I well remember a snowy Christmas in Denver many years ago
that has to do with ham radio.  Normally we have no snow on
Christmas in Denver but this particular year, we had 25 inches of
snow on Christmas eve.  The next day, Christmas day, all three of
my young children wanted to go out and play in the deep snow.  I
had a 55 foot tower at that time and I had, the summer before, put
up three quarter wave slopers on 80 meters.  They were controlled
by a relay, a pair of relays actually, which allow two of the
three wires to be floating above ground while the other was being
used for transmitting.  This gave me a 3-way switchable antenna on
80 and 75 meters.  It turned out to work extremely well and the
front to back was as much as 10 and 15 DB at times.  Anyway, one
of the relays burned out that week of Christmas.  So, since the
kids wanted to go out and play in the snow, I figured it was as
good of time as any to climb my tower and work on my antennas.  It
was mid afternoon and probably not much more than an hour of
sunlight left so my wife and I figured we best let the kids out so
they could play for awhile in the newly fallen snow.  I belted up,
dropped all the tools I thought I might need into my tool bag
hanging from my climbing belt, pulled on my boots, heavy coat and
gloves, and my three children and I walked out the back door.
Holy Cow!  I've been in deep snow before but this was ridiculous.
I couldn't even find the tower in the middle of my backyard
because I had no ground references to guide myself to the base of
the tower.  After roaming around my backyard for awhile trying to
find my tower, one of my kids came over and led me over to the
tower.  You almost had to swim your way through the snow; it was
that deep.  It was also now about 35 degrees but fortunately there
was no wind.  I slowly climbed, and I do mean slowly, the tower
until I got to the relay box.  After belting myself to the tower,
I had to pull off my gloves so I could feel what I was doing.
Man, was that tower cold.  The relays were plug-in relays but I
had no spares so I cut the wires leading to the relay box and hot
wired the coax so I could have at least one antenna to use to get
on the air over the holidays.  It was tough going in that cold but
I got everything wired up and came down the tower.  I still
couldn't believe how much snow we had on the ground in only 24
hours so I went in to the house and found my wooden yard stick.
It had been notched every inch.  I went and measured the depth of
the snow in three or four different spots in the back yard.  As I
said, we had no wind and the snow had fallen and lay in the
backyard without drifting.  I had 25 and a quarter inches of snow
on the ground in every spot I measured.  My kids had fun, I was
back on the air, and we had snow in Denver on Christmas.  I am
older and wiser now, of course, and my kids are all grown and have
their own families.  So a nice snowless Christmas day is fine as
far as I am concerned.  that Christmas, however, was one to
remember and I still think fondly of it when I think about having
snow on Christmas day.  My tower climbing days are over, too, at
least at my age, so I think I'll get a motorized crank up unless
you want to send me one for Christmas.

73,
Phil,
K0nx


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