Monthly Archives: September 2009

SAC SSB and other activities

This weekend we had planned to run a few qsos in the SAC SSB contest while working on the outside projects to get ready for the contest season begins for real. SM2LIY did 90% of the operating in the contest while me and SM3JLA focused on getting the chimney fixed but also getting the 4-1000A amp to run on 160 so we can try out the new top band antenna. On Sunday SE2T also showed up to help us out and did cut down some trees to free up space to hoist antennas into the tower and also helped with assembling a part of the 40m yagi.

We managed to get the amp working but we need to do some adjustments to get it working on 80m again since we needed to remove a capacitor because it was at the wrong place when 160m was added. This will easily be fixed with a vacuum relay though. Propagations were terrible though when the amp was ready for action but we managed to get qsos with TO7RJ (with SJ2W, SM2LIY and SM3JLA) and also 9M2AX and VK4MM. However I will need to do some more testing before I will give out a statement on how well the place works on 160m. Maybe this weekend me and SM2LIY might do some comparisons between SK2AT and SJ2W with the help of Dave, N2NL. So Stay tuned for those results…

Scandinavian Activity Contest, SSB

Call: SJ2W
Operator(s): SM2LIY, SM2WMV, SM3JLA, SE2T, SA2AWO
Station: SJ2W

Class: M/S HP
QTH: Da Traesk
Operating Time (hrs): 20

Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
——————-
80:
40:
20:
15:
10:
——————-
Total: 1427 175 Total Score = 577,325

Club: Top of Europe Contesters

3830 post

Action pictures of 160m work

Here are the pictures I just promised in my earlier post. I found some energy to upload them to the page but I haven’t written any comments to the pictures. TNX Anna for the pictures!

Enjoy!

160m vertical ready for the snow

This weekend SM2XJP helped me to fix the top aluminum tube for the 160m vertical. It now consist of 24m of WIBE tower sections and an tapered aluminum tube which is in total 14m long making the vertical 37m high. On Friday evening when me and the gf arrived to the QTH I constructed the mounting brackets for the CUE DEE clamps which holds the aluminum tube. These clamps make it a lot easier to hoist the top tube instead of regular exhaust clamps which would have been a nightmare to use, atleast for this.

On Saturday morning SM2XJP arrived and I climbed up the tower to mount the bracket for the top tube. When that was done we ate lunch and after lunch started to hoist the pipe. After a while in the tower I finally managed to get the tube into position and the guy lines were secured and on the way down I removed the temporary steel guy wires. After a cup of coffee me and SM2XJP spent the afternoon tuning the antenna to have 50 ohms.

We also struggled a bit before we managed to mount the 7/16″ connector to the RG-17 cable but after a while we managed. I bought some 7/16″ connectors for 1/2″ cable from SM2A (SM2ILF) which can be used for RG-17 if you remove some parts of it. You will not have the cable mechanically fixed very well but some tape solves that.

Now we’ll see how well the antenna works, when we have an amp working on 160m!

Here are some pictures, I will post more action pictures later when I have time.

Beverages “finished”

This weekend I brought with me some 500m of new RG-58 cable to use when attaching the beverages to the antenna switch located in the shack. All the cables were used up and everything is now connected to the 4×8 beverage switch and remote switchable via the internet for remote control. SM2LIY barely got any sleep during the weekend because he could not stop listening to the broadcasting stations all over the world and I got impressed by the beverages. I have always thought we do hear very well at SJ2W but now we hear even better, which I barely thought was possible.

Last year I (SM2WMV) worked A LOT of qsos on 80m, this winter I think that 160m will be the band with the hopefully soon finsihed 160m vertical and all these listening antennas.