This weekend a lot of work got done at the station. I showed up on Friday and later SM2LIY also came along. We also got some help from SM2XJP, SM2XLL and SM3JLA showed up on Saturday evening and stayed until Sunday evening.
We added three 7/8″ coaxes from the switch room out to the tower. I need to get hold of some more connectors for the airflex cables though. On Saturday I worked the whole day on getting the rotator cabinet containing the “logics” for the rotator control, putting on the chain etc on the rotator and late Saturday evening I was finished and could rotate the tower with indication and everything. The indicator consist of a rotary encoder with 360 pulses / lap and a counter which shows the heading in the shack. The old rotator box was rebuilt to just handle 24V signals instead of 400V since the new rotator cabinet has got relays used for switching the motor on/off, changing direction etc. It has also got a 10 second delay (made with a micro-controller) which makes it impossible to start a new rotation before the tower has fully stopped. A really nice feature was that I added a VIP-switch in the cabinet as well so that one can rotate the tower from outside.
On Sunday we hoisted the 6el monobander for 15m up to 14m height under the first guy ring of the 60m tower. Another 6el will be added in the future at around 27m but this needs to be done in the right order, so that it is not in the way when hoisting the other beams. The 6el @14m does not have a rebuilt feedpoint system, so it will need to be taken down later to change that out. However now we have a good antenna up for CQWW CW and the other contests this winter.
Also big thanks to Gus (Kunnari), SM3SGP (SG3P/SK3W) for sending me 50 pcs of 7/16″ chassie connectors, which will be used when I build the antenna switch system for the station this winter. This was very appreciated!
Here are some pictures
