Monthly Archives: November 2009

Getting ready for CQWW CW

This weekend a lot of work got done at the station. I showed up on Friday and later SM2LIY also came along. We also got some help from SM2XJP, SM2XLL and SM3JLA showed up on Saturday evening and stayed until Sunday evening.

We added three 7/8″ coaxes from the switch room out to the tower. I need to get hold of some more connectors for the airflex cables though. On Saturday I worked the whole day on getting the rotator cabinet containing the “logics” for the rotator control, putting on the chain etc on the rotator and late Saturday evening I was finished and could rotate the tower with indication and everything. The indicator consist of a rotary encoder with 360 pulses / lap and a counter which shows the heading in the shack. The old rotator box was rebuilt to just handle 24V signals instead of 400V since the new rotator cabinet has got relays used for switching the motor on/off, changing direction etc. It has also got a 10 second delay (made with a micro-controller) which makes it impossible to start a new rotation before the tower has fully stopped. A really nice feature was that I added a VIP-switch in the cabinet as well so that one can rotate the tower from outside.

On Sunday we hoisted the 6el monobander for 15m up to 14m height under the first guy ring of the 60m tower. Another 6el will be added in the future at around 27m but this needs to be done in the right order, so that it is not in the way when hoisting the other beams. The 6el @14m does not have a rebuilt feedpoint system, so it will need to be taken down later to change that out. However now we have a good antenna up for CQWW CW and the other contests this winter.

Also big thanks to Gus (Kunnari), SM3SGP (SG3P/SK3W) for sending me 50 pcs of 7/16″ chassie connectors, which will be used when I build the antenna switch system for the station this winter. This was very appreciated!

Here are some pictures

Some construction videos

I haven’t done any videos in a long time so I thought it was time for it. I think these things can be fun to watch, atleast for me to look back at what we have done.


18.5m long boom for the 20m 6el


The assembled yagi


The lights on the yard I installed a couple of weeks ago, helps a lot…

Example of how nice 160m can sound

This video shows how nice 160m can sound at a quiet QTH with good RX antennas. This is recorded on the 700m long beverage towards JA with SM2LIY behind the paddles working JF2WXS at the SJ2W QTH.

N7UA on 160m

This is recoreded remotely by SM3JLA on 160m during full daylight at 1302z. He peaked 599+10dB on the beverage!