This weekend me and my girlfriend went down to the QTH on Friday. I did put up boards on one of the walls in the barn and after that I spent some time upgrading the openASC boxes to the newest firmware, and a bug I have been struggling to find seem to have been solved. On Saturday I did spend time to prepare for having the excavator over but when I called him he was out flying, so he said he’d be there on Sunday instead.

I continued some outdoor work mixing concrete in the wheelbarrow since the concrete mixer was borrowed by SA2AWO for his tower project. It needed four of those wheelbarrows full with concrete to fill up the hole I dug for the 18m tower. The result is quite nice, I will need to adjust the bottom bracket for the tower a bit but that is easily done with four nuts under the bracket.

When I was inside resting I heard a horn from a car sound, and when I checked SM3JLA came driving and apparently he did morse code on the horn but I was so surprised so I didn’t copy it, but he states he was signaling a very inappropriate Swedish word which I will not mention here 😉 Anyway, we spent the evening finishing up the elements for the 40m Yagi and tensioned the element guy support. On Sunday we carried them out to the field where the boom was waiting, and we mounted them onto the boom and also mounted the boom strut and its guy lines. Now I’ll let it hang for a week until next weekend when I will tighten it and mount the parts for the feed system, coax etc. We also finished up the elements for the 10m Yagi, so now it is missing the coax and then its ready to be tuned and hoisted. Unfortunately this will not happen before SAC CW, but hopefully before SAC SSB at least.

On Sunday afternoon after SM3JLA left, Göran from a local company in the village came by with his Åkerman H3 excavator. He dug holes for the 18m tower guy anchors which we hoisted down and filled up again. We also fixed the anchors for the 40m military tower project and did dig the hole for the base of that tower, and finally he made a ditch between the house and barn where I will put down another 110mm tube to pull cables through. I need to buy some bends for that tube and we can start filling it up again next weekend.

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This weekend was spent building antennas and SM2LIY was here the whole time burning branches from the trees we’ve taken down to make room for more towers. On Saturday me and SM2XJP spent some time putting on the headlights for his car and I also put up the inner roof of the isolated room in the barn. Now I soon have a nice work place during the winter!

The center parts of the 40m elements are now finished, now I need to spend some time in the newly bought lathe at work and make the outer parts. SM2LIY and I also carried the boom out to where the beam will be assembled so hopefully this weekend I’ll get the elements on the boom and the boom strut mounted as well. Then let the strut hang for a week and tension it again so maybe we’ll get it up soon! The 10m beam will also need some work, finishing up the elements and mount the driven element parts.

SM2LIY stayed at the QTH and burned more branches from the forest work we did in the summer for the 40m tower, so now all that work is done. I plan to mark out next tower project which will maybe be started next year, and if some neighbor is going to have a forest company taking down trees for him, I’ll ask them to shovel the trees to make room for that tower as well, because that is so much work that I think we’d have work for the whole year otherwise. Bigger trees, closer located and bigger footprint.

I also wrestled a bit with the guy anchors I did make in the summer for the 18m tower. I felt they were heavy to handle myself and I was wondering if I was getting a cold or something but then I weighed them and they were 75kg each, so I guess that was the reason whey they felt heavy…they actually were heavy 🙂 Anyway, I managed to get them into position and added the guy rod so if I just manage to get an excavator this weekend it should be ready for some towers.

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The problem with the kitten and her mom seem to have solved itself. When I came here they were both gone, so I assume that she took him home. She was probably coming from a home with dogs, since she didn’t get angry at my girlfriends dog, so my guess is that is why she did give birth to her kittens at another location.

I built a fold over base for the 18m tower. It turned out pretty good and was built from what I had here at the QTH. It isn’t a copy of the regular solution using a big base plate, but this should work just as good. Now I need to transport the tower from my work QTH to this place, which I hope will happen in two weeks.

SM2LIY showed up on Friday and we did some work dragging branches and I did cut down the last trees I felt needed to go around the WARC tower. As usual its a lot of work, even if its just a few trees these were a bit bigger, about 10-15 years older than the ones on the other side of my property. There is a bit more work to be done before I can get the excavator there, so I guess that won’t happen next weekend but we will see. SM2LIY had plans on going here a bit before next weekend and start the work, so maybe there is hope.

SM2NOG showed up today and with him was SM2HWG with wife Cindy. I hadn’t met Cindy in 2 years so that was a pleasant surprise. They picked some berries since I have quite a lot of them on my property. SM2NOG had the base bearing for the 40m rotatable tower project with him, a real beast which comes from a crane. Its 1m in diameter and I didn’t manage to lift it with my arms, and SM2NOG broke his back getting it up on the trailer. SM2DMU has donated a guy ring for us, which I also need to get picked up but there is too much work, so my hope of getting it up before the snow is kind of gone. We will aim for having the concrete poured and all guy wire anchors in the ground. The rest of my effort will be put on the WARC tower, which will be holding a temporary 5el 20m beam (which I traded with SM2DMU against an RA-400 military transceiver), because this is where we are very limited today. But now this will give us a independent rotatable antenna for 20m, which will help a lot when working multipliers.

I also have plans on measuring out where our third tower project is going to be located. This is because its a lot of trees that need to be taken down, and its on the most dense part of my land, which would mean that doing it manually would probably take a whole summer. So my idea was that if some neighbor is going to have machines nearby, they could take down the trees I need them to remove at my place too. This would save me lots of time and might even bring me some money to. The tower is a 52m high 76/1000 (76mm tubing, 1000mm side/side) which has been donated by SM2EKM and is currently lying at his ranch, waiting to be transported down to SJ2W. Plan for this tower is to hold a 80m yagi and the big stacks for 10/15m on side mounts.

Inside the shack the fourth operating position was finished. Now I just need to get some connectors on a cable and its routed out to the switch room too. So the four openASC controlled positions are finished and seem to be working!

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