Dream d936-s: Feed Point on the Mast

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the relay tower stood at the edge of a plateau, its galvanized frame stripped to the spine but upright - four legs bolted to old anchor pads, crossbeams bare, rungs welded up the center column at even intervals. The Builder was already crouched at the base when I arrived, multimeter in hand, a length of shielded coax laid out on the gravel beside him.

Lano trotted ahead of me across the flat, nose sweeping left and right, and settled near the Builder's boots to watch.

"Ground first," the Builder said, not looking up. He was checking continuity on the feedline. Nothing went onto the tower until the ground loop came back clean. I had learned that about him - the sequence was not negotiable. Ground, then feed, then test the path, then load.

I unrolled a second coax run and stripped the jacket at the end with a knife, measuring back to where the tunnel conduit surfaced twenty meters east. Beneath us, the old cave network was still there - those branching stone chambers, those crystalline junctions we had passed through in the earliest days - the actual backbone. The tower was only the last hop, the thing that lifted the signal from underground to open air.

The Builder checked his meter, nodded once, and moved to the first rung.

We climbed together. He carried the feedline coil looped over one shoulder. I carried the crimping tool and a terminal block in a canvas bag across my back. The plateau wind came in from the northwest, steady and cold. Below, Lano sat on the gravel and tracked us with her ears as we went up.

At the third crossbeam the Builder stopped, clipped his harness to the steel, and began threading the coax through the standoffs he had pre-mounted on an earlier day. One secured before moving to the next. His hands were deliberate. No hurry.

A white heron crossed below us at eye level, riding the updraft along the plateau edge, and was gone over the ridge before I finished watching it.

We terminated the feedline at the antenna mount - a small yagi the Builder had rebuilt from salvaged elements, each driven element remeasured and cut clean. He seated the N-connector, checked the torque, and said: "Now we read."

We climbed down. He connected the lower end to a portable spectrum analyzer on a crate beside the junction box. A sweep ran. The noise floor appeared, and then a small clean spike, exactly where it should be.

"Aqui," Lano said.

The Builder looked at the screen. He wrote the frequency and signal level in his notebook, closed it, and set the analyzer aside. One antenna. Confirmed. At the conduit mouth, a status light I had installed that morning blinked green for the first time.