Sorry for the lack of updates lately. I have been very busy at work and weather was bad last weekend that not much outdoor work was done. However I managed to mount the new hairpin conversion kit a la SM2WMV on the 15m Yagi. SM3JLA showed up as well and since weather was calm for a moment we decided that we needed to get the 20m 6el yagi ready to be lifted. SM2XJP and me went to Rainer, SM2DMU to get some Parafil (similar to phillystran) for the side support of the boom. So now that antenna is ready to be tuned in and lifted into position. However weather has been too bad lately, it has been windy pretty much all the time I have been at the QTH so work has been focused on other things.

On last Sunday when I was climbing the tower to mount the lifting rope and tram wire, when I reached 33m, thunder was heard in the distance so I had the abort the climb and come down again. Hopefully I will be able to take a few days off work this week and get down there to make things ready so that we have atleast 6/6el + 4el for IARU when we will do 20m SSB as SK9HQ and act support station on 10m if we get sporadic E openings.

I did some work in the switch room as well. Installed some 7/16″ connectors on the 7/8″ cables from the 60m tower and also put up some mounting for a powersplitter. Five more powersplitters will be added for the other contest bands in the future when I get some more relays from Fabian, DJ1YFK. It was easily configured into the openASC system and is switching as it is supposed to, now only some antennas are missing 😉

I also got some help from SM2XLL to pull out 2 pcs of 7/8″ cables out to the 18m tower. These 7/8″ cables will be pulled up in the tower and we will need to add some more meters of cable to get into the switch room.

[Show as slideshow]

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 🙂

[Show as slideshow]

1 2 ►

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.

[Show as slideshow]