This last week has been quite intense. I’ve spent some evenings finishing up parts for the 15m beams and during the weekend we managed to get all beams ready and lifted. The crew during the antenna lift was SM2XLL, SM2LIY and SM2UVU plus me. SM2UVU did the climbing while attaching the beams and when he had to leave at 1400 I climbed and we hoisted the stackbox and finished up some details on the side support for the booms. On Sunday I did another climb and finished up the work so we could try it out during the CQP which was fun. It seem to be a killer, during the wide open propagation’s during the day we didn’t see that much difference in signal strength but the signals were a lot more stable on the new stack. But when we got late evening/night propagation’s we could see 5-10dB difference which is what I was hoping for. Also it gives us a lot more flexibility being able to have three directions on 15m where two of the systems are stacks that perform very well on DX. I will be getting to test it out during the SAC SSB contest this weekend SOAB HP, so make sure to work SJ2W on as many bands as possible!

On Sunday SM2XJP came out and we put some connectors on cables and shifted out the 1 1/4″ coax to the 2/2el stack and put it on the new 15m stack. I would rather have one piece of coax to the main antenna system for a band and let the secondary system on 40m have 7/8″ with a few jumpers. Less risk of failures of the main system that way, also less loss on the 1 1/4″.

Now some smaller tasks are left to do before the snow is allowed to arrive. We need to get the tower rotating and hopefully we can get that done before CQWW CW. I doubt we’ll have it rotating before CQWW SSB but you never know, we’ll see. Currently I am feeling a bit drained on energy but hopefully that will improve during the week, it usually does.

So CU lads in SAC SSB and big thanks to SA2BRJ who did the optimization of the stack on the super computer they have at work!

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Lots has happened since the last update but I have been too busy to update the website, sorry for that. It’s been a lot of work and planning @SJ2W plus also my regular job and some private work on the side to bring in more money so I can build even bigger. Why? It’s fun!

Last week was spent at the station and a lot of progress was made. We got one beam assembled, tuned and hoisted into place. It resonates a bit too low (21150kHz instead of 21270kHz) and I blame the tram wire for the false reading. I’d like to get a tram wire with a non conductive material instead. Anyway, I figured that the beam will need to be lowered next year or the year after when I have plans to put up a 3el for 80m in top of the tower. So I will document how we tuned the other beams and when we bring this beam down we re-tune it to match the other four. We will tune the next beam pulling it straight up the tower, simulating the real position a lot better. We can get them to about 10-12m above ground which should be sufficient, I’ve seen before that after about 1/2 wl the difference seem to be insignificant.

We also managed to get all other elements made for the other four beams and SM2UVU arrived and helped me build booms when SM2LIY was working SAC CW SOAB HP. On Monday before I went back to the work QTH we carried the beams down to where the final assembly and hoisting will be done and I brought up some plates to be drilled here at work where there is better equipment.

I am starting to feel the effects of working intensively for a period of time so I really hope we can get the 15m stack completed in the next two coming weekends. I am starting to doubt to be active in SAC SSB even thought it would be fun the goal is CQWW SSB. but we will see how it goes.

Doing the Gentry @53m

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