I generally have to walk all my Beverages about once a month. If I don’t the growth becomes overwhelming. It may not be true, but I’ve felt that wet vines, branches, and leaves tend to cause some attenuation if they contact the uninsulated wire in too many places. Walking the antennas regularly allows me to try to keep the jungle at bay, before it becomes a huge clearing project.
Yesterday, while working on clearing the route for my soon-to-be new NA Beverage, I brought my GoPro camera. Once I finished clearing a path to what will be the termination point, I turned it on and walked back along the length of the new trail I had made. This video will give you an idea of what it’s like to walk in the jungle here on Northern Guam. The area is very typical for what you find in the northern forest, however I chose a route that was less heavily overgrown than many other areas in an attempt to make my job clearing easier.
You may notice that I am walking slowly. This is on purpose, to keep from tripping over vines, roots, and rocks laying on the ground. Additionally, you will notice that the jungle is absolutely silent. There are no birds in the jungle, which is very much in contrast to my housing area where birds can be heard chirping all day long. Why? Because of the brown tree snake. You will never find one in the jungle, but they are everywhere, masters of disguise hiding in the tree tops during the day. The birds have migrated out of the forest and into trees on base, because it is protected from snakes by a barrier of snake traps. It can be eerily silent in the jungle, and I’ve often been startled by the quick explosion of noise which occurs when I stumble into an area where pigs have bedded down for the day, as they crash through the jungle running away.
[I need to relocate my video on Youtube. I didn’t upload it on my normal account. The link did not survive in the archive copy I am using to rebuild this site in Dec 2020]
By clicking on the Youtube icon at the bottom right of the imbedded video, you can watch a higher resolution version in a new window.