Category Archives: Tower work - Page 7

More electronics + CQWW DX CW

Posted by sm2wmv on December 3, 2014 Comments Off

I went down to Burträsk already on Thursday and SM2XJP picked me up as usual in Skellefteå. Major work was to get the new 60m Moskojärvi tower rotatable and after a bit fault searching by me, SM2XJP and SM3JLA we found the problem being a shortcut bar in the terminal jack which I had not see when I put it together. When that was removed it all worked great. I managed to setup the station on Thursday so Friday was calm and nice before the competition. OH2UA who is the op who beat both me and SM2LIY in SAC this autumn asked me what our plans were for the contest and was willing to come over and help us out. It was a great addition to the team and Toni fit in perfectly and I sure do hope this was not the last we’ve seen of him @SJ2W. SE2T came on Friday evening but had to leave for a family dinner but was back on Sunday when SM3JLA had to leave.

Anyway it was a real blast and we could not have asked for a better result. Bands were the best they’ve been for a CQWW CW all the years I’ve participated and we managed to increase our Scandinavian record by some 30%

                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW

Call: SJ2W
Operator(s): OH2UA SE2T SM2LIY SM2WMV SM3JLA
Station: SJ2W

Class: M/S HP
QTH: Da Traesk
Operating Time (hrs): 48

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:  198    15       68
   80:  294    35      112
   40: 1205    40      144
   20: 2036    39      143
   15: 1846    38      149
   10: 1150    40      153
------------------------------
Total: 6729   207      769  Total Score = 15,032,352

Club: Worldwide Young Contesters

Comments:

What a blast! I must say that propagations can't get much better than this for
us this late in the year with mostly just darkness outside, it was pretty much
perfect.

We had operator reinforcements from OH in form of OH2UA, who normally operates
for our biggest rivals OH8X and it was a great addition to the normal bunch of
old farts @SJ2W.

Station worked flawlessly and we got the new 15 stack rotatable as well and it
was a great boost for us.

Antennas
160m: 39m vert
80m: 4-SQ
40m: 3/3el + 2/2el + 4-SQ
20m: 6/6/6el + 5/5el + 4el @EU
15m: 6/6/6/6/6el + 6/6el + 5el
10m: 6/6el + 6el @46m
8 beverages

FT1000MKV + ACOM 2000 (Sponsored by Ojojoj Music AB)
FT1000MKV + ACOM 1000
K3 for inband
N1MM Logger

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Rotator work

Posted by sm2wmv on November 13, 2014 Comments Off

Last weekend me and Anna + Hicco spent some time at the station. I mainly spent time getting the rotation of the Moskojärvi tower to work. Me and my neighbor also spent time planning out where to put the inband tower on his land. The plans turned out great so now we have a fun project for next year. Left to do getting the Mosko-tower rotating is putting the pot in place, running a bit more cables and configuring the rotator board for the openASC system. So hopefully its finished before CQWW DX CW in a few weeks.

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15m stack finished

Posted by sm2wmv on October 7, 2014 4 comments

This last week has been quite intense. I’ve spent some evenings finishing up parts for the 15m beams and during the weekend we managed to get all beams ready and lifted. The crew during the antenna lift was SM2XLL, SM2LIY and SM2UVU plus me. SM2UVU did the climbing while attaching the beams and when he had to leave at 1400 I climbed and we hoisted the stackbox and finished up some details on the side support for the booms. On Sunday I did another climb and finished up the work so we could try it out during the CQP which was fun. It seem to be a killer, during the wide open propagation’s during the day we didn’t see that much difference in signal strength but the signals were a lot more stable on the new stack. But when we got late evening/night propagation’s we could see 5-10dB difference which is what I was hoping for. Also it gives us a lot more flexibility being able to have three directions on 15m where two of the systems are stacks that perform very well on DX. I will be getting to test it out during the SAC SSB contest this weekend SOAB HP, so make sure to work SJ2W on as many bands as possible!

On Sunday SM2XJP came out and we put some connectors on cables and shifted out the 1 1/4″ coax to the 2/2el stack and put it on the new 15m stack. I would rather have one piece of coax to the main antenna system for a band and let the secondary system on 40m have 7/8″ with a few jumpers. Less risk of failures of the main system that way, also less loss on the 1 1/4″.

Now some smaller tasks are left to do before the snow is allowed to arrive. We need to get the tower rotating and hopefully we can get that done before CQWW CW. I doubt we’ll have it rotating before CQWW SSB but you never know, we’ll see. Currently I am feeling a bit drained on energy but hopefully that will improve during the week, it usually does.

So CU lads in SAC SSB and big thanks to SA2BRJ who did the optimization of the stack on the super computer they have at work!

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The antenna factory

Posted by sm2wmv on September 23, 2014 3 comments

Lots has happened since the last update but I have been too busy to update the website, sorry for that. It’s been a lot of work and planning @SJ2W plus also my regular job and some private work on the side to bring in more money so I can build even bigger. Why? It’s fun!

Last week was spent at the station and a lot of progress was made. We got one beam assembled, tuned and hoisted into place. It resonates a bit too low (21150kHz instead of 21270kHz) and I blame the tram wire for the false reading. I’d like to get a tram wire with a non conductive material instead. Anyway, I figured that the beam will need to be lowered next year or the year after when I have plans to put up a 3el for 80m in top of the tower. So I will document how we tuned the other beams and when we bring this beam down we re-tune it to match the other four. We will tune the next beam pulling it straight up the tower, simulating the real position a lot better. We can get them to about 10-12m above ground which should be sufficient, I’ve seen before that after about 1/2 wl the difference seem to be insignificant.

We also managed to get all other elements made for the other four beams and SM2UVU arrived and helped me build booms when SM2LIY was working SAC CW SOAB HP. On Monday before I went back to the work QTH we carried the beams down to where the final assembly and hoisting will be done and I brought up some plates to be drilled here at work where there is better equipment.

I am starting to feel the effects of working intensively for a period of time so I really hope we can get the 15m stack completed in the next two coming weekends. I am starting to doubt to be active in SAC SSB even thought it would be fun the goal is CQWW SSB. but we will see how it goes.

Doing the Gentry @53m