The FT1000MP MKV bought from OH8X fits just fine in the shack. Today me and SM2XJP spent time fixing the SO2R setup and the FT1000D has now been passed to the job as 2nd radio in SOAB and mult radio in M/S. I also upgraded the firmware in all openASC gear, so after some minor fixes it seem to work fine *knock on wood*.
I have been looking for a new radio and decided to go with the FT1000MP MKV. Since I knew that OH8X had upgraded their radios to FT5000, and that they are probably fully equipped with all filters needed I contacted OH2UA and he thought they had a couple available. So I emailed Vejo, OH6KN about it and he after some talking with OH8NC decided they could sell me one of their radios. So me and SM2XJP took the 450km drive (one way) to arkala to pick up the radio yesterday and also get a tour of the station. We showed up when it was bright outside, so we could see all antennas. When I saw the big M7 monster I was really amazed of its size. I’ve seen many pictures but nothing beats watching it in person.
Veijo also gave a tour of the insides of Arkala which was a lot of fun and gave me some new ideas of how to do things at SJ2W. Veijo was a great host and we will go back and see things in the summer, when its possible to walk around and inspect the things done outside more.
I have tested the radio a bit and I like it very much, so now the FT1000D has been moved to be used as the 2nd radio in SO2R operations and mult radio in M/S.
This weekend SM3WMU and SM3RAB will join us at SJ2W to do ARRL SSB. They plan to be on SB 20 and SB 40, one with SJ2W and the other with one of SM3WMUs callsigns. I think the plan is to go for the Swedish records but we will see if propagations will allow for that.
Otherwise last weekend was mostly spent working on an amplifier and also changed all the batteries in the alarm system that was donated by SM2DMU last year, so now the units have stopped sending alarms because of low battery. I also put back the 40m stackmatch after the failure that occured in CQWW CW and removed the 15m unit because of some faulty relay that had been a bit bad from the start. So this weekend I plan to put that back so that the station is almost ready for when HA1AG arrives to work the Russian DX Contest.
This weekend I will try to clean up a bit in the house, because its quite a mess now and maybe some outdoor work as well, since weather seems like it will be very nice.
I just wanted to let you know that now you can check the Equipment tab and browse through each of the bands antennas. On each one of these pages at the bottom there are links to the posts which show when we built the antenna systems, so there is a lot of fun stuff to see if you haven’t followed the project from the start.
I will try to gather the posts of all tower construction work as well, but not tonight so stay tuned for that.