OK, this is getting a bit old…

I received a call from a listener that we had been off the air in Dubois for the past four days.  That’s odd…I had not received any other calls about it…  She had tried to receive us on two different radios at her house, however, and was receiving nothing but static.  This had happened once before when one of the two transmit antennas on the tower failed.  Time to hit the road again and head up to the site with the help of the guys from Dubois Telephone Exchange.  DTE owns the site and agreed to take me up there in their snow vehicle.

Well, at least I had some pretty scenery to look at on the drive yesterday…
This is Elk Mountain just west of Laramie.  Quite the cap cloud up there…

I made it to Dubois after an overnight stay in Riverton.
An “Argo” all-terrain vehicle hauls us up to the site along with a spare antenna

Sure enough, the mast of this antenna has snapped.  Since this is a directional antenna array, this condition can indeed cause issues with the pattern where some people are able to receive the signal and others are not.

Rich and Kevin from Dubois Telephone Exchange prepare to climb up the tower and make repairs.

Kevin begins removing the failed antenna…

The failed antenna is brought to the ground…
Note the missing element at the right hand side of the picture…

The broken antenna mast…It appears to have snapped right at a screw hole normally used to secure the element to the mast.

Rich handles the tag line to haul the new antenna up while Kevin climbs the tower

The new antenna is up on the tower…Kevin carefully aims it to the direction necessary for the pattern.  The listener confirmed that service has been restored.

All done for the day!  A gorgeous view of the Tetons in the distance…
Pretty unusual for it to be as calm and clear on Windy Ridge as it was today.