The latest winter storm to pass over Ireland, called Storm Desmond, brought extremely strong winds and heavy rain to the country. Unfortunately, my hexbeam did not make it through this one. It has survived many storms, but Desmond was too strong.
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| Three band wires snapped during the storm. |
As you can see in the above photo, I've lost three out of five bands due to the storm. Three separate band wires snapped during the high winds. The hexbeam has a great ability to flex in strong winds, and even with the wires placed in such a way as to allow for this flexing, sometimes the strain on the antenna is just too severe.
At the moment, I am able to use 20m and 17m, but there is a higher SWR on 15m, 12m and 10m.
I'm not sure what I will do to repair the antenna. I feel that maybe stronger wire is part of the solution. I'm just glad that there are no ATNOs (All-Time New Ones) coming up this month because I don't know when I will get a chance to repair it.
I feel you pain Anthony I lost my rotator and rotary dipole in the last storm, looks like its going to be a hard winter, at least it's now and not January when the VP8's and Palmara are on,
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