Category Archives: Work weekend - Page 22

The military tower is up

Posted by sm2wmv on August 17, 2013 Comments Off

I arrived to SJ2W on Thursday evening when SM2XJP picked me up in Skellefteå since I had a very heavy bag with me, with tools etc I used in Moskojärvi when we picked up the last things from the 60m tower takedown last year. SM2LIY also came to SJ2W and me, SM2LIY and SM2XJP did pull out more coax to the inband location, so now we have one more roll of 7/8″ to get out before it’s there. I also did the final preperations for the military tower, attaching the top tube so that I can lift the 40m yagi in the top of the tower and the guy wires were attached.

When we were out in the forest SM0W called me and said the coffee was done. He had arrived with a colleauge since they were doing a “tour” up in north SM fixing commercial radio stations and had arrived and prepared the coffee for us. They stayed an hour or two before they left off.

Today we managed to get a crane here and lift the military tower. It all went very well and the tower was up and in position under an hour, I think we are starting to get a hang on this now 😉 The tower felt pretty good to climb in as well, we will see how it feels when I get up in the top, probably moves a bit more but still, during the lift the tower didn’t bend much at all, so it’s extremely stiff.

SM2UVU, SM2NOG, SM2XLL, SM2LIY, SM2WMV and Tobbe from GTL did the tower lift.

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Military tower progress

Posted by sm2wmv on August 6, 2013 1 comment

We’ve gotten a lot done on the military tower project as well. I’ve welded some iron on to the guy wire ring we got donated by SM2DMU. I want to make sure that no water can leak into the bearing so it freezes up in the winter. Outside I am welding metal bars and on the inside SM2UVU has fixed some plastic that will make sure no water leaks into it from the inside of the ring. Not sure if it’s needed but a lot easier to do it now then needing to do it later.

I also helped Andreas at work to build a stand for his heat pump. The regular ones they sell seem to be for south SM since they don’t handle a lot of snow depth but the one we built does 🙂

My neighbour took back his concrete mixer for a few days to help his sister out but when I got it back I spent half of a day to mix concrete in the 25C heat which was tough by myself, but luckily after half of the time the sun at least got covered up by some clouds. The result came out great and I added the insulation around the concrete and added three ground rods which were connected with 1.5″ copper strips in a ring around the foundation and three 1.5″ strips up to connect into the K-600 tower section which SM2RMG sponsored us with.

Then SM2XJP got to borrow a tractor from a local tire shop and filled the hole back up and also lifted the bottom bearing to the foundation and it looks great. I need to adjust it a bit (2mm or so) to make it perfectly leveled.

I’ve also gotten permission from a couple of guys to run cable over their land to one of my neighbours fields to put the inband vertical. I’ve also gotten permission to errect a tower there later, maybe next year? Got a tower lying around that needs a new owner? 🙂

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4el @EU for 20m redesigned

Posted by sm2wmv on August 6, 2013 Comments Off

I’ve said for a couple of years that we need to redesign the 4el for 20m since the bandwidth is a bit narrow and it differs too much from the other antennas, so the amps gets problems when switching antennas or powersplitting. Now when the neighbour took back the concrete mixer because he needed to mix some concrete for his sister, and I was wondering what to do SM2XJP gave the suggestion to take down the beam. So we did and put it up the next day with another design (OWA) which I had already made, it just needed to be transfered to the correct tapering. The result is great, now the SWR is not over 1.3:1 on the whole band and is a lot more similar to the big stack.

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Big update, 40m yagi fixed, concrete pour etc

Posted by sm2wmv on July 27, 2013 Comments Off

Lots have happened lately. I’ve been having help here at the QTH and haven’t really felt like spending that valuable time updating the web page. However, this made it a nightmare since I had pictures from different sources and a lot of them!

First off I spent time at a friends place helping him to build a 2nd floor to his house. After this I went down to SJ2W and spent 1 day before leaving to go to my parents place down in SM3. I spent a few days there and on last Friday SG3P came up since he was going to go up and help me mainly fixing the 40m yagi in the top of the 60m tower. The elements turned on the boom a bit a couple of winters ago and it’s been like that since, very hard work to fix it up at 60m. We went up to SJ2W on Saturday but it was very windy so we did other things meanwhile, such as making the base for the 40m tower.

I have added description on the pictures so I believe that is the easiest way to check what has happened. I got lots of help this week from SG3P (SK3W), SM2XJP, SM2UVU, SM2XLL, SM3JLA and SM2NOG. Great progress! Especially huge thanks to SG3P who spent another week at SJ2W helping out!