SJ2W Contest Station

Yesterday I decided to remove the rotor of the big 60m tower. This is because it is currently not strong enough, it has got some cracked weld and also I found a big crack in the metal when I removed the gearbox. This is however rather easily fixed and I will add some more iron to it so that it gets more stiff and doesn’t flex so much.

When SM2XJP arrived I decided to climb the tower (I don’t climb it when I am here alone) to add the boom side support for the 20m yagi and tighten some stuff up on the 40m yagi. I also needed to attach the cables properly to the tower. I use duct tape every 50-100cm or so on cables running in the tower, to avoid them from bashing against it when its windy. When I arrived up to the top 20m yagi the boom support was missing its clamps, so I could not do that. However I finished up the coaxes and on the way down with help of SM2XJP on the ground we lowered the 20m temporary 3el yagi @20m and also the low 15m yagi which will be moved up to 17m when the top 15m yagi (27m) and low 20m yagi (23m) is in place.

I also have fixed the cables between the 7/8″ in the tower and the 7/8″ on the ground. I used 3 pcs of RG-217 for this with 7/16″ connectors. I also put the RG-17 for the 160m vert, 80m 4-SQ and 40m 4-SQ in the ground and routed them into the switching room together with the other coaxes.

Today it was rainy so I decided to build the verticals for the 40m 4-SQ. The tips were made out of an old ZX 15m monobander and I added some 31 and 35mm tubing to that plus put 12mm tips (tip of the ZX yagi was 15mm). This turned out great and hopefully I will be able to have them un-guyed since they stand rather well protected with forest all around.

Here are some pictures

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Here are some more pictures taken by SM3JLA.

Now I am putting together some tubing for the 40m 4-SQ which I have planned to have up before the winter. Also some work on getting the top 15m yagi ready to be lifted.

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Posted under Tower work, Work weekend

Today we worked again on the 40m yagi. SM3SGP spent many hours up in the tower and we managed to get the beam up horizontal and at the first try without tuning we had 1.2:1 on 7050. We will try to tune a bit on the hairpin match but it is currently good enough, so I don’t think we will tilt the driven element to adjust the tips.

PA3DAT arrived at the station while I was up in the 18m tower putting the rotator in the tower. He stayed with his wide during the whole day and evening until the next morning. It was a very pleasant visit and they are welcome back anytime! He was hoping to help out with the 40m yagi but unfortunately it was too windy. However it was just as windy today when we decided to continue with the work anyway.

I will post more information later, too tired now.

BIG thanks to especially SM3SGP but also SM2XLL and SM3JLA for helping out during the weekend!

Check the pictures below of the newly put up 3el yagi @60m height!

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Posted under Tower work, Work weekend

In the end of the weekend SM3SGP arrived up from SM0 area to help out with the 40m yagi work. Since its a bit tricky to get the 40m yagi up in the top of the tower, especially since the 20m yagi is hoisted he will build the yagi up in the tower. He has done this before at his Contest station SK3W with good result. The idea is to first lift the boom up, then the director, reflector, tilt it up and at last hoist the driven element up and mount it to the boom.

But first we needed to level everything out and hoist the beam for some tuning. We had a pretty good result at the first hoist but we did some minor changes and got it to resonate with a 1.2:1 VSWR where we wanted it. However since the beam was probably still affected by the ground we might need to do some fine tuning in the tower when the beam is in place.

Now we are waiting for some calmer weather so that we can start the process of building the yagi in the tower, right now its too windy.

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Posted under Tower work, Work weekend