Springtime Lull

The bad spring weather continues. This has been the wettest early spring I can remember for perhaps 10 years. At least it has warmed up, although we still have regular cold weather. That isn't so bad except that it comes with high winds and snow. It is always amusing to see the tulip shoots pushing up through the snow cover. This weekend it was a summery 25° C on Saturday and snowing on Sunday.

About the only productive work I've done outdoors was several hours clearing brush along the Beverage lines in preparation for summer growth, and to take down several large dead maples that threatened the towers or buildings. Felling trees isn't so hard but cutting them up and disposing of the debris is a lot of work. I also spent time putting connectors on and testing Heliax runs that I hope to bury in a trench to one of the big towers either this spring or in the fall.

I did manage one tower climb to resume work on one of my projects. That was great until I fired up the station for the Ontario QSO Party and found out I had trouble with both prop pitch motor rotators. One wouldn't turn at all and the other had an intermittent direction pot.

Remember this uncomfortable truth with large stations: you can be as thorough as you like yet there are so many things that will go wrong. Maintenance is never ending, no matter how well you build it.

I've had time to operate yet admit to doing little. General chatting doesn't often interest me and there has been little happening on-air to attract me. I've been passively monitoring far more than I've operated.

• There are no interesting rare DXpeditions at present. 3Y0K brought excitement for a while and then there were S21ZD and XX9W, plus a few others that drew my attention. The latter were difficult due to being shots over the north pole. They seemed to have more luck with Europe and with FT8 so that's what they did. 
• Despite that difficulty, with daylight shining on the Arctic there have been regular openings most evenings to Asia over the pole, at least on 20 meters, and some on 17. The several days long dive of the solar flux below 100 bodes ill for 15 and 10 meters. The years long slide down to the solar minimum is well underway.
• 
  6 meters briefly showed signs of life around the spring equinox, as expected. I heard South American stations almost daily for nearly 3 weeks. That dried up in early April. In any case there were no new ones to work. There was a CE0Y station active but not on 6. It will be several weeks yet until we see the first glimmerings of the summer sporadic E season.
• 160 meters has been quite poor. Most evenings the Europeans are very weak. Even the FT8 activity is subdued. There has been little DX at our sunrise openings, just the occasional VK and KL7, with just one JA heard on FT8. I expect better with the quiet geomagnetic conditions at present. As previously mentioned I heard but did not work 3Y0K on top band. I could have tried harder but it was inconvenient. Soon I'll be rolling up the radials for the duration of the farming season.
• There are no major contests. The next is WPX CW in late May, which I may enter for practice since it's not one that I particularly like. The only QSO parties that interest me are the Ontario QSO Party, where I want to raises the activity level, and perhaps the Florida QSO Party since it is one with lots of activity. Handing out a mult was fun in OQP but the contest was otherwise not terribly exciting.

While the rain pours and the winds howl, keeping me off the towers, I am dabbling with various indoor projects. 

• 
  I made significant strides on the software for the next version of my antenna selection software. Although it won't be ready for a while yet I am getting close to connecting the new UI (user interface) to the Arduino-based antenna switching system. The design process has been interesting since the revised UI requires a different relationship between clients and server. I may write about it when the project is done.
• To support the antennas slated for construction this year and next I am preparing Heliax runs to the tower that hosts the 20 and 15 meter stacks. That tower also has a 30 meter delta loop and the tower itself is shunt-fed for 160 meters. A new trench will be required, running parallel to the one I dug 6 years ago. I'll toss a Cat5 cable into the trench for control line expansion.
• Most of the material for the new 3-element 20 meter yagi has been assembled. I'm thankful that the aluminum is on hand because, have you see the price of aluminum recently? Antenna prices are going up, commercial or home brew. It ain't easy being a big gun!

This article took me so long to finish that I finally did spend a few hours on the towers. Many more will follow as the spring weather stabilizes. I'm beginning to realize how much work there is to do this year. I'm getting exhausted thinking about it. The springtime lull won't last much longer. Then, if I feel lazy, I'll have different excuses to avoid work on the station, such as ticks and the growing hay.