Category Archives: Work weekend - Page 31

Cleaing up the antenna switching

Posted by sm2wmv on August 5, 2011 1 comment

Today I first did work some on making it possible to use the fireplace in the basement again. Its half done, so I will try to finish it up tomorrow.

SM2LIY did move the 2 half squares for 30m to another position and has put the cables into the antenna switch room. A 6×1 box has been mounted so that we can hook up WARC antennas and route them to the main antenna switch system, so that no manual switching will be needed and the amplifiers can be used on them.

SM2XLL said yesterday that we should mount the stairs up to the switch room again since it has been removed since two years back. So today he showed up and we mounted the stairs again and also brought me some tape he bought in town. Its funny how a job which has been put on hold for 2 years gets done in 20 minutes, why not just do it at once?

I decided to do something I have been thinking of for a while since its been raining today, and that was to redo all the antenna switching so that its more tidy with cable ladders and proper accessories to mount cables easily. I also added the 2nd 6×2 switch which makes it possible for us to have four radios hooked up so that they can access all antennas plus I added a power splitter for 10m. Its only half finished though, I hope to finish it all up tomorrow except the power splitters for 80/160m which still need to be built. Do you have any 7/16″ females for chassie mounting which you don’t use? Then I need some of them to finish up the switch system.

Now me and SM2LIY will try the sauna since we now have the SM0W hinges mounted and ST0R in the log on the low bands 🙂

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40m yagi construction

Posted by sm2wmv on August 5, 2011 Comments Off

I built some tripods out of 2×4″ which we can use to hold beams waiting to be hoisted or just waiting to be worked on. I have been tired of not having enough support when building antennas so this was a new very appreciated addition. I moved the 6el for 10m waiting for its driven elements to two of the tripods and started construction of the 40m yagi. The boom strut was painted so that is finished and the boom, consisting of 90x5mm center tubing and 75×2.5mm end tubes was assembled. I also started construction of element-boom brackets out of steel, since I was to cheap to buy 6m long U-beam since that is very expensive. It weighs a bit more but I don’t think it will cause any problems.

SE2T showed up on Wednesday to help out so him and SM2LIY did drag some branches and moved some logs while I continued construction of parts for the 40m yagi. When they had finished their work they came over to help and with help of SE2T I finished the elements and I built the last element-boom bracket, which is currently being painted so it wont rust for at least a while. Now I will need to cut all the small dimension tubing and bring that up to the work QTH where I can use the lathe and make them fit properly in each other.

Thanks to SE2T and SM2LIY for the help!

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WARC beam finished

Posted by sm2wmv on July 30, 2011 Comments Off

Today the wasp war continued. This time I think I finished them off using three dl of gasoline into each hole and smoked them out. After that I dug the hole up and filled it back with gravel and sand. So hopefully the war is won but we will see.

SM2XLL came by and helped me to finish up the WARC beam so after he left it was pretty much ready to be tuned. I spent the rest of the day making a boom strut for the 40m 3el Yagi which is in the process of being built. I am quite pleased with how it came out and I really like using square tubing instead of round ones, makes it a lot easier to cut and get the welds nice. Now I need to clean it off and paint it and start building the boom for the Yagi.

SM2LIY arrived in the evening and after some BBQ we hoisted the beam into vertical position with the reflector down and tuned it up. We didn’t need to adjust it anything on 17m but on 12m we had to adjust the hairpin a bit to get a proper match. The beam is not designed to sit in the 60m tower, but it did fit when turning the beam about 30 degrees off, giving it enough room to have a few cm between the elements and tower. So that is the reason why its not pointing exactly as the other beams. The first tests seem very promising and the first QSO was ZP6CW followed by D2CQ.

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Finally some more vacation

Posted by sm2wmv on July 29, 2011 1 comment

Now I have another two weeks of vacation and all the time will be spent at SJ2W. I arrived yesterday with my girlfriend after we had been shopping some iron material for boom struts etc, but also a wood splicer (if that is what they are called) since my girlfriend loves to do that and I hate it, its a perfect match.

I also had war against wasps. On Thursday evening I got stung five times at two different occasions. Once it was when opening one of the doors to the barn, some wasps had built a nest on the door and they attacked me which caused three bites. Later when I was mowing the lawn I got stung two times more. So this created a war between me and the wasps. I first manage to tear down their nest, which I later sprayed with paint and I will continue to do this until they are all gone and I can enter the room again. Later when attaching the winch to the 60m tower I discovered another nest, but this time the kind in the ground. So I poured 1 liter of oil into it and plugged it closed with a stick. Hopefully I have won the war, but we will see if they are still trying to get in tomorrow and if that is the case I’ll use more spray.

Since I am using the work table for the wood splicer I had to build a new work table. I found an old thing in the barn which had wheels, so I modified it and attached a board onto it, so now I have a table which is easier to move and bigger. I’d like to protect the board with some sheet metal, but I don’t have any right now but might to get hold of some.

Tomorrow I plan to finish up the WARC beam, tune it and get it into position in the 60m tower under the first guy ring. Plan is to move it to another tower in the future, but I don’t know when I will be able to get that up.

I will try to update the web page a lot now when I have vacation, so stay tuned!