The reason for the title of this message is that the sewer system is blocked. We tried a lot on Sunday to get the blockage away but unfortunately without much success. Next weekend SM2NOG will come up and try to help us to get it open again and in worst case I need to get some pros to do it, but that cost $$$.

Otherwise the weekend was great. My mom and dad visited us with their newly bought trailer. I had given my dad the task of drawing the new kitchen. When I bought this place the guy before unexpected passed away. Just before this he had ordered a new kitchen which has been sitting out in the barn since then. My dad loves to do carpentry and he has built several kitchens before and wanted to do this one as well. So probably in September he will come up and install it.

SM2XJP also came by and helped us clean up the timber which was taken down by SE2T last autumn and SM2XLL also came by for a visit. We all went to check out a tower which SK2AU (www.sk2au.org) had announced on their site being available to take down if wanted. However the tower was probably 25-30m high and not of the right type for us to use. I am looking for another tower which can be made rotational for the main 10m and 15m stacks.

SM3JLA also showed up on Friday a few hours after my parents and gf Anna showed up on Saturday. Plan for the weekend again was to hoist the 20m Yagi but it was again too windy and we discovered I did not have enough philistran for the side support of the boom. And of course, because of this the weather got calm on Sunday and the whole day we had perfect lift weather. So instead we decided to hoist up the top mast in the new 18m tower to hold the 5el Yagi for 15m. This went very smoothly and now the mast is in the proper position awaiting the beam and newly greased rotator.

After this was done we took out the parts for the 5el monobander for 15m, donated by SM3WMU. However this Yagi did not have its original boom but instead some weaker one made out of 50mm tubing. I did not like this so we decided to insert a 4m pipe of 60mm tubing making the boom a lot stronger. After this was done we went over the Yagi which was in pretty bad shape and added a lot of new screws to the tubing joints and made sure everything looked good. The driven element will get its SM2WMV hairpin conversion kit assembled next weekend and hopefully be ready to be lifted.

SM3JLA came up with the idea of leaving the gin-pole up in the tower, making it easier to raise the top mast with the Yagi attached. My idea was to use brute force but I believe SM3JLA idea was better 🙂

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Today in the morning, just after me and SM2LIY woke up SE2T arrived to help us with some work outside. Original plan was to lift the 20m Yagi but because of too much winds all weekend long that job has been postponed. So instead we decided to try getting the 18m high tower up. We were hoping to be able to raise the first 12m by hand by that was not possible, so instead we did raise the first 6m with the gin-pole ready to lift the next section, so that work was done rather quickly. After that we did tension the guy wires, add some rope for extra support and moved the gin-pole up to lift the top section. We hoped that we could lift the top section with the mast inside it but unfortunately the balance of the whole thing got messed up, so we aborted the lift, removed the pipe and tried again.

SM2LIY came up with a very good idea of using some rope to attach the lift wire along the tower section, since the gin-pole is a bit short. This made it a lot more stable and when I got the ropes up @12m I just removed them and steered the tower section easily by hand. So after a whole day of work we have the 18m tower up and now next job on it will be to put up the mast and rotator. The tower will hold a 5el yagi for 15m and 4el yagi for 20m (fixed EU) and the 15m yagi will be rotated by a G-1000SDX. I will need to rebuild the driven elements on the beams first though, since they are gamma matched now and I want all to be hairpin.

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This weekend the main goal was to put up the 2nd 6el yagi for 20m. However it has been way to windy to get it up safely so instead we have been working on getting the 18m tower up in the air. This tower is planned to hold a rotating 5el monobander for 15m and a 4el monobander for 20m which will be fixed @EU. This is the tower we took down last weekend at the SM3 QTH and the base and guy anchors were already made last year.

SM2XJP and I drove to the village to get a new blade for the lawn mower. I tried to straighten it out but broke it while trying but the local store had one and now the lawn finally got cut!

SM2NOG, SM2LIY and SM2HWG showed up today and SM2NOG drilled the holes in the concrete for the bottom plate. SM2LIY and SM2HWG went out into the woods and took down the rest of the 1200m beverage and fixed the one towards 45 degrees. Me and SM2NOG did fix the threaded rods which holds the tower and carried out two of the tower sections. The lower guy wires have been attached to the tower and we will try to raise 12m of it by hand tomorrow. If that works the last section will be erected with a gin-pole and if we can’t get the first 12m up by hand we will need to put up 2 sections with the gin-pole.

Stay tuned for the results…

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This weekend me and SM2XJP took his car with a big trailer down to SM3. We arrived on Friday at around 16:30 and we rather quickly went up to the hilltop where we did remove the 4el monobander for 20m, which was still in the tower at 18m. It all went very smoothly and after a while we had the antenna on the ground and went down to eat. After dinner we left to SM3WMU where we picked up some 7/8″ cable, connectors and a 5el monobander for 20m plus some other junk he has collected for me.

On Saturday morning we went up the hill again and SM3JLA joined us as well. We hoisted down the last tower with the gin-pole I built last year to erect the 160m vertical and after a few hours the tower was down, it all went very smoothly. However since the antennas are located on a hilltop, about 40m drop down to the road we had to carry everything through the woods, which was a painful job. The tower sections were the easiest to get down though, since SM2XJP came up with the idea of just dragging them which worked well. The tower bottom plate, the iron pipes and antennas were worse to carry but after a whole days of work everything was down beside the road.

SM3WMU showed up and helped us load the stuff up on the trailer and after that we had some birthday cake (2 days too late for me) and coffee. Me and SM2XJP, the designated driver for the weekend went up again to SJ2W and on the way up we saw a one year old moose, that SM2XJP managed to trick out of the bushes by making moose sounds, so we got a nice look at it before it felt our sent and ran into the woods again.

Big thanks to SM2XJP, SM3JLA and SM3WMU for helping to take everything down.

There is some info about that old QTH at http://www.sm3wmv.com/sm3w/index.php

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