Me and a friend went away and bought a bunch of iron at a store about 30km away from where I work. They are not that extremely expensive which is nice and they are used to sell to regular people and not just companies as many others who are a mess trying to buy from.

I decided to build 2 boom struts for the 20m yagis and some element/boom plates for the 40m yagis. I also did some other minor stuff like some supports for my RAGE 2 chop saw. That thing is just a beast! It still cuts iron like it was butter and I have not changed blade yet, it’s awesome and makes building these kind of things so much faster and more fun.

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I was going to drill holes in the guy wire ring plate that SM2DMU donated to us. But it was very hard to try to measure out where to drill the holes so I will take with me the small 20cm piece of tower I have down at SJ2W and use it to mark out where the holes should be. I was thinking about making a template in paper but it’s so big that it will be tricky, so easiest way is to use the small piece of tower instead.

I have recovered from the flu so I will be going down to SJ2W probably on Wednesday and stay there at least until Sunday, maybe longer. Hopefully I’ll get some work done. We need to go to pick up a couple of K-600 sections from SM2RMG that will be used for the base of the military tower project.

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I had planned to be at SJ2W this whole week but managed to catch a cold and have been lying in bed for a few days. So plans are to spend a bit of next week at SJ2W instead getting some spring work done outside.

For the Swedish people here, I am in hunt for another tower. I need it to be 24-40m high and hopefully strong enough so I can make it rotatable. The backup plan is to build a tower but I would rather get hold of an already made one. Plan is to use it for inband operation in the future (maybe next year?) so I can put a triband stack in it and a 2el for 40m. I’ve been playing around doing some simulations of putting 3xJP-2000 tribanders which would be awesome (3el 20, 3el 15, 4el 15).

A thicker model (thicker than 280mm side) of the WIBE towers used by the military would be an OK backup plan. One could weld cross brases to stiffen the tower up making it possible to make it rotatable.

Today I welded a bit more on the power supply amplifier box. I also grinded down all the welds and removed the paint so now its ready to get pretty with some black colour. I also drilled holes for the screws holding the side panels and got threads into those, it looks pretty good. I need to cut one of the panels since it was too long.

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