This weekend I got great help from SA2KNG and SA2FDR which was highly appreciated. The winter season is coming quickly and there is still some stuff that need to be finished up before the winter, but this weekend we managed to get some of that crossed of the list.
I went down already on Thursday and started working on some stuff on Friday. I managed to get the cabinet for the RX-array mounted and also all hoses clamped and hooked up. I also put 75m of RG-6TS through 16x2mm water hose so that the cable leading to the RX array is protected from animals. The rest (about 270m) hangs in the air in the trees leading up to the beverage cross point on the north side of the QTH.
On Saturday I started going out with the first 75m of coax to the RX array and hooked that up. Then I pulled two more RG-6TS cables over the road, so now we have 2 pcs of RG-6 and 5 pcs of RG-58 over the road. I had some problems with this but managed after a few hours. Then SA2FDR and SA2KNG showed up and we pulled out the rest of the coax and managed to get everything connected and it all worked at once. I did some tests and the F/B looks promising on the array but conditions turned really poor so I have not been able to really test it out. The switching of the directions is currently done through the laptop but I will finish up some programming so that I can switch it through he openASC system instead.
The dishwasher broke a few weeks ago and I told SA2FDR that either they do the dishes on Sunday or they fix the dishwasher, so they spent a few hours on Saturday evening/night and managed to fix it which I am very thankful of. I made them pie, I need to keep the guys helping happy so they come back 🙂
On Sunday we went out to the inband site and mounted the cabinet which hold batteries, antenna switching and the control electronics. I would not have been able to do it myself since the screw in anchors are tough to get down in sandy/stony ground. It turned out great so now I just need to finish up the last programming and put the 868 MHz link up in the tower, so we get the antennas switchable and rotatable. Left to do at the inband site after that is putting up an 80m dipole.
It was a very productive weekend and we had fun! The sun is still warm but it was very windy this weekend with cold winds, so it was a bit of a struggle to be outside.
Next weekend I hope to get the Moskojärvi tower rotating again, doing some more work on the inband tower electronics and maybe work on the snow cover for the Military tower.
