I have been working a lot in Skellefteå so a lot of time has been spent at SJ2W, mainly trying to organize things and getting the CNC mill operational.
Electronics and the CNC mill
Posted by sm2wmv
on January 9, 2017
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Inband work and new towers
Posted by sm2wmv
on November 30, 2016
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I worked a lot before CQWW CW and managed to get most stuff operational. We had quite fun even though propagation’s sucked big time. We had 1/3 of the score from 2014 but the inband test was a success even though we had a bit of phase noise issues when both towers were beaming US. In most other directions the problems were surprisingly small. Especially on 40 and 80m there were no problems at all to come quite close to the run frequency.
SM2VTS called me a while ago and said he knew of four 14m high freestanding light towers, something I had been looking for for the planned move of the 80m 4-SQ. I gave them an offer for them and they accepted it. SM2UVU was very kind and said he could with help of his friend with a truck with crane, take them down and transport them up to SJ2W. They also had 16 pcs of Metal-halide lamps of 2000W each, I will put one or two up at SJ2W to light up the yard when needed. When SM2UVU arrived there he instantly said “These are not 14m, they are probably 20m” and he was correct. Kind of perfect for an 80m 4-SQ but they are almost too good for it, but since they are conical the only use for them except 4-SQ is a small 20m tower, which is not much use. I am almost starting to consider a 27-30m high vertical 4-SQ for 160m 😉
I need to update the site with the results from CQWW SSB and CQWW CW, but I have the scores at SJ2W. In the SSB part there were a guys of contesting “rookies” of mixed ages and even though conds were horrible they seemed to have fun.
Better late then never :)
Posted by sm2wmv
on November 30, 2016
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I have a couple of big updates coming now. I have been so occupied working and on the spare time trying to get the station ready for CQWW CW. The inband stuff has been a lot of work but I did manage to finish it up pretty well before CQWW. We had some issues but it was solved and it worked quite well, a bit of noisy on 10-20m when both the stations were beaming US but on 80 and 40m there was really no problem at all which is interesting, since it was the other way around with the vertical.
Rotor repair
Posted by sm2wmv
on October 13, 2016
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Last weekend I spent some time at SJ2W fixing the rotor for the Moskojärvi tower and also added some cover for the gear to the Military tower. I ran out of material though but I hope that I can finish it up this coming weekend. The moskojärvi repair went great and now it does turn a bit slower which is nice. Still could need to put an VFD on the two 60m towers to have soft start/stop on them though.
SA2CLC worked quite some hours in SAC SSB and did very well and I think he enjoyed it.
This coming weekend I hope to get more work done on the inband tower electronics and maybe also some on the control for the RX-array. That is however lower priority.
