GB3WE Tower Guy Wire Isolation System

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

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