I’ve done some work on the military tower getting the guy wire bearing water proofed with some material that SM2UVU brought. I have also gotten help from SM2XJP who borrowed a tractor so that we could move the tower sections and assemble them. It all went very smoothly and hopefully next weekend we might get it up.
Unfortunately I need to start working now again, so I won’t be able to spend as much time here.
When Gunnar, SG3P was here he recorded some videos with his helmet camera. I had forgotten to share these so here they are,
Inspired by Gold Rush Alaska when they pump out their glory holes 🙂
Tower work by SG3P
Moving clouds
We’ve gotten a lot done on the military tower project as well. I’ve welded some iron on to the guy wire ring we got donated by SM2DMU. I want to make sure that no water can leak into the bearing so it freezes up in the winter. Outside I am welding metal bars and on the inside SM2UVU has fixed some plastic that will make sure no water leaks into it from the inside of the ring. Not sure if it’s needed but a lot easier to do it now then needing to do it later.
I also helped Andreas at work to build a stand for his heat pump. The regular ones they sell seem to be for south SM since they don’t handle a lot of snow depth but the one we built does 🙂
My neighbour took back his concrete mixer for a few days to help his sister out but when I got it back I spent half of a day to mix concrete in the 25C heat which was tough by myself, but luckily after half of the time the sun at least got covered up by some clouds. The result came out great and I added the insulation around the concrete and added three ground rods which were connected with 1.5″ copper strips in a ring around the foundation and three 1.5″ strips up to connect into the K-600 tower section which SM2RMG sponsored us with.
Then SM2XJP got to borrow a tractor from a local tire shop and filled the hole back up and also lifted the bottom bearing to the foundation and it looks great. I need to adjust it a bit (2mm or so) to make it perfectly leveled.
I’ve also gotten permission from a couple of guys to run cable over their land to one of my neighbours fields to put the inband vertical. I’ve also gotten permission to errect a tower there later, maybe next year? Got a tower lying around that needs a new owner? 🙂
I’ve said for a couple of years that we need to redesign the 4el for 20m since the bandwidth is a bit narrow and it differs too much from the other antennas, so the amps gets problems when switching antennas or powersplitting. Now when the neighbour took back the concrete mixer because he needed to mix some concrete for his sister, and I was wondering what to do SM2XJP gave the suggestion to take down the beam. So we did and put it up the next day with another design (OWA) which I had already made, it just needed to be transfered to the correct tapering. The result is great, now the SWR is not over 1.3:1 on the whole band and is a lot more similar to the big stack.
