Hot weekend

Last weekend we had really hot weather, it was awful. Us northern vikings are not used to having over 30C and when there is no wind at all and no water nearby to swim in we aren’t very happy. The vodka me and SM3JLA drank on Friday night was not the best either since it made coping with the heat a lot worse, at least that is my guess.

Anyhow, after we recovered we did fix up the 6el for 10m that we intend to put up at 45m in the 60m tower. This antenna is meant to be an antenna which will be great during the period before the band really opens and closes and with marginal propagations, since it will have very low angle of radiation. However we are missing a feed line for it, so it will need to wait a bit more until it goes up. On Sunday we spent time doing lumber jacking. I did cut down a bunch of trees while SM3JLA was putting them in piles so that its easier for the neighbor to pick it up with his tractor and timber wagon. This is so that the 40m tower fits. A bit more and then we can measure out exactly where we want it and can see if anything more need to be taken down for the guy wires.

A problem we’ve gotten is that our usual aluminum supplier does not want to sell to us anymore. Its been done so far as a favor since they usually don’t sell to people without companies. But now they claim that prices has doubled and we’re trying to find some other place to buy aluminum. So unfortunately all the antennas project this summer are put on hold 🙁 Its mainly the 3el mono bander for 40m that we feel “pain” in all of this, since the antennas for the 40m tower is not such a rush since the tower is not up yet. If any Swede is reading this and got a tip of where to get hold of decent priced aluminum, please give us information about that.

I gotta tip about a new blog which I read and like a lot. I pretty much read through it in two long sessions, very interesting reading about the adventures of K4ZA who is a famous tower climber in the US, this also made me order his book. Check it out at http://www.k4za.com .

  1. Mike:
    Thanks so much for your kind words! I hope you
    enjoy & benefit from
    Antenna Towers for Radio Amateurs.

    It truly was a “labor of love” writing it…
    vy 73 Don K4ZA

  2. I suppose you have already checked http://www.tibnor.se/ ?
    I’ve bought aluminium from Tibnor here in OH and they always ship it from SM.

    GL,
    pete
    oh3mep/k0ssu

  3. The problem here in Sweden with Tibnor is that they only sell to companies. I even tried to get an account at Tibnor with a company that I am part owner of and they just replied that I should contact some local distributor. Which means insane prices.

    But thank your for the tip.

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