Some stuff done and failure

I got to the radio QTH on Thursday after me and SM2XJP went to CUE DEE to pick up some aluminum that we ordered earlier. After that we went to buy another 600x2400mm shelf for the radio shack to add so we can put stuff over the monitors. I also bought a 12mm thick OSB board (kind of like plywood) which is meant to be used on the wall of the switch room, so I can add all boxes onto it.

I also cleaned out the barn and made some holders for aluminum tubing which has been lying on the barn floor, a place I don’t like since it’s in the way and can be damaged. I was planning on doing a different solution but unfortunately the room of the barn was exactly 6m, so I needed some more space to fit the tubing. I think the result is pretty good, even though it doesn’t look as perfect as I was hoping for, but it was kind of tricky putting it up by myself.

The 160m vertical went QRT on Monday during a storm. We saw during a storm in the autumn that the three direction guy wire system of the top tube wasn’t sufficient, since such long lines when you can’t tension them properly, is useless and this failure was kind of expected. I had plans to take the top tube down and add another guy line, however snow came and tower climbing season was gone. I was hoping that it would survive until the summer but it didn’t. So now plan is to add one or two more tower sections, making the top tube section very short and if we add two more sections guy line won’t even be needed. The plan to add one or more sections had already been made since we wish to add an array around the vert in the future, however since those tower sections are still in SM3 we couldn’t do it last year. So this will be a project to have done sometime during the summer.

As soon as I get the TS-850 sold (hopefully in the end of March) I will order all material needed for the summers antenna building projects, so stay tuned for lots of updates.

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