This weekend SM2LIY was working the Scandinavian Activity Contest as SOAB LP. We did not know that the ACOM 2000A that we got sponsored by Ojojoj Music AB would show up before the contest, so SM2LIY was signed up for SOAB LP on the Swedish “National Team” in the contest. The propagation’s during the night with aurora ruined the chances of taking a new Swedish record, but Pelle seem to finish in second place after OH5Z.
On Friday I did connect the last antennas since we dug the cables down in the ground earlier in the summer, to prepare for the contest. I also built a mould which will be used to make the concrete base for the 40m tower. Hopefully next weekend we get to borrow an L70 tractor to get some gravel and maybe the concrete mixer from my neighbor, so we can start making the base for the tower.
On Saturday SM2XJP had borrowed a tractor that we used to move the tower sections and all the wood left from the house work during the summer. I have a small hay barn which is 20m2 that has been standing empty, so we moved the wood there and also the insulating material which was left for the last wall of the house, which will be finished next year. When SM2XJP got tired in his clutch foot I got to drive the tractor which was a lot of fun but when it got too exciting he got to take over 🙂 Now the yard is starting to look decent again but still some cleaning to do before we can call it ready for the winter, which hopefully wont arrive in a while if we are going to get that 40m tower up.
SG3P has borrowed me an TS480HX that I will be using to remote control the station. The openASC system is supporting control of all antennas etc remotely and now I’ve started to make it so that we can control it over ethernet as well, which will make it even more neat. However to make the station fully steerable I will need to add my rotator boards into the rotator controllers so we can turn the antennas remotely.
We got sponsored by SM2O and his Microbit 2.0 AB company with lots of remote gear. The well known remoterig system which is an excellent product to make remote operation enjoyable with very low latency, possibility to send clean CW etc. All in all we got a complete set of RRC-1258MkII with an extra control unit for SM2XJP, a Webswitch 1216H and also an RC-1216H for controlling the ACOM amplifier. I soldered some cables for this so hopefully I will have it operational after the weekend!
Stay tuned…
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