Repeater Visit July 23, 2011

This trip up took place on one of the nicest Saturdays that the coast has seen in quite a while. The goal of the trip was to replace the door. On the trip we had: Tim Crawford, KE7TAC, Bob Cerelli, a local builder, Brad Shamion, and Dale Mosby, K7FW. The door that was on the building was used when it went on and the metal cladding was starting to separate. The interior of the door was coming apart. The inner material seems to be a combination of wood and some sort of expanded foam. We were seeing piles of a swadust like material inside the repeater building at the base of the door. At first I thought this was sawdust and that we had an ant infestation but on closer examination I decided that this was the material from the inner core of the door.

Not knowing what sort of tools we might need I brought just about everything possible, including a generator and several power tools. We got quite lucky and found that the new door would fit in the old door frame so we could just swap the door and did not need to remove the old door frame. The old frame was still sound. The hinges and lock were in slightly different locations so a little bit of fitting was needed but not much work compared to the effort that would have been needed to pull out the old door frame.

We measured the two doors and determined that they were the same size. The two doors were removed from the frames so that they could be swapped. Brad is holding up the new door. (Note: Amateur photographers often make the mistake of shooting into the sun resulting in a washed out photo. Experienced photographers do this on purpose to achieve an artistic effect.)

Test fitting the new door. Bob fastens a couple hings while Brad and Tim steady the door.

Bob did most of the work while the rest of us watched. Here Bob repositions the mortise for the door hinges while Dale supervises.

Bob  marks the location for the new strike plate.

Bob creates a new hole for the deadbolt. Tim and Brad supervise.

Dale tightens the bolts holding a metal plate protecting the deadbolt.

The new door is in place. We should have had Bob pose for this photo as he did most of the work.

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