I had an interesting find tonight when I came down to listen to 75M, no receive on the 80M Dipole! I wasn\\\'t sure what had caused an antenna that was working perfectly last night, to be dead tonight. Well, I found the problem!



My neighbors have pets, LOTS of pets. The biggest animals they have are horses. Now these folks don\\\'t really maintain their fencing. The horses are always getting out of the pasture and roaming the neighborhood. Well, those #@!& horses got out last night and ripped the feedline from the dipole. How do I know this if I didn\\\'t see it? Well, I was just out there the other day and everything was as it should be. Tonight as I was troubleshooting the feedline, I found the feedline on the ground, laying in a pile of horse %$#@. Now that in itself wouldn\\\'t incriminate the horse, but the broken end of the feedline was laying under it!

I hope the horse doesn\\\'t get entangled in the feedline after the tower goes up. I would hate to give them a bill for a tower climber, you know the most expensive one I can find, antenna repair and/or replacement and feedline replacement. I don\\\'t want to have a war with the neighbors, but they need to maintain their fence!!

Well, enough of a rant. I am tediously working to get the station into some kind of shape for CQ/RJ WPX RTTY this weekend. After the contest, I will have a complete write up in the Station Section.[/size]