[SJDXA] report from the general

[Bob Schenck N2OO]

Hi gang.
 
We had a productive day out in the woods today.  It was warmer than the last
few days, and even some sun for a few minutes.  With the storm hitting
tomorrow night, having a work party today was a good idea.  No way we would
have been able to complete all the projects on Friday.....especially if
there is new snow to contend with.
 
The new Inverted L is in the air.  We moved the bottom mounting bracket from
the NW to the SE tower, and extended the height of the SSV with a 10' piece
of new conduit, so the top of the vertical is about 67 feet high.  Four
quarterwave elevated radials were run through the woods.  We did our best to
tune each pair of radials like dipoles but my MFJ box wasn't cooperating
very well.  Bottom line, it looked like the vertical has a curve that
bottoms at 1830 but we need to apply RF to see how its actually tuned.  We
should allow at least an hour to get this antenna completed.
 
As Gerry mentions below, we had assistance from three SJDXA members
today.....a big help.  They assisted with measuring the wire needed for the
inverted L (nearly 700' in all) and also cut 12 new 65' radials for the NW
and NE beverage projects.  
 
Three radials were installed at each end of the new NW beverage.  A coax was
extended across the back lawn and connected to the termination cable from
the conduit on the east side of the building.  All we need to do to complete
the NW beverage is to add the termination resistor on Friday.
 
At the end of the day, we also did some preliminary work on realigning the
NE beverage.  We used the GPS coordinates provided by N2OO to locate the
correct near termination point, which was pretty much where we expected it
would be by walking off 100' from the current antenna position.  Three
radials were installed at that location in preparation for moving the
element on Friday to eliminate the stagger and to straighten the element.
Three radials for the ground system at the far end were left attached to
trees along the driveway, so we can find them after the storm tomorrow
night.
 
So the outdoor work remaining:
 
1.  Install termination resistor (470 ohms) at end of new NW beverage.
 
2.  Take SWR readings on inverted L using 756ProII.  Adjust antenna length
as necessary.  Install Unun if SWR is unacceptable and retest.  TEST with KW
to determine what if any RFI issues exist that might impact WYRS broadcast
audio.
 
3.  Take action required to realign NE beverage element.  Assume this is a 3
man job, 2 hours.
 
4.  Inspect and  Tune main TX antenna elements.   If time permits, determine
resonant frequency of delta loop, and adjust length as required (it should
be ~1818 Khz)  2 or 3 man job 1 to 1.5 hours.
 
5.  WALK all BEVERAGES.
 
Oh forgot, Gerry inspected the main TX antenna and reported everything
looked good, no damage from the last two storms, and only minor adjustments
(e.g. rope tightening) should be needed on Friday.
 
Setup will commence at 9 a.m. Friday.  Would like to get most of the outdoor
work behind us as early as possible, so the indoor setup team has more than
enough time to get things sorted out no by 3 pm.  So upon arrival, indoor
team please proceed to set up an Xcvr/amp pair so we can quickly start tests
on the new Inverted L and tune the main TX array too (at power).  In the
event the Inverted L turns out to be an RFI problem, we need to allow
sufficient time to reinstall the Vertical Dipole as our backup TX antenna.
 
Overall, we're in great shape going into the weekend.
 
73,
 
John W2GD
 



 

See ya' in the Pileups!

73!

Bob Schenck, N2OO

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