Today I felt like doing some digging so I started with filling the hole around the tower foundation for the 60m tower. After that I felt like mixing some concrete so I decided to fix the post which will support the cables for the 60m tower and also hold a cabinet with various electronics and connections for the tower. I first thought about using regular lumber but decided to use a steel pipe instead, this made it a lot easier. I just took a pipe which was around 4.5-5m long and put it about 60cm down into the ground. The hole size is about 120l which means around 250kg weight when it’s filled with concrete. I also added a frame around it to make it look a bit nicer.

To get the tubing straight before pouring the concrete I used a steel tube which I connected with help of a boom to mast plate for a 10m yagi and to the vertical post I used a CUE DEE special clamp which is a very neat thing. After I had it straight I started the concrete mixer and mixed around 130l of concrete to fill the hole. I sure don’t think that the post will buckle to the weight and tension of a few 7/8″ cables 🙂

Here are the pictures

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Now all 8 beverages are pulled out to the planned length. We have still not connected the coaxes or baluns. I have a roll of 500m RG-58 on the way so hopefully by next weekend we’ll have them all connected. Now I need to finish up the 8-port beverage switch which is able to route any beverage to 4 radios. It will be very interesting to compare the noise levels on the different ones and also how well they work on 160 and 80m.

These are the finals:

Beverage, 580m (1900 feet) long towards West Coast US (330 degrees)
Beverage, 550m (1800 feet) long towards East Coast US (300 degrees)
Beverage, 320m (1050 feet) long towards South America (260 degrees)
Beverage, 220m (720 feet) long towards EU/Africa (180 degrees)
Beverage, 320m (1050 feet) long towards South East (120 degrees)
Beverage, 450m (1480 feet) long towards Australia (80 degrees)
Beverage, 700m (2300 feet) long towards Japan (45 degrees)
Beverage, 800m (2620 feet) long towards North (5 degrees)

Tomorrow work will continue with the beams.

SM2LIY showed up on Sunday evening and was looking forward to trips out in the forrest to put up beverages. So far we have managed to get up 6 of the total of 8 planned beverages. These will give us a good coverage primary on 80 and 160m all around the world. Of course we were a bit limited into some directions because of the terrain. For example to south we could only put out about 200m since there is a powerline there, but that does not matter since we wanted a wide angle beverage to the south.

The beverages put out are:

Beverage, 580m long towards West Coast US (330 degrees)

Beverage, 550m long towards East Coast US (300 degrees)

Beverage, 320m long towards South America (260 degrees)

Beverage, 220m long towards EU/Africa (180 degrees)

Beverage, 320m long towards South East (120 degrees)

Beverage, 450m long towards Australia (80 degrees)

Left to put out are a 800m long beverage straight north and one which is about 700m towards Japan. Also we need to put feeders to them but that will need to wait until we have gotten the ordered RG-58 and when we have built more baluns.

I also started to mount the top 6el yagi for 20m which has got a 18.5m boom. I had to weld the boom support since it broke when we took the beam down and also one element was broken. All beams will get a new feeding system (hairpin) but we are awaiting the isolating clamps from OH Antenna limited. Tomorrow I will try to finish up the 6el for 20 (except the feeding) and start to assemble the 3el for 40m. This antenna is currently a 4el which will be reduced a bit in size and plan is to have a 3/3 stack instead of the single 4el yagi.

Here are some pictures:

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I ordered some new climbing gear from http://www.hewallsafety.se which is located in my old town. I felt that I wanted to have real stuff which hopefully saves my life if I fall instead of just breaking my body into two pieces like a belt would.

The harness

The ropes with fall dampner and big hooks

And a climbing helmet