I have been doing a little maintenance on the 3-section Tennamast, replacing the original winch cable which was about 20 years old, and doing repairs to eliminate the goaning and rotation in the wind caused by slack in 2 small lugs on the bottom of the inner round pole allowing it to turn slightly in the middle square tube. I got a friend who is an expert welder to come and help with the job (rather than the job I was likely to make of it !), and built up the lugs with weld and then ground them down to a nice fit leaving just a small gap (approx 1mm) to allow freedom when raising and lowering and allowing very little rotation.
I do think the instructions need a slight amendment having been through the process and knowing the pitfalls I found during the process, it's nice to know what you're going to find before you tackle a job and have the right tools available to complete it. One small problem to overcome was how to insert a bolt through a hole in the corner of the middle section tube when it is about 10" (250mm) up the tube, but improvisation with a piece of stiff wire with a u-bend like a shepherd's crook firmly holding the bolt allowing it to be inserted in the hole and the wire pulled free before the bolt was tightened. The bolt supplied with the new cable had been carefully ground down @ 45 degrees on the inner of 2 sides so that it would fit in the 'vee' of the corner and not turn or need a spanner to hold it. If you had been just using cable 'off the roll' from another supplier this may have been a problem to solve yourself !. Wear on the original fittings had masked the fact that they had been modified to fit the purpose. Likewise, after tightening the bolt on the inner round tube the sides of the washer have to be hammered down and the sides ground off the nut in order to fit in the corner space between the round and square tubes.
I did omit to have the camera out there when it was all in pieces as we wanted to get the job done before the rain came on, which it did about an hour after I got it all put back together !
Now that it's been refurbished it's nice to have no groaning noises coming from it in the wind any more (which was very worrying for the XYL !), and now there's just a few more little bits to do, mount a waterproof box on the rotator cage with relay and pre-amp in it, run some new W103 cables and make a better clamp to re-attach the weather station to the cage, then sit back and wait for the DX to come rolling in ! :-)
Here's a couple of additions to the Tennamast instruction sheet !
I do think the instructions need a slight amendment having been through the process and knowing the pitfalls I found during the process, it's nice to know what you're going to find before you tackle a job and have the right tools available to complete it. One small problem to overcome was how to insert a bolt through a hole in the corner of the middle section tube when it is about 10" (250mm) up the tube, but improvisation with a piece of stiff wire with a u-bend like a shepherd's crook firmly holding the bolt allowing it to be inserted in the hole and the wire pulled free before the bolt was tightened. The bolt supplied with the new cable had been carefully ground down @ 45 degrees on the inner of 2 sides so that it would fit in the 'vee' of the corner and not turn or need a spanner to hold it. If you had been just using cable 'off the roll' from another supplier this may have been a problem to solve yourself !. Wear on the original fittings had masked the fact that they had been modified to fit the purpose. Likewise, after tightening the bolt on the inner round tube the sides of the washer have to be hammered down and the sides ground off the nut in order to fit in the corner space between the round and square tubes.
I did omit to have the camera out there when it was all in pieces as we wanted to get the job done before the rain came on, which it did about an hour after I got it all put back together !
Now that it's been refurbished it's nice to have no groaning noises coming from it in the wind any more (which was very worrying for the XYL !), and now there's just a few more little bits to do, mount a waterproof box on the rotator cage with relay and pre-amp in it, run some new W103 cables and make a better clamp to re-attach the weather station to the cage, then sit back and wait for the DX to come rolling in ! :-)
Here's a couple of additions to the Tennamast instruction sheet !
I have also replaced a couple of steel bolts in the backplate of the electric winch (Goodwinch) with stainless as although they are only a few months old they were already showing signs of rust, but curiously they were fitted with square stainless nuts !