The GM4AFF Blog

I spent 7 hours out in the antenna field yesterday fixing the 20m yagi and the 40m rotator and lots of other stuff. I bought a new (Lazy Tongue) riveter so I was able to replace the small (2ft long) broken piece of the 32ft boom on the 20m yagi. The rivets were too big for my pathetic toy one to handle. The tubing for replacing the broken elements arrived this morning, so that's the next step.
I replaced the broken Kenpro 600 with a HAM 4 on the 40m tower. I used some crimped connectors for the connections, but one of them was loose. I didn't discover this until the rotator was bolted to the tower. So that's now fixed and working.
So even more progress.

I saw the first swallow of the year yesterday, which is about (or maybe exactly) the same day as the last two years. I finally collected the new spiggots for the 20m tower, and got the head unit fitted last night. There's so much broken and needing repaired I don't know when I'll get it all done.
The Kenpro 600 rotator on the 40m tower has lost 3 teeth off the main gear. Understandable because it was never going to be able to handle a 402CD. Now I have to find parts. The HAM 4 on the 10m tower really just fell apart. One of the limit switches seems to be jammed open and the terminal block on the base has disintegrated. The boom and 2 elements on my 4ele 20m yagi broke so the bits have been ordered for that and a new rivetting machine has been ordered.
Have decided to go to GD (Isle of Man) to do the IOTA Contest. This seems to have upset a few folk. None of whom live on the Isle of Man. I don't believe that the Isle of Man is a place to win IOTA from.

Haven't done much radio now since the Stew Perry Contest back in December. Decided to bite the bullet and get the 2m amplifier fixed, and try to rekindle the dying embers of 2m. And it was great fun, with pretty average conditions for me, and a best DX somewhere around 850km in JO32 with DF0MU. I believe some folk worked an EA, which was nice. I did the 6 hour (3 + 3) section - the first 3 and the (nearly) last 3 hours. Seems like the level of activity up here is awful. I believe this is due to the restrictions in the use of the cluster.
The setup was an Elecraft K3 with Allan's (GM4ZUK) Elecraft TV144 transverter, an old MuTek MGF1302 on the mast, and a 17 element Tonna at 50ft or so, on the tower nearest the shack.
It occurs to me that I bought this house because it's a good VHF site, and I've spent the last 10 years trying to do well on HF with little success. Perhaps I ought to erect a decent system for VHF. Four big yagis would be difficult to keep up though.
Here's a pic of the broken head unit off the tower...

The problem I have is that the tower is a very heavy duty 5 section tower, but only the bottom 3 sections are used, so the head unit needs these silly tabs to mate the head into the top section.

I've spent the last few weeks playing with Skimmer. I use a Softrock SDR receiver, and a Clifton lab Z10000 buffer amp on the IF output of a K3. The sound card in my PC is poor so I don't see much (in terms of bandwidth) but I've got a better new sound card on the way. I found it quite hard to get everything set up and working and had to e-mail some people to get some help. It's wierd that this new technology created such a wave of controversy on the contest reflectors, but very few people are actually playing with it - or perhaps they're not letting on. The info on the web is actually not very helpful, or too simplistic.
It was interesting to watch 160m last night during the CQ WW 160m Contest, or 40m during the REF Contest yesterday afternoon.
I now have my new shack PC all wired up and fired up. Unfortunately we (my son) seems to have lost our (his) copy of WIndows XP so I've had to install 2000 Pro, which works, but means that I can't beta test iHamLogger, which I had planned to do.
Both the AFS CW and SSB Contests are now past, and the 70MHz Cumulatives are under way. And today I competely forgot about the latter. However, it does mean that the year is well under way and spring will soon be here - I see a lot of snowdrops pushing through.
I repaired and re-erected the 160m dipole today. I spent a few hours giving away some points in the CQ WW 160m, but I seem to have a problem with every receive antenna in some way now, so that'll be the next thing.
Ho Hum.
Regarding the comment about Heathrow, my mother deosn't actually live in Canada and isn't dying or dead either. I decided that I would delete my comment though, and try to stick to the ham radio script here. I will probably create a new blog for travel and other related issues. My comments were also off the mark and not particularly well written, for which I apologise.

As one who travels quite a lot, I'm intrigued by the Greenpeace purchase of land on the proposed site of the Heathrow third runway. I simply would like to know what alternative Greenpeace are offering? A passenger in a fully laden Boeing 747 produces less carbon than a driver driving the same distance in a Mini. But it is not possible to get to Kuwait, or Sidney, or most other places in the world in a Mini - you need to fly. So, come on, what is the alternative? I know there are some, but I'd like to hear the argument for them backed by science and logic.

I spent about 5 hours in the Stew Perry contest - I was pleased with what I could work. We had to go out to dinner with friends on the Saturday night so I missed the JA opening which seems to have been one of the best for years.
The 4m Cumulatives got of to roaring start this morning - I only worked 9 stations as I had to get out do some stuff, but there seemed to be a lot of activity and some high serials. Managed to work G4RFR for best DX and a few other good ones, but G3TCU lost me in the noise.
Having lost the top of the 80m vertical in the gale in December I decided to tie an 80m dipole to the top of the decapitated tower and slope it to the south. I've never tried a sloper in AFS before. Seems like it was worthwhile, as I just achieved my highest ever score. Also, I tried a new tactic, starting with S & P from the top down, rather than the bottom up, which is always like trying to platt fog ...especially from GM at 1400 in the afternoon.
My AFS score are here for interest:
1999 - 212
2000 - 214
2001 - 212
2002 - 210
2003 - 193
2004 - 180
2005 - 220
2006 - 214
2007 - 211
2008 - 235
2009 - 261

I have just returned from a quick trip to Singapore, which also managed to give me Oman, UAE, Malaysia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the Maldives in the DXFC count (www.dxfc.org). Quite a little adventure in 8 days, taking me to 111 countries.

Unfortunately for every up there's always a down. My antennas were hammered in a gale while I was away so I came back to a nice mess. The head unit on the 20m tower had broken off.

Allan GM4ZUK came over and helped me lower the shambles to the ground. I've quickly tried to tidy up and put the top band dipole at the top of the tower ready to make a few Q's in tomorrow's Stew Perry contest.

As it turned out I was unable to even make a stab at CQ WW CW. It was always going to be a no-no on that particular weekend as my son and wife were to have a kidney transplant op on the 3 Dec. In the end events overtook us and he was taken in to hospital as a result of a reaction to Heparin. So, the op was cancelled. We've all got back to normality now.
I spent a couple of hours working some nice DX ion 40m and giving away points to my firends and others who were deserving. Please to work 3X5A on six and P3F and others on five bands. I was very pleased to work some Pacific DX on 40m and managed to catch W6, W7 and VE7 long path in the afternoon.
The antennas have only been up and working for a week and already I lost the top 30ft from the 80m vertical and a bit of my 20m yagi D1, so now it's a 3.75 element yagi. I busted the 160m dipole while fixing the 80m vertical. They're both back working again, but the resoanace of the 160m dipole will have to be reduced prior to the Stew Perry contest this Christmas. I also have some work to do to put an 80m trap and a set of capacity hat wires on the 80m vertical to make it work on 160m.
I made a few QSOs in the 144 AFS contest on Sunday and was surprised at how many people could hear my I started with 25 watts, then switched on the amp ...and ran 100 watts. It's still a waste of time trying to do any 2m contesting with less than 400w from my QTH though. And it was a UK contest, with the big hitters just beaming to Eu and working stuff that way. When you call them they spend 5 minutes asking you to repeat your call then they hear you, give you a report and tell you that you're off the back of their beam. Fine, but you're off the front of mine, you're weak and I can still hear YOU! Sadly a few were heard and called that I never did work. But it is real fun to work someone who is weak, far away and can hear well.

I spent most of Saturday and all of Sunday daylight hours working on antennas. I hauled up the 160m dipole on Saturday morning only to discover that it was resonant on 2.005 MHz. This was interesting because the wire I use is actually 2-core ex-GPO stuff which is very strong, and seldom breaks. Of course, when it breaks, you can end up with a situation where the actual useful part of the wire that is elecrically connected is not the full length, as had happened in this case. It's more complicated than that because there was already an existing repair, which had a single wire electrically connected through it. Blah, blah, you get the point. It's only a f***g dipole!! But it works like a dream now, resonant on 1840 with 1:1 SWR.
Having frigged about with that all morning, I moved on to the 80m vertical, which still needed to be erected in it's 40ft form, get the guys set, then have the top 31 feet added and guyed. I had bought a load of new 3mm rope - stuff which I thought would be a lot better than the blue rope which I (and lots of other people) use. The reason most of my antennas fall down is because blue rope degrades in sunlight. The 3mm rope is for the top set of guys. I noticed that during the day they seemed to go loose, and I had to re-tighten them twice. All seemed to go well, the vertical is resonant on 3650 which was a surprise (but at 71 feet this makes sense). The SWR wasn't too good, but I then spent most of Sunday morning walking out 32 radials and that helped. It also helped to flatten out the SWR bandwidth. It's still not great but that must be due to a problem with the final run of coax from the box in the field to the antenna base, although the last connecting piece was replaced on Sunday.
I was quite chuffed to have got all 6 aerials working (after a fashion) by lunchtime on Sunday. Now I started on the receive antennas. Both the ewes and beverages all needed major work. I replaced the terminating resistors on the ewes, and used the new (home made) matching transformer on one (which I had made for Shetland). The beverages required a lot of work. I replaced about 150 feet of wire on the SE one, and sorted out the supports where the horses had tried to eat and head-butt them. The wire was degraded because of so many breaks due to deer crashing through it and rabbits eating the wire at the end where it's in the weeds at ground level. I had to repair a break in the NW one too, but this wasn't such a hassle. Nevertheless, it took the rest of the day. As it turned dark I went indoors to check them. I didn't hear much to give it a good test on 80m but they are working. On 40m it was more successful. I could hear W7WA as clear as a bell long-path. I flashed up the linear to call him only to discover that the indication on the 40m rotator controller wasn't indicating. I checked that it was still responding to rotation commands - it was, so it's another rotator cabling issue to deal with. I worked him anyway, as he was dropping into the noise.
As I drove down the road this morning I saw that the top section of the 80m vertical is bent over. Unfortunately the new rope which I have bought may not degrade in sunlight, but it stretches, which is probably a far worse problem!
I'm happy to think that all around the world others are also wrestling with antennas, getting them ready for next weekend. And of course, there are lots of people travelling off to exotic parts this week as well. Wish I was!! Good luck to them all!

Last year I went to CT3 (Madeira) to do CQ WW CW. This year, as my wife is donating one of her kidneys to my oldest son, and the transplant operation is on 3 Dec, I am probably not going to be be making a serious entry.
I have spent the last two weekends working on getting the antennas at home up to spec. The list of problems is long:
Both beverages are broken, both Ewes are broken, the 80m vertical is lying on the ground with broken guys, the top band dipole is broken at three points with the balun also disconnected, the Prosistel rotator on the 20m antenna tower is broken, and the reflector on the WARC beam is lying on the ground.
I spent last weekend lowering the big Westower with the 20m yagi, and removed the Prosistel rotator. The rotator controller is indicating 112 degrees all the time and the antenna appears to have spun round at least 3 times clockwise - the coax to the 20m yagi and the WARC beam are both damaged and will have to be chopped and re-terminated. I unwound the antenna by spinning it anti-clockwise 3 times - the limit stop didn't prevent me. Having removed the rotator I opened it up - it was as clean as a whistle, and the pot was working as it should. The Prosistel uses a 10 turn pot - you could turn it 5 times in either direction without damageing the thing. The controller has an electronic stop to prevent that happeneing, but it doesn't always work. Even when the rotator was off the tower the controller was still indicating 112 degrees. This is OK (I later calculated), but the manual incorrectly says it should indicate 000 degrees. The manual is rubbish, but this is made up for by the rotators ability to turn a house. To cut a long story short I eventually found that the cause of the wrong indication was due to a break in the cable underground. The cable runs for about 150 feet in a pipe, and unfortunately, I had to haul it out to find the break. It was an old join that had corroded. Moral of the story is never use a cable with a join, in a pipe. It will corrode.
This weekend was spent mending the feeders to those antennas, realigning the rotator, replacing the rotator cable, replacing the 160m and 80m dipole uphauls and getting the tower back up. Added to that I also lowered the 40m yagi tower because the 402CD SWR has gone up over the last year. The point of resonance has gone down to 6940kHz - why...? I lowered the tower, shortened the driven elements by about 2" and found that the point of resonance was now 7120kHz. This always mystifies me! I ended up extending and shortening the damned thing until eventually I had to add 3 inches of WIRE to the end of the driven elements to make it resonate on 7040. Next November I will have to remove these because the thing will decide to resonate on 6940 again.
As light faded today I was out there fixing the 160m balun, but it got too dark to see so I'll have to haul that up next weekend.
Still, what else is there to do at the weekend!? Rag chew with your old mates on 80m I suppose.