Canada Base

The weather for today is low, blue and windy, so we all elected to pass on flying.  This gave us the opportunity to erect the Canada Base antenna on the chimney of the rental house where 5 of the team members are living.  While the antenna may not be as tall as it was in Leszno, it is higher than any other obstacle in about a 1 km radius and should provide good coverage of the task area.

In fact, the antenna was erected a couple of days ago, but was not working properly so it was dismounted and then upon inspection we found a poor solder joint that I had made back in Canada.  Wrapping the antenna to fit it into the suitcase caused the solder joint to split.  With the solder joint repaired and antenna hoisted up the chimney we went on a drive with a handheld to check it out.  It all worked well, so tomorrow we can give it some air-to-ground checks and see what kind of range we can get.

This summer Nick Bonniere did some trouble shooting on the team radio because the last few times it was used, the transmissions were breaking up and difficult to understand.  Nick determined that the additional wire that had been added to the power connection was too small in gauge and was causing too large a voltage drop along the power supply line.  With this fixed and some other fixing of car antennas by Nick, we have what we think is a sturdy setup that will work really well.  Thanks Nick.

 

Dave