Countdown to CQWW

Two weeks to go and as usual we still have loads of things pending.

Today we had a short morning session to do a few more things. First off was to prepare the new stub location. Up until now the stubs were just thrown on the floor of the shack, since as we used to use two tribanders, we often needed to change the stubs on the coax of both tribanders. Now that we have monobanders for 10 and 15 metres, there will be virtually no stub changing to do, so we are going to locate the sixpack (and later eightpack) relay box and all the stubs in a cabinet outside the bunker.

The cabinet came from a scrapped tile factory and our first job was to empty it, here is Victor with the completed article:

 

 

Next, we needed to make sure that the stubs would fit. The biggest one is still missing, but we reckon it'll be ok.

 

 

A nice job by Juan and Elías, especially the double stub for 40m. These have been tested on the VNA and give over 50dB attenuation.

Here's the cabinet ready for hanging and then installing the relay box and all the stubs.

That will be a job for another day.

 

We then went on to look at the cabling for the 10m stack, which we finished last week and looks as above. Elias couldn't come today so we were left wondering which of the following cables was the one for the stackmatch controller:

Jose and Juan helped Victor get this all sorted while I went away to the bunker to check the EQ settings on the FT2000D. When I finished, the guys had already got it all hooked up, and also reeled together with the coax cable and rotator cable, all ready to roll out to the tower on our new hose reel, courtesy of Juan.

Eventually we will bury all of this but in the meantime this is a quick and practical solution.

More updates to follow as and when available.

Only two weeks to CQWW phone!