Monthly Archives: January 2011

New TX/RX relay

Posted by sm2wmv on January 25, 2011 Comments Off

We had some problems this weekend with a relay which would sometimes not switch properly, so we would lose the RX. We are quite certain that it is the TX/RX relay for the amp, which I built earlier. Since its not in a warm place I suspect that moisture can be one problem, so instead of messing around with that just before CQ 160m I just built a new TX/RX relay with vacuum relays instead.

I have some soldering left, but the mechanical part is almost done, just need to add some shield wall and cover for the back of the relays.

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Will the snow ever stop?

Posted by sm2wmv on January 24, 2011 Comments Off

Its a lot of snow this year in most of Sweden and Burträsk is no exception. Last year we had a bit over one meter of snow in the end of March, with most of it coming in March. This year we already have over 1m and its just the end of January, where will it end? I don’t really mind though, since my kind neighbor has been shoveling my yard. However, we needed to shovel the snow from the barn this weekend. SM3JLA probably shoveled about 4/5 of it though, so I don’t take any credit myself for it 🙂 I spent most of the time on the ground shoveling away snow instead while SM3JLA did the tough work.

SM2XJP took the snowmobile to try making a “road” out to the 160m vertical, but he gave up after he passed the 4-SQ because he noticed he wouldn’t make it down there. It is just cold powder snow, so he pretty much just sunk. So me and his son Tobias had to walk and make a path for him which he could drive on to avoid getting stuck anymore. So now there is at least a “road” out to the 4-SQ which one can walk on.

My GF Anna did the awful task of going out to the 4-SQ and getting rid of the snow from the guy lines. Because if you get too much snow on those, there is a risk of the tubing snapping since you will get a very high vertical load on the verticals. So she went out to all the guy lines and shook the snow off in the 1m deep snow, so it was a good workout.

People @SJ2W this weekend were, SM3JLA, SM2WMV with GF, Molly, SM2XJP, SM2XLL and Tobias (son of SM2XJP).

Here is a nice picture that SM3JLA made of one of the photos, with me (SM2WMV) up on the roof

Here are some pictures

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More work on the in-band electronics

Posted by sm2wmv on January 19, 2011 Comments Off

Just did a bit more work on the electronics for in-band listening. Attached a couple of relays and the control board. Now I will make three boxes which can mute an RF signal (with a relay) and start to connect things to the control board. I will also need to make the control box, which will basically just have a few switches and connectors. Not control electronic in that one.

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In-band position update

Posted by sm2wmv on January 17, 2011 Comments Off

I’ve worked a bit on the electronics which will make it possible for us to have a radio on the same band as the runner, listening on the same band while the runner is not transmitting and thus making it easier for us to work multipliers and in-band qsos. The system will be interlocked and when the mult radio wants to work a multiplier it will use the amp from the runner, switched with a transfer relay. It will also have a priority switch, which handles the PTT function, with functions for “First wins”, “Radio 1 priority” or “Radio 2 priority”.