not had time to work on it.  As you can see below, it is the antenna on the top and to the left.  It is an Alpha Delta DX-LB Plus 6 through 80 meter dipole antenna that was quite expensive.

What happened was that I had the antenna suspended on a pole off the side of the tower at 50 feet by a pulley and a nylon rope.  Some time this week, the rope broke sending the antenna to the power line below.  Well I hoped the neighbor would not notice it until I would have time to fix it but she did.  The night before last she came to the door about 8:00 pm and told us how concerned she was.  Of course I had already showered for bed because I had to be up at 4:00 am.  Well the next morning I got up and I was on that tower about 40 feet up at 5:00 am trying to pull the antenna off the wire.  Because the antenna has large traps on it, the antenna did not want to cooperate.  I eventually got it down but not after getting every dog in the neighborhood wound up.  Man I have the most stupid dogs that live next door to me on three sides.  These dogs will bark non stop for hours on end.  If I did not sleep with a fan next to my head, I would never get any sleep.

For the life of me I cannot see what the attraction is to a loud barking dog.  They have all the appeal of a wasp in attack mode.  Oh well, I did manage to get the antenna down without destroying it though it is all tangled up.  I hope to be able to work on it within the next few weeks and get it back up.  I really am not up to climbing the tower any time soon because my feet have been hurting a lot lately.  So this means that I will not be on the radio in the near future.  Do you hear that lady next door?  When your television is not working right, it is not me.  Just kidding.  She is okay but she does think it is me sometimes when it is not.  That is part of the way of life when you are a ham rado operator.  People will see your antenna and just assume that it is you that is messing up their television.  I have been watching TV and not even have the radio turned on and people come to the front door and accuse me of coming in on their television.  It just comes with the territory as my dad can attest to.  He has had similar experiences at his house with false accusations

For the most part, things have been going fine around here except for all the overtime.  Some people love working overtime but not me.  I believe that time is the only resource that you cannot get more of.  You can work and get more money but you cannot get more time.  Fortunately my overtime is limited in scope and I work with some great people.  I am looking forward to not working next weekend.  Well I think that just about covers my week.  I thought I should post an update since I have not posted much lately.  I will try to keep this up to date more so you will know how things are going.