I arrived to the QTH on Friday after me and SM2XJP had gone to CUE DEE to pick up some aluminium for building the third 6el yagi for the 20m stack and also picked up a 5el yagi for 20m that I traded a few years back but have never picked up during a visit to SM2DMU, who has built a new shack which has got an UFB ICOM line and looks very good.

SM3JLA arrived 00:27 on Friday night and during Saturday he and me worked on getting the 20m yagi completed and also assembled some of the 40m yagi. We also centered the sprocket for rotating the 60m tower plus mounted the mechanics to turn it. Now what is left to be done is to get the tower perfectly straight, weld the sprocket stuck for real and mount the chain. On Sunday SM2NOG showed up since we had plans to lift the 6el 20m yagi to the top of the 60m tower. However after some trouble with the “capstan” winch we were delayed a few hours which made it dark when SM2NOG was gonna mount the yagi to the tower. The chilling minus degrees did not help either but after some cursing heard from 55m up the 60m tower SM2NOG was able to attach the yagi to the tower, however just in a “temporary” position since the antenna needs to be lifted another 5m but this could not be done because of the darkness set in.

As my gf said, SM2NOG is the Clint Eastwood of ham radio, climbing towers in minus degrees without gloves attaching yagis.

We were VERY lucky with the weather, no wind during the whole day, sunshine (even if it didn’t make it warmer, it made it nicer) and no snow. Here are some pictures!

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We got a visit from SM2-7871 this weekend, a guy who SM2LIY has learned to know since he is also an DXing guy. However, I must say that he doesn’t come close to the enthusiastic level of Kurt, SM2-7871 who came to the QTH bringing 6 receivers, tape recorders etc. After a few hours of connecting cables he was setup and ready to listen to the bands. Luckily propagations were good and he managed to get a few new IDs even though he has got a lot of them. The 1200m long beverage that SM2LIY put up a couple of days before he arrived did help, aiming at the center of US at 315 degrees.

Here are some pictures

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I did some work this weekend on both fixing the cabinet which will contain various switching for the 20 and 40m stack in the 60m tower. It was not in good shape so I need to seal some holes and also repaint the whole cabinet.

I also did work on the 20m beam. The driven element is almost done so hopefully next weekend we will hoist the antenna up to 60m. I have also decided to go with an 4el OWA design for the 40m band since the new extended bandwidth makes it a suitable antenna. The current 40m yagi is already 4el ut the boom will be shortened a bit and the first director will be moved closer to the driven element to make it 50 ohms and also better bandwidth.

Here are some pictures

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