SJ2W Contest Station

Building antennas part 2

Posted by sm2wmv on August 20, 2013 Comments Off

Today I didn’t have that much to do at work so I did sneak into the workshop and did some work there. I’ve spent most of the time in the lathe and gotten most of the stuff done for the yagis that I can do up here. Left to do is the center parts for the 40m elements, all the plates to attach the yagis to the tower and also the element/boom plates for the 30m yagi plus a boom strut. I need to get this done quickly so I can get it all galvanized so I can have it assembled in a few weeks. Goal is to have it all operating before CQWW SSB which I believe should not be a problem *knock on wood*.

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Building antennas part 1

Posted by sm2wmv on August 20, 2013 Comments Off

After we got the tower up on Saturday I felt like I was totally drained of all energy. But after some sleep and food I managed to get motivated again and started building antennas. I have been using some of the aluminium that we took down in Moskojärvi last autumn for booms and also parts of the elements. On the 40m yagis I change all tubing smaller than 50mm and the 5el for 20m will be totally new except some of the boom. The 30m 3el yagi will get the elements and boom from the Moskojärvi aluminium as well, we will see how many years left it has got. It looks in great shape but it’s aluminium so you never know…

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The military tower is up

Posted by sm2wmv on August 17, 2013 Comments Off

I arrived to SJ2W on Thursday evening when SM2XJP picked me up in Skellefteå since I had a very heavy bag with me, with tools etc I used in Moskojärvi when we picked up the last things from the 60m tower takedown last year. SM2LIY also came to SJ2W and me, SM2LIY and SM2XJP did pull out more coax to the inband location, so now we have one more roll of 7/8″ to get out before it’s there. I also did the final preperations for the military tower, attaching the top tube so that I can lift the 40m yagi in the top of the tower and the guy wires were attached.

When we were out in the forest SM0W called me and said the coffee was done. He had arrived with a colleauge since they were doing a “tour” up in north SM fixing commercial radio stations and had arrived and prepared the coffee for us. They stayed an hour or two before they left off.

Today we managed to get a crane here and lift the military tower. It all went very well and the tower was up and in position under an hour, I think we are starting to get a hang on this now The tower felt pretty good to climb in as well, we will see how it feels when I get up in the top, probably moves a bit more but still, during the lift the tower didn’t bend much at all, so it’s extremely stiff.

SM2UVU, SM2NOG, SM2XLL, SM2LIY, SM2WMV and Tobbe from GTL did the tower lift.

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The military tower assembled

Posted by sm2wmv on August 9, 2013 Comments Off

I’ve done some work on the military tower getting the guy wire bearing water proofed with some material that SM2UVU brought. I have also gotten help from SM2XJP who borrowed a tractor so that we could move the tower sections and assemble them. It all went very smoothly and hopefully next weekend we might get it up.

Unfortunately I need to start working now again, so I won’t be able to spend as much time here.