gb3wb

On Sunday Morning 29th April 2012 our main tower suffered massive damage in the high winds.
At 5.22 am the lower part of the latice tower folded which caused the whole tower to fall into a nearby tree.
Amazingly not a single antenna or feeder was damaged and even the wind turbine and blades are in perfect working order.

In order to keep all of our repeaters on the air we have moved GB3WE’s folded dipole onto our small wind turbine mast. This mast holds the GB3WB 4-Stack already, so its coverage is unaffected.

To keep GB7WB on air we have had to temporarily fit a colinear to the very short remains of the damaged tower, so it is practically at ground level. Obviously coverage will be well reduced, but at least GB7WB is still on the air.

It was a very big and dangerous job to get the whole tower and turbine out of the tree. But to make the area as safe as possible as quickly as possible we have worked on the site more or less night and day for three days in some terrible weather conditions.

Here are a selection of photos of the damaged tower.

click here to view our repeaters live video cameras

 

 

click here to view the WB live meters in their own window

 

 

click here to view activity on all of our repeaters

The GB3WE VHF repeater suffers tremendously from ‘metal-on-metal’ interference as all repeaters do. This interference is noticeable on any weak signals accessing the repeater and sounds like a constant crackle and almost as if a microphone has been placed next to two pieces of metal while they are being rubbed together!
This is caused by the repeaters transmitter constantly transmitting its energy into all nearby metal objects and the receiver being able to detect the making and breaking of any conductors which are allowed to freely move across each other.
Every conductive object must be either securely fixed to any adjacent conductive object or insulated completely from the other objects, the important thing is that they must never rub together.
Our guy wires were our biggest problem, so we had to devise a way to insulate them from the tower and each other to remove the interference that we were suffering from.
It didn’t help that we have a three section wind-up tower with a very heavy wind turbine mounted on the top, which caused the tower and guy wires to move continuously in the wind!
Cutting the Gordian knot!   …..  The photos show how we overcame the problem.

Here is a short video to show you how bad the interference is when a weak signal is accessing GB3WE and metal objects are allowed to rub on the guy wires

Many thanks to the guys from the golf course for returning our tail along with one of our blades, which was found some distance into the golf course! Cheers guys!

Many thanks to the team who travelled all the way up from Plymouth to help us with our failed backup generator.
After much hard work and many trips walking up and down the muddy field it was found that as the main alternator shaft had been sheared off nothing more could be done on site.
The engine and alternator was removed from the trailer, man-handled and carried all the way down the hill in the dark so it could be taken back to Plymouth to be worked on.
The team also lowered the GB3WB mast so that the damaged wind turbine could be worked on.
Also many thanks to Neil G7EBY who travelled all the way up from Sailisbury to work on the failed equipment with us.

In the tremendous winds of the morning of 05/01/2011 at 1am the tail was broken off of the GB3WB wind turbine. This had the disastrous effect of stopping the turbine from auto-furling.

This left the blades facing the wind, which caused them to spin at thousands of RPM until they were all broken off. This is a disaster for our repeaters.

It is worth noting that our modified oil-filled heater 24v dumpload worked perfectly day after day and saved our expensive battery sets from over voltage charging and burning out.
Other repeaters running from wind turbine power not so far away lost their dumpload, which in turn destroyed their battery sets. They also lost their mast and antenna. It was a real nightmare for us all!

We have currently turned off the repeaters to conserve the power in the batteries.

A new tail and set of blades will have to be bought and fitted asap so that the repeaters can be activated again.

Click on the play button below to watch a video of what is left of our turbine.

GB7WB October Sunset

GB7WB Wind Turbine Tail Blue camouflage Pattern Detail

GB3WB Very Early Morning

GB3WB G1VSX Getting His Leg Over

GB3WB G1VSX Sunrise Tower Climb

GB3WB Wind Turbine Test LEDs which are used to test our new 12 way slip-ring mounted at the top of our tower.

GB3WB Wind Turbine Modifications. The GRP blades have now been balanced. New tail pivot spring brackets have also been fitted. A second 12 way slip-ring has been fitted inside the main 3 phase slip-ring so that other equipment may be fitted onto the turbine to monitor its preformance or send other data. At the moment LED’s have been fitted to each circuit to test them.

GB3WB DumpLoad Controller Lives!

GB3WB Wind Turbine Tail Pivot Spring Details

 

 

GB3WB with Boeing 747 a few hundred feet above the mast breaking through the clouds.

 

GB3WB 500w Oil Filled Dump Load

 

 

GB7WB Mast Configuration October 2011

GB3WB New Wind Turbine Blades Fitted

GB3WB Getting The GRP Blades Fitted

This is what the new wind turbine blades look like. These will be fitted at the weekend.

GB3WB wind turbine blade failure worked on in the dark in 50 mph winds

 

Detailed View of Damaged GB3WB Wind Turbine Blades

GB3WB Graph.

View WB graph in its own window

GB3WB Video Files Player

 

GB7WB at sunset

GB7WB Turbine view of Glastonbury. Now that our highest omni antenna and wind turbine have been swapped over, the turbine can just see over the tree which has blocked most of the wind from us for such a long time. Our two towers are still at the same height, simply the head-loads have been swapped over. The omni antenna is now on our lower mast and our wind turbine is on the taller mast.

GB7WB and GB3WB 2011 Antenna Configuration

 

GB7WB Repeater reconfiguration on an August evening

Original Wind Turbine after overhall, with new slip-rings, silent blades and new colour scheme.

GB7WB turbine blade silencing details, showing garden strimmer cord
see full details on how this is done here 

GB3WB Original Wind Turbine Sprayed. Now that the wind turbine blades have been silenced by the modifications found here we have opted for a blue camo finish in place of the original dark green option.

 

GB7WB antenna’s being rigged by Steve G4TBD & Graham G1VSX

 

GB3WB tower being modified and welded by G1VSX.

 

GB7WB Wind Turbine Slip-Rings

GB3WB Map of Web Site Visitors