On May 7th a group gathered on Medicine Butte to get Reliance back on the air on .34/.94 and back on the SD Link to complete the linking across the state again. The crew consisted of W0RTD-Eldon and KD0S-Jim of Pierre; N0TAW Rob of Clear Lake and his brother Mike from Highmore; W0SD-Ed of Salem and AA0F of Forestburg; KC0MOH-Mike of Lesterville; KC0AXR Kevin of Tabor and Al-N0OII of Tyndall.
A special thanks to Eldon W0RTD of Pierre for use of his site to make this possible. Eldon also has provide his site at Murdo for our use so Eldon has been a major contributor to the SD Link. Thanks Eldon!
There is no road to the site so we just went through the pasture. It was not muddy. We were able to drive right to the tower. We installed two sections, getting us to 80 feet. We did not have a gin pole so Rob -N0TAW and Ed W0SD arm-stronged the first one, Rob did the second one. Bless the Yankton group as they showed up with a wonderful assortment of supples. They furnished all the tower sections, guy wire, UHF antenna's and numerous other items. We put up one more section getting us to 90 feet. Rob and Ed arm-stronged it in. This was about 11:30 am and the wind had come up more than earlier. We then installed the third set of guy wires. We only had a 3 hole equalizer plate so only three sets of guys were possible which put us to 90 foot rather than 100 feet.
We took a lunch break about 1:20 pm and the wind really came up. Rob and Kevin worked in bad winds all afternoon installing the VHF antenna at about 80 feet and the two 440 yagi's and all the coax. There was lots of work done by all getting the guys installed, coax runs ready, hardware, getting the building leveled up, fencing and a number of other details. The VHF two meter antenna has 1:1 SWR and the signals were very strong on the 440 link so things look good there.
Thanks to the Pierre group for furnishing the two meter antenna and mount and all the 1/2" heliax for the UHF and two meter antenna, guy wraps and other items
