CQWW @ VP5DX October 2015
A brief description of the station is important for those that don’t know. VP5DX is on the island ofMiddle Caicos in the Turks and Caicos Islands. The location is remote in that there are no stores, and no
direct access to the outside world without traveling miles on the roads and a boat ride. This limits whatis available for repairs and maintenance to what is on hand or what is brought with you there.
The house is in a resort location and only the main tower and antenna can be left installed when thestation is not being used. For the last few years the location has only been used during the CQWW
phone contest in October. The main antenna on that tower is a 3 element SteppIr with the 30/40 meter
dipole kit. This antenna was installed in 2008 and was taken down once for tower maintenance and theelement poles were painted at that time. This was about 3 or 4 years ago. In early September of 2015
we received a picture from the neighbor saying that it looked like the antenna was broken and we mightneed to bring parts to repair it when we came in October.

I dropped a note to SteppIr and asked what I needed to make the repair. They needed to know which
fiberglass elements we had as they have changed suppliers from time to time and the capacitance could
be different. Lucky I found a picture of the element when we originally installed the antenna in 2008
blew it up and the label was visible. This SteppIr was a replacement for the previous 3 element that did
not have the 30/40 meter kit and was damaged from a hurricane that took the tower down in
September of 2008.

A new tube was purchased and shipped to Providenciales for us to pick up on our trip. Upon arrival andsettling in we proceeded to take the antenna down and make repairs. We had not spent any time in theradio shack at this point as there were no antennas to use anyway. When we leave the station after acontest there is a check list of things that are always, ALWAYS, done. Everything is unplugged from theac power, any cables from the rotor, SteppIr control lines, any coax runs are removed from theirrespective control boxes. This includes retracting the elements on the antenna and leaving the rotor in
the north position.

After lowering the antenna to the ground, here's what the tube looked like.

Also when removing the tubes, we found one of the tapes on the driven element was not retracted so I
proceeded to go inside the shack plug in the SteppIr controller and park the elements. When I got insideand put power to the controller it did not come on. A quick check of the power supply showed it wasdead. Also the control cable from the antenna had a burned mark on it. There was also a black markfrom where the cable was laying not plugged in to anything to the case of the Icom 756 Pro and anotherblack mark from that case to the case on the SteppIr control box. We knew at this moment that there ismore to this operation than first thought. We had the power supply from the old SteppIr control box
although it had not been seen for 7 years. After opening dozens of boxes in storage and finding that,
the Control unit still did not power up. A couple of weeks before NF4L gave me a motor control PCB for
this model control box and opening and inspecting found the regulator on our box was bad. The newpcb was installed and the box came up and appeared to be working. Of course it would not control theantenna as we needed to find a DB25 male connector to replace this one.

Before looking for a connector to replace this one with burned off pin at #1 I decided to check theresistance to the motors from this end of the cable. They were open on the couple I checked, and it wasthought that maybe the cable was cut or blown open somewhere. All goes downhill from this point. Nobreaks were found in the control cable right up to the antenna. But during this inspection we did findthe coax was missing about a foot of shield and its’ insulation.

I cut back the coax towards the shack about 2 feet and found the cable to be very clean and not
damaged so a new connector was installed, and another new piece made to go up to the antenna with aPL-258. When we tried to remove the PL-259 from the driven element of the antenna this happened.

The shell of the PL-259 came off with the threads of the female completely. Well this could be fixedanyway. We took the EHU off the antenna and proceeded to put it on the picnic bench to make repairs.
Opening the EHU found this damage.

The tapes are burned in half, both of them even though only one was not extended. Also notice theburned area on the end of the element that had not fully retracted. Ron hunted around and found theEHU from the old antenna and we made the decision to make this into a 20-6 meter antenna and wehad enough parts to do that. The driven element EHU from the original antenna was not damaged andit was saved. The other 2 EHU’s from that old antenna were destroyed when the tower had come downin 2008 and broken the housings. Of course when he went to remove the coax connector on the oldEHU, the connector twisted off just like the other one.

Well the SO-239 was in stock in our cabinet so Ron proceeded to replace it.

Ok we are making progress now. The new SO-239 installed, the control box is turning on, and we havetubes to install to make up at least a 20 – 6 meter antenna. I then tested the control box with this EHU
to make sure all the motor ICs worked and all appeared to be ok.
Now back to the control cable problem. I took the ohm meter out to the antenna to check the cables. I
found that 3 of the other 4 windings on the stepper motors were open. We opened a stepper motor
just to see what is inside.

The windings are burnt, along with the rotation unit. (Notice the end of the burnt tape on the bench)
Well we are done, with the 2 other elements non-operational, we can make a rotatable dipole and thatis about it. The SteppIR has had its last rites..
The Cushcraft A-4 was assembled and installed on the main tower. The SWR was dead flat as designed
and the Yaesu G-1000 rotor worked, progress was being made. The next day in the morning Ron said
the bands are really dead, he heard nothing on 20 meters. We had fired up the 2 windows 7 desktop
computers that were purchased and installed in 2014. Neither would boot up. The power supply on
one of them was bad, and the other the motherboard was bad. I managed to fix the power supply onthat one, but its motherboard was bad also. We are dead here.
We still had 2 old XP machines that these replaced and they would work. We need 3 machines tooperate, one for each operating position and another upstairs to get to the Wi-Fi connection about 1/8of a mile away. The shack is low to the ground and connection to the internet cannot get there fromhere. I normally talk to a few friends on 20 meters in the morning and had the radio sitting on thefrequency we talk. I was trying to get the radio to communicate with the XP machine using WriteLog.
All of a sudden the radio came to life and starting to receive. What was that ??? We used the radio
yesterday and it seemed ok, this morning no receive and all of a sudden it started to work. I deduced

that the IF-232 unit from the Icom to the computer not working. I opened the Icom interface box only
to find a hole in the IC. I had another in stock and replaced it, (note: this was not in a socket) but theradio and the XP box still would not talk. During this we had turned off the Icom 756 Pro. It neverreceived again, and is back up here in Florida for repair. Then the XP machine pressed into service at theMult rig locked up and shut down. Inspection revealed that the Micro cooling fan was not running.
Steve hunted around all the old stuff, (never throw anything away) and found a fan to fix that machine.
During all of this one of the monitors was flickering so bad that Steve could not read it on the computer
being used upstairs to get the internet. I took it apart and replaced a couple of capacitors and it got a lot
better. I then went over and turned on the TS-950 on the other bench. It came on but no frequency
display. Moving it away from the wall to open it up here is what we found.

The white cable is a connector to the logic unit for the 10 position antenna switch; this logic unit was notconnected to anything except another cable just like it over to the other operating position. The graycable with the silver connector goes down to the filter box with 6 – ¼ wave stubs in it. The black cablegoing out to the left goes to the interface unit on the Kenwood to a USB input on the computer. Here is
the USB to RS-232 interface from the Kenwood.

Not very surprising that the Kenwood’s micro is dead and the mother board on the computer it wasplugged into was blown up also. So 2 radio’s out of commission. We pulled out our other TS-950 thatwas still in its shipping box from 2014. We never took it out the box last year as we used the Icom
instead of it. We also pressed the old TS-930 into service. No computer control on it so we would haveto remember at least to change bands manually in the computer. We had an original Kenwood IF232
that was stored away and connected it to the XP machine. Never got it working reliable, the computer
would either talk to the radio or the radio to the computer, and sometimes it worked both ways, neverdid figure that out. While sorting that stuff out the old Cushcraft A3 was installed. Back in 2013 thisantenna did not work, Mike and I spent a whole day taking apart all the traps and cleaning andrefurbishing them. It worked fine until during the contest the SWR went sky high and failed again. Ofcourse it did not work now either. Mike and I started pulling apart the traps again, inspecting andcleaning as necessary. After pulling 3 of the 4 traps on the driven element apart and finding nothingthat even was dirty or making a bad contact we almost stopped. When pulling apart the final 15 meter
trap we found this.

The insulators were burned up and it was black from the arcs. We blew the antenna up during thecontest. Might be too much power, or might have been moisture inside of it. We don’t know but it
might explain why one of the AL-1200’s band switches was burned up and had to be replaced in 2014.
We repaired the trap, installed new insulators and the antenna works again.
On Thursday before the contest Ron was working someone and I noticed the SWR was high on the A4 up
on the main tower. A further check we found another place in the original coax that had been blown
apart. Steve put some connectors on another run and replaced that. Then on Friday morning while on
the air I pushed the monitor button on the TS-950 to see what the audio sounded like and the radio
went dead. Opening it, I found the 7.5 amp blade fuse blown. It took 3 of us 2 hours to find the fusesthat I was sure were there somewhere. Replaced the fuse, pushed the monitor button and it
immediately blew again. Three hours later traced the problem to a connector miss installed on one ofthe boards. When I installed the roofing filter back in the summer of 2014 I must of mixed up 2connectors. Well at least I figured it out.
Well here is what we finally ended up with.
Blown up: 2 desktop computers. Icom 756 pro. Icom interface. Kenwood TS-950. Kenwood to USB
adapter. A router that was still connected to the computers. SteppIR antenna. SteppIR power supply.

One monitor quit about 2 hours into the contest. A few PL-259 connectors, and about 200 feet of coax.
What we ended up working with.
TS-950 with intermittent interface and an XP machine. TS-930 no interface and Ron’s XP laptop.
Both AL-1200s worked without a problem. The antennas, A-4 on the big tower, A-3 on the short tower,
80 meter delta loop, 160 meter inverted L, 40 meter vertical and low 10 meter 4 element. All theantennas had very, very low SWR and performed ok. Normally we have at least 2 antennas on everyband. We just did not have enough time and energy to put up more. We did have 2 beverage antennasup, each about 600 feet long, one North west the other East.

I felt some of my runs were not as fast as possible and Steve said low band operation was a real chore.
Both of us blamed it on using the TS-930 not having the TS-950 with roofing filters and 1.8 bandwidth
filters and DSP. After the contest I verified that the Digital unit was the flaw in the other TS-950 andbrought that board home for repair. We also brought the Icom back for repair. Next year we will need
new computers and 2 more monitors if not 3. Not sure if we are going to replace the mother boards orspend more money on a couple of laptops. Also we will need to return the Icom after it is fixed andrepair the TS-950 that is still down there.
Our claimed score was 11,473,587 for 2015 compared to 12,960,792 in 2014. Down a little, but we feel
it was a pretty good effort considering.

Lesson learned………. UNPLUG everything from everything, leave no cables attached to anything.
And how much fun was that ? 73 Jim NU4Y