Fortunately, when I started putting antennas on the garage roof I had the forethought to cut the overhead wires. The little lightbulb out there wasn’t doing much good, anyway. I’ll rewire it someday, but for now it’s off.

So I took down my old vertical antenna. It was 26′ long, and the bottom of it is about chest high on top of the garage roof, mounted on a tripod. Taking it down means I had to unbolt the base, hold the bottom of it and lift the bottom to about head-high, and then ease it to the ground. You can imagine how hard it is to maneuver a 26′ long aluminum pole from the bottom 3 feet. It came crashing to the ground.

The new antenna is 24′ long, and much thicker. I tried to put it up the same way (big mistake) and ended up with it in the neighbor’s tree, with the bottom u-bolt all bent to hell. There was no way to get it off the pole with it bent like that, so I had to cut it off with a Dremel. This means standing on the roof, with a high speed cutting wheel that’s likely to shatter, with no safety glasses, in the dark. I couldn’t leave the mess the way it was. Fortunately, it’s all down on the ground, and I didn’t break anything other than one u-bolt.

I did this all in a hurry because there’s a rare country on the radio. I think the antenna will be finished too late to talk to them.