As I write this, we are two days past the winter solstice. The days have now begun to gradually get longer. In this first part of winter, it's cold and wet here in the Ohio River Valley this time of year. The daytime temperatures are not far above freezing, and they have a particular power to chill, with all the moisture in the air. So I haven't really wanted to spend a lot of time away from home. Staying home more and looking out my back window often, I naturally turn inward with my own thoughts and ponderings. I imagine that my ancestors many millennia back have done the same at the time of the winter solstice. Much of my inner pondering is on relationships, and of course human relationships are at the forefront. Some turns in my life have recently led to thinking about my relationship with trees, and in particular, four trees close to home in my own back yard. I'll share with you in this blog post a chapter in our lives together - the trees and I.
Four months ago, my family and I had the privilege of going to my nephew's wedding in the greater Atlanta area. We stayed with my brother James and his family for a few nights. In between the celebration events leading up to and enjoying the actual wedding ceremony, James and I caught up on our interests and activities, like we often do, both over the phone, and in person. We are both tech-head nerds, and enjoy talking about technology. When he told me some details about pursuing amateur radio as a hobby with his youngest son over the past couple of years, I felt drawn back to a spark of childhood interest in pursuing being a ham radio operator. This interest had actually been a pre-cursor to my becoming an electronics engineer. Sometime about 1971, I had put up a rudimentary long wire antenna for the 1950's Hallicrafters shortwave receiver that my dad gave to me. I became familiar with international shortwave broadcast stations, and wondered about the strange non-vocal sounds that I heard spinning the dial, which I would not recognize for many years as being digital data transmissions, mostly radio teletype. I heard what were obviously human transmissions that sounded weirdly distorted and sometimes like a robot voice. This was because my general coverage shortwave receiver would not demodulate single side-band (SSB) transmissions, the preferred mode of HF (High Frequency) voice communication for about the past 84 years. My curiosities and desire to communicate with these amateur radio operators made me realize that I wanted to become a radio amateur. I was about 12 years of age. I was unable to find someone who could really hold my hand and help me take the first steps into this magical field of applied science! My pursuit of electronics design in general stuck. I graduated with an Electrical Engineering degree in 1983, but I dropped the pursuit of the radio amateur license. Fast forward to August, 2018, and suddenly I was in conversation with my 12 - year old self again 47 years later! I knew I had had to pursue getting my license. My brother had shared taking his Technician ham license exam and General class exam back - to - back, in the same night. I decided that I would do that, too. I found the excellent license study manuals written by the American Radio Relay League for both levels, and worked through them over the next two and a half months. On December 5th, I went to an ARRL - sponsored exam session an hour away from home, and passed both, as my brother James had almost exactly two years prior.
To satisfy my curiosity and get the lay of the land, I purchased an all - band HF long wire antenna, and a low-cost computer - based, software - defined radio (SDR) a month before successfully taking the Tech and General exams. I put up this antenna and started spinning the dial like crazy, just like I had as a 12 year - old boy. This time, I could listen to all those SSB transmissions that my Hallicrafters hadn't been set up for. I made plans to acquire an HF radio transceiver and eventually pursue ALL transmission modes - voice, Morse code, and digital streams over radio. The idea of bouncing signals off electrically charged layers of the atmosphere to communicate with hams all over the world using well-established, orderly protocols, and be an ambassador of good will from the US really resonates with me in many ways. I also like the prospect of having the skills and means to someday be of service in a disaster scenario. Most people don't know that radio amateurs are on the front lines when a disaster takes out the cell phone, land line, and power in a region. They have established procedures for sending out hams to set up temporary radio communication relay stations, each covering a radius of 300 miles or more. In this manner, they are a key part in our country's disaster response processes.
The timing of getting my license and limited funds made me re-think buying the do-all 100 watt transceiver rig, and opt for a four Watt output Continuous Wave (CW) Morse code - only transceiver. This most efficient of radio modes had always intrigued me, and I realized that limiting myself to this type of radio would make it more likely that I would gain some proficiency with the very old International Morse Code rather than get caught up in my already well - proven ability to engage in an English speech dialogue, so I changed the plan. I purchased a highly- respected radio kit for about fifty dollars, constructed it, and brought it up about a week after getting the license. I also got a telegraphy key for transmitting. Morse code school has begun for me in earnest.
In mid - November, we had to say goodbye to a pair of Bradford pear trees.. These two were the last of three Bradford Pears that had been living on the property when we first moved to Union, Kentucky in 2003. The first one had been wiped out by some forty - mile an hour straight line winds that blew through about three years ago. This first one was in our front yard, and I remember sadness at having to hire someone to cut down the splintered pieces of trunk and branches and grind the stump flush. I think all of us in the family felt sadness, but I remember my wife, Sharon, cried over the loss of that tree. It was a more difficult decision when early in the fall of this year, a thunderstorm sheared a huge branch off one of the last two surviving Bradford pears that grew close together in the western corner of our yard. This was the second time this pair of trees took a hit like this. I have learned belatedly that the cultivars of the Bradford pear tree that have proliferated in the US have developed serious structural weakness over the generations, and typically live less than 25 years.1 That would be the roughly the age of our last two, assuming they were planted when the house was built in 1994. The only way to extend the life of these trees, I'm told by the arborist that I hired, is to cut them back seriously at least every two years.
I mentioned that removing these was a more difficult decision. We had grown emotionally attached to these trees because they offered afternoon shade looking out over our back yard. Here is a spring 2016 sunset shot:
My son Caleb and I had cut up a section of the same tree about a year and a half ago in the previous storm incident mentioned above, and it seemed OK until this storm hit, so I was still thinking that it could be stabilized again. A neighbor had just had a brand new fence installed and had expressed a concern that parts of the tree were going to fall and break it. I knew it was at least going to have to be cut way back. When I called the arborist, I told him that I did not want to kill the trees for convenience. I asked him to please try to stabilize them by cutting them back. He originally told me that he would give me a quote on the work, but I would have to wait about two weeks. When he called me back, he told me that the trees were so unstable that he was moving me to the front of his work schedule out of concern for an imminent collapse. I realized that my emotional attachment to keeping my trees was blinding me to their true condition. It had been a very rainy fall for us, and the crew had to leave their truck in the driveway, and carry the trees out to the truck piece by piece. Our back yard just doesn't seem the same now.
I can't help but think of the ancestors of these trees in China and Viet Nam, before they were brought to North America, and bred for their rapid growth capabilities that shorten their lives.1 Now that we have spread them all over our developed real estate, we are compelled to kill them unnaturally to prevent them from threatening our constructed property. It's another interesting, but sad story of humans getting crossed up with other life forms on our home planet.
Now back to the story of returning to ham radio, I promise not to walk you into the nerdy antenna construction details because I want to tell the rest of the tree story. I needed the antenna to cruise all the bands during my study period for the license exams. I put up an all - HF - band (3.5 - 30 MHz) long wire antenna. The challenge was its overall radiating wire length of 132 feet. I didn't really have enough back yard for a straight run with that. In a situation like this, I am absolutely dependent on a tree to support one end of the antenna. I originally thought that this supporting tree would be rather absorptive of the signal if the radiating part of the antenna ran through it, and that I needed to route as much as possible along one of the ends of my house to keep the other end of the radiating span clear of the tree. So I originally suspended the far end of the radiating wire from a dacron cord pulled into the tree. On the near feed end of this wire, I ran it up most of the northeast vertical corner of the house, and along the eave on the north end of the house. This next photo shows a view looking toward the north peak along that eave, with the northeast vertical corner of the house about ten feet behind me. Yes, those are in fact modified plastic forks used as standoffs.
Here's a shot looking up at the dacron cord attach point to the antenna wire far point (indicated with the small red circle) the way it was originally installed. There is almost no tree branch contact with the wire end.
I used this original antenna setup for a few weeks on my SDR radio, but I began wondering about the near end being so low to the ground. I had mounted the near end of the radiating long wire only about 30 inches above the ground, and was concerned about my future 100 watt HF transceiver representing an RF shock hazard to our dog when I was in transmit mode. After finishing my exams on December 5th, I put the question to one of the three volunteer examiners since they were veterans holding amateur extra licenses. I described my reasons for routing as much of the antenna as practical on the north end of the house to avoid routing in the tree. I learned two things: firstly, I would lose much more signal routing along the house due to nails, aluminum flashing, and the like as opposed to committing more of the 132 foot antenna length to the tree, and secondly, yes the dog or any human touching the end of my wire could indeed get a painful RF burn! I realized that I had to bring it down, and re-route it. A few weeks passed without me being to work on it due to a lot of rain or seriously cold temperatures, but I managed to take care of this on December 20th. Here is the near end. The radiating element starts at the match box about ten feet below the PVC pipe at the roof peak which supports the long span. Below the match box is the coaxial cable feed into the house, and a bare copper ground wire.
Here is a shot of the far end. The attach point to the dacron cord that pulls tension on it and is tied off to a low branch is marked with a red circle. The purple dots mark the wire's path up to the high supporting branch and out toward the tree.
Here is a shot showing the southeast - northeast long span to the peak of the roof on the north end of the house:
1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrus_calleryana
