Monthly Archives: September 2011

Tower work

Posted by sm2wmv on September 26, 2011 1 comment

This weekend was spent doing some various things getting ready to lift antennas up into the 60m tower. The 6el monobander for 10m was finished. The SM2WMV hairpin design is now even closer to perfection, as its mounted on yet another beam. I used the 3/8″ superflex coax I got from SG3P. Unfortunately I didn’t have any 7/16″ connector that did fit this coaxial cable, so I used a PL259 which fits perfectly and soldered that instead. So I will need to get an UHF->N->7/16″ adapter mounted. Not the perfect solution but I will seal it well so we don’t get any problems in the future with it. SM2XJP helped me a bit to finish it up and we flipped it around and attached the boom strut to it. Hopefully we will get it up this weekend and the goal is to also get the 3el for 40m up, but I am happy if we get far enough so its tuned and ready for lift off.

I climbed the tower on Saturday with a rope and block. After getting up to 52m I attached the block and with help of SM2XJP we hoisted the tram wire and the block up to the upper guy wire point. The block got mounted and it was a tough job lifting 52m+ of 8mm wire by hand, but as further down one came with the wire the easier it got, since the weight of the wire itself goes towards equilibrium when it reaches the ground. It was funny because when lifting the wire up to the block with the winch, the block I was using for the lifting rope made terrible noises. But after spitting on it a few times it did quiet down, innovation is the key to building a big contest station 😉

So now the tram wire is in place, the 10m yagi is ready to be tuned. So I am hoping to get to SJ2W on Thursday evening and if weather allows, we will lift the 10m Yagi on Friday. Then the next task is to hoist the 1/2″ coax if I have enough energy left. But if not we will continue work on the ground and hopefully getting the 40m Yagi tuned and ready to be lifted.

Also, big thanks to SM2RIX for giving us a bunch of 1/2″ superflex jumper cables with 7/16″ connectors! Thank you very much Rickard!

Here are some pictures from the weekend and also from SAC CW,

[Show as slideshow]

SAC CW 2011

Posted by sm2wmv on September 18, 2011 Comments Off

                    Scandinavian Activity Contest, CW

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

Class: M/S HP
QTH: Da Traesk
Operating Time (hrs): 24

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
   80:  283    40
   40:  557    61
   20:  929    66
   15:  333    57
   10:   63    36
-------------------
Total: 2165   260  Total Score = 1,315,080

Club: Worldwide Young Contesters

Comments:

This was fun. Propagations were outstanding in the beginning of the contest but
the usual aurora visited us up in the north and we as usual were saying that
the contest should have started a day earlier. However some hardware upgrades
made us able to beat last years score, even though propagations were down a lot
most of the contest. Activity felt low as usual from US but quite a lot of JAs
worked.

66% EU
16% NA
14% AS

Our mults are higher than last year and qso count just a bit below but qso
points higher. So we are very happy considering the propagations.

Now there are some antenna upgrades planned the two weekends before SAC SSB and
hopefully that work gets done in time so we can operate the SSB leg as well.

Check the website for lots of information on the ongoing projects and also
information about the station,
http://www.sj2w.se/contest/

Thanks for the qsos!

Cable trench

Posted by sm2wmv on September 11, 2011 Comments Off

This weekend not that much was accomplished at the QTH. Me and the girlfriend arrived very late on Friday with 24m tower which 18m of that will be used for the WARC tower. SM2LIY and SE2T showed up on Saturday and while SM2LIY was burning the last branches from the forest work, SE2T and I spent our time in the cable trench. We managed to get about 2/3 of it done, so there is a bit more to do before its all filled up again. SE2T also helped me a bit in the barn, we carried a temporary work table which I can use to saw boards when its raining outside. SM2XJP showed up a few times as well and helped me a bit in the barn as well.

SM2XLL also showed up on Saturday evening for some coffee and cookies. A cold which had been surfacing for a week finally broke out so I’ve been feeling quite down from Saturday evening until now, hopefully it improves fast.

Next weekend is SAC CW, which we will operate as SJ2W. Ops will probably be SE2T, SM2LIY, SM2WMV and SM3JLA.

[Show as slideshow]

Control box for the amp conversion kit

Posted by sm2wmv on September 7, 2011 Comments Off

I’ve been building a bit more on that conversion “kit” for making one of our manual tuned amps automatic (in this case, an 4-1000A amp). The idea is that you already have all meters etc on the amp, grid current, anode current etc. So this box is just a way to tune the amp manually but then save the settings and they get loaded automatically when the box is switched from LOCAL to REMOTE mode by sending commands over the openASC bus. The C1/C2 PAD is to switch in extra C in the Pi-filter. As a first step the openASC box will send the band information and when the amp should be tuned, but later I will make an similar box as the openASC which will show grid current, anode current etc in the shack as well.

I am quite pleased with how the box came out, except the REMOTE ending up too close to the hole.