My Dad is the permanent onsite inspector for the antennas and the station. On 2/Jan after lunch he gave me a call claiming the 80m vertical has an unhealthy shape and it’s close to collapse due to an unknown reason. Sent the picture below made his claim very concrete. Considering that my history in the “wind vs. vertical” topic is quite long I jumped into the car and 2 hours later the troubleshooting started.
In an unbelievable way the lowest section of the vertical tubing climbed off from the teflon insulator to the _upward_ direction and was standing on top of the insulator without any anchorage. Even a very small wind gust might have been enough to push it off and the n+1th time of destruction might be occurred again. Fortunately arrived in time and could push the tube back to the proper place.
Have been thinking for long how on Earth this could happen. Had no better idea than in the past years every wind made a mm by mm steps towards up and after a while it reached the top. I clearly remember when the last vertical build happened I was thinking if a cross screw is needed to fix it through the insulator but this idea was ruled out claiming “this might be physically impossible to move it up by itself”. This is when the reality proves that even the impossible might be possible after a while. Now an M6 through is anchoring the vertical tube to the teflon element.
