Fallow Summer

My on air activity is limited at the moment. This is partly due to the arrival (finally!) of warm spring weather. There is so much to do that the weather makes attractive, both radio and non-radio related. The other part that makes me relatively inactive is a lack of antennas. That may sound odd when you consider the number of towers and antennas that I appear to have. But there are reasons.

The new big tower was raised to 120' in early May with the help of Eric VA3AMX and my regular assistant Don VE3DQN. The top 20' are waiting for my decision on a rotator. I will then fabricate plates, machine the mast and select bearings. There is no rush since the stacked yagis for 20 and 15 meters that will go on it are not ready.

In the background you see the 150' tower. The TH6 and XM240 up top have intermittent problems and so they must come down. I wanted to do this before the hay got too high (and the ticks emerged) but is delayed until the hay is harvested. I could not arrange a full ground crew and rig the tram line in the short window after the new tower work was completed.

Once they are down and repaired the XM240 may end up in its original position atop the Trylon tower at 21 meters height, below the 6 meter yagi. However this depends on whether I can build and raise a new 40 meter yagi onto the big tower before winter. It will be a challenge. The TH6 and TH7 will be stacked at a low height on one of the big towers to cover North America.

The 160 meter vertical is disconnected and the radials rolled up, again in consideration of the haying. To simplify redeployment this year I left it tied to the tower top and secured the wires to a guy anchor to keep them from tangling with farm equipment.

My 80 meter yagi project suffered a setback when the stinger for the driven element broke and the top half speared into the ground. After putting it up I discovered that the column (compression) strength of the stinger was insufficient to withstand the tension on the rope and wire supporting the parasitic elements.

My hope was to delay replacement, but it must now be dealt with before I can resume work on the yagi switching system. The job is not difficult just annoying, especially since I was making good progress on the direction switching system construction and installation. In any case the low bands are not attractive during summer due to the high noise level.

Inside the shack there are also problems. One is that the recently acquired Drake L7 amplifier has a couple of faults. One is the T/R relay (a common failure point) which has intermittent high contact resistance on receive. My gentle cleaning temporarily cured the problem but now I must take more aggressive action. Eventually I will replace the open frame relay with something faster and quieter.

The second fault is the loading variable capacitor. Occasional arcing on the low bands led me to discover that several rotor plates are not straight and get too close to the adjacent stator plates. With the capacitor pulled pulled from the chassis I found that it had been previously worked on, and not very well. The repair is easy but time consuming. Again, there is no urgency since I am relatively inactive during the summer.

Last weekend was CQ WPX CW. Although it is not one of my favourites I wanted to play around for a while with high power. Since that wasn't possible and because of the antenna situation I opted to enter as 20 meter low power. It is perfectly possible to have a few hours of fun with a crippled station.

The one antenna I do care about right now is the 6 meter yagi. At least that antenna is trouble free. If only DX conditions were better. Sporadic E season started well but has entered a lull in this part of the continent.

I'll have more to say about yagi construction when I'm further along in that project. The bulk of the required aluminum is in hand and machining of the tubes has begun. I want the yagis ready to fly in August for testing and adjustment after the hay is harvested and it is easy to move around the fields. This project will keep me busy since with my lack of antennas (and sunspots) there is little incentive to spend time in the shack. Well, at least when 6 meters isn't hopping.