Monthly Archives: August 2011 - Page 3

Visitors to SJ2W

We had some visitors coming by this week. First we had a very pleasant visit from Aloys (PA3DAT) with wife Femma (PA3DWK) who did visit us last year as well. This is starting to be a tradition and I hope it continues since its always a lot of fun. SM0W with his girlfriend also showed up so we had a very nice barbecue the whole bunch which also included SM2LIY and SM2XJP. At 2100 PA3DAT had a sked with some PA friends and asked if he could use the station. He seemed to enjoy using rather large antennas compared to what he is used to, and he ended up working radio with help from SM2LIY until 02:30 when he felt he needed to go to bed. Maybe the longest DX stint at SJ2W except during a contest? I would guess so, at least on SSB.

SM0W and his girlfriend stayed until Friday. Teemu has now become our official sauna maintainer, since during his first visit during CQ 160m cleaned out the sauna and made it usable. This time he got some door hinges and mounted those to the door so that we don’t have what I used to call a “Norwegian sauna”, which means a door without any hinges needing to be lifted into place. So I have updated the “People” part of the webpage with Teemu as an addition with the title “Sauna responsible”. He also dropped of some openASC boxes which I will help him finish, so that they get the system installed at SK0UX.

SM2LIY assembled the 6m yagi which I bought from SM2O that SA2AWO transported to us. We put it temporarily on the chimney fixed south and the first qsos worked on it was DL2SWN via a sporadic E opening followed by 12 other stations. This had to be done since the SM2LIY QUADâ„¢ made by branches broke last year and is now mounted on SM5EPO:s car roof. We’ve been told that its a solid performer!

So big thanks to PA3DAT/PA3DWK and to SM0W and Elisabeth for the very pleasant visit.

40m yagi construction

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!