This weekend we headed down to SM2UVU to help out getting his home made tower put up and the Opti-beam antennas. The station is now a beauty with the 46m rotating tower which holds a OB804020 in top which is a 2el on 80, 3el on 40 and 5el on 20. Below that he has a 2el for 30m, 5-5el 15/10 duobander, 3-5 40/20m duobander, 5el 12m, 5-5 15/10 duobander. So it’s 2el on 80 @46m, 3/3el on 40, 5/5el on 20,15 and 10m plus a 5el on 12 and 2el on 30.

The work went really well. The crane arrived 08:00 and we were done 12:30. SM2NOG and me (SM2WMV/SJ2W) did the climbing and it was quite fun to be two people in the tower and made it a lot easier and faster. The rest of the crew were, SM2UVU, SM2VTS, SA2BRJ, SM2VJX, SM2LIY and SM2MZC.

Pictures were taken by SM2VJX, SM2LIY, SM2WMV and SA2BRJ.

Now SM2UVU became a big-gun but hopefully he will join us at SJ2W during most of our M/S efforts.

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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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I’ve said for a couple of years that we need to redesign the 4el for 20m since the bandwidth is a bit narrow and it differs too much from the other antennas, so the amps gets problems when switching antennas or powersplitting. Now when the neighbour took back the concrete mixer because he needed to mix some concrete for his sister, and I was wondering what to do SM2XJP gave the suggestion to take down the beam. So we did and put it up the next day with another design (OWA) which I had already made, it just needed to be transfered to the correct tapering. The result is great, now the SWR is not over 1.3:1 on the whole band and is a lot more similar to the big stack.

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Lots have happened lately. I’ve been having help here at the QTH and haven’t really felt like spending that valuable time updating the web page. However, this made it a nightmare since I had pictures from different sources and a lot of them!

First off I spent time at a friends place helping him to build a 2nd floor to his house. After this I went down to SJ2W and spent 1 day before leaving to go to my parents place down in SM3. I spent a few days there and on last Friday SG3P came up since he was going to go up and help me mainly fixing the 40m yagi in the top of the 60m tower. The elements turned on the boom a bit a couple of winters ago and it’s been like that since, very hard work to fix it up at 60m. We went up to SJ2W on Saturday but it was very windy so we did other things meanwhile, such as making the base for the 40m tower.

I have added description on the pictures so I believe that is the easiest way to check what has happened. I got lots of help this week from SG3P (SK3W), SM2XJP, SM2UVU, SM2XLL, SM3JLA and SM2NOG. Great progress! Especially huge thanks to SG3P who spent another week at SJ2W helping out!

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