Apr 182011
 

I asked around on the SteppIr Yahoo group. Some hams told that SteppIr had used Mission boots for a short while but the are back to Femco boots which are better. Let me have the Mission boots… Today I wrote an e-mail to Vine antennas where I bought my antenna and Ron told me he would replace all the 10 broken boots for free. I only have to pay shipping. That’s what I call great service!

 

Apr 162011
 

Today I turned down the Versatower so I could reach the element with the broken boots.  I called Jan PA0VAJ who came to help me to move the 6 meter long ladder in the right position to the tower. Removing the elements was easy. To get them back was a little more pain. To be on top of a ladder and put with one hand a 5 meter long fiber pole in place was a no go. We decide to make something to support the element from the ground. Jan created a V on a piece of aluminum (see picture) and then it was an easy task. I had one spare boot and repaired another. Later I have to replace all the boots for better ones.

This helped to get the element back in place.

Apr 142011
 

In the morning I replaced the crashed computer by an other one and made it running with wsjt and tested it it txed the tranceiver. After I came home from qrl at 2330 local I inmediately fired up everything and after calling in the big pile up I finaly worked PJ2/PE1L for dxcc 102 via the moon.

Apr 132011
 

Today it was one of those days everything goes wrong. When I came home (late) from QRL I looked to the SteppIr antenna and saw that there was something wrong with the position of one element. (2 Fiber poles). When I looked better I could see that the boots who hold the fiber poles in place where broken! This has to be repaired in the coming days otherwise the element will come down.
Later in the evening I started up the moonbounce station to work PJ2/PE1L via the moon. I saw very strange noise all over the screen and of course exactly on 144114 where the DXpedition was transmitting. After disconnecting my Internet switches from power problems where not over yet. I switched off both computers with the power button on the front off the PC and noise was gone. Maybe this was not a good action because the main PC would not start up again. Windows-xp was crashed. I decided that it was enough for this day.

Apr 102011
 

Today I worked on 144 MHz moonbounce DXCC #101Hl5QO.