Sycamore Tree Removal

Damaged DE

I have a "forest" of trees directly East of my EME antennas.  In the winter when the leaves and sap are gone, it seems not to be a huge problem to my moonbounce operations, but in the spring and summer it provides a "brick wall" that keeps me from hearing all but the very strongest EME signals.   Two of these trees (directly behind the house) are Sycamores.  It turns out that Evelyn is severely affected by the dust these trees develop under their leaves in the summer.  If she steps out on the back porch, she will start exhibiting an allergic reaction in less than a minute!  Thus, these trees HAVE TO GO!

Once we decided to have these two Sycamores removed, we chose RealTree Tree Services (a local tree service) and they were able to schedule the removal for today.  I told them we just wanted to "drop" the trees over the lip of the hill where they sat.  Therefore they did not need to be cut up nor did we need the stumps ground down.  This kept the costs down.

These two trees were directly East of my EME array and provided significant blockage from 70° to 110° in Azimuth. This was the direction of my MoonRise and that's where I need to see the moon to be able to work stations in Europe. In the photo on the Top-Left you can see how close my antennas are to these trees even when the antennas are turned broadside to the trees.  And you get a bit of an ideal of how tall the trees are.  The tree cutters estimated the largest one was 65-feet tall.  The image on the Center-Right shows a better view to indicate the height of the trees.

Over the last 3 years I have been on EME, these trees have grown to the point where they prevent my antennas from pointing in their direction.  I first noticed this early in February of 2020 when my SWR suddenly shot up.  I tracked that problem down to the fact that the trees had reached out and GRABBED the driven element of one antenna and actually pulled it apart.  (See the image on the Top-Right of this Post.)  Click on any image to see it larger.

For multiple reasons I asked my Grandsons (Owen and Grant) to come down today to help out.  I knew they could clean the debris from the yard and could cut any of the trees that fell across the "trail" we used to access the HF tower.  They showed up about 8:15 a.m. and brought their friend, Logan, as well.  Evelyn had made a BIG breakfast for them with ham, eggs, biscuits, fried apples, hash browns, and hot chocolate.  After they ate (and the tree service had not arrived) I had them do a small amount of tree trimming at the mailbox.  Later I had them check our whole house generator and replace the battery in it.

When the tree service arrived, they saw that we had three strong men available so they cancelled their own ground crew.  The one guy that did all the major work then paid my "ground crew" $100 of what he had planned to charge me.  You can see on the Bottom-Left photo my Ground Crew cutting up the large tree.  It fell across the "trail" so they got to work with their chainsaws and cleared the way. Logan is on the left gathering up one of the ropes for the tree service guy.

Click HERE for a 30-second video of the trees coming down.  I was a little slow in starting the video for the large tree falling so it is not included.  That large tree definitely shook the ground when it hit.

There are still a LOT of trees to my East but I'm hoping that by removing these two large trees (which were so close to the antennas that the branches were touching the antenna elements) that my signals toward MoonRise will improve. Maybe it is wishful thinking but I feel like I can see more "sky" than I could before removing these two Sycamores. Time will tell. However, on Thursday morning I can tell there is a great deal more light coming into my bathroom. Those trees were definitely blocking a bunch of sky.