It's Finally Up !!!

Being a Saturday, I slept in a little bit. As much as I wanted to lay in bed a little longer, there was work to be done that needed to be completed today. Not tomorrow. Today!!!

S9v31 antenna

I needed an assistant to get the task done, so I woke up James earlier than he wanted to. After a quick bite, we were both ready. We first worked on the vertical antenna. Being telescopic, I extended it to its full length of 31 feet. At each section, I had to manually squeeze each clamp to prevent each section from collapsing down (by gravity). Once fully extended, I carefully placed it over the pipe I buried the day before. The ground had hardened and the pipe was as sturdy as it can be. James was my pair of eyes as I hoisted the antenna, making sure it didn't come in contact with any power line.

As expected, the slight tilt of the pipe was visible as the antenna stood slightly off vertical. I had a remedy for it, but would do it later once the ground radials have been laid out.

The next task was laying out all 16 ground radials. This was quite tedious because I had to layout the radials all over the ground (backyard), as equally as possible. Since the antenna was located close to the back of the house, there was very little space for the 26-plus-foot radials. I purposely left this part of the gorund "empty" and concentrated the radials across the larger portion of the backyard. I could add shorter radials later, and still work well (that what the books say). I didn't have any grass and the  yard was just plain hard dirt. To keep the radials in place, I had to drive lawn staples over each radial. With a hard ground, it was not as easy as I hoped. I didn't have enough staples, too, so I had to get more to finish the job. But that's for tomorrow.

VHF/UHF J-Pole Antenna

After laying out the radials, I connected the ground plate to the antenna with the 12-inch copper wire I prepared yesterday. I hooked up the coaxial cable and ran it to the computer/radio room, which I call the "shack". I didn't want to drill any holes on the side of the house to bring the cable in so I fabricated a cable pass-through made of wood, which was mounted against the sliding window. For security, I used a 2x1 inch wood to jam the sliding window (with the pass-through on one end) on its frame so it could not be opened from outside the house.

Then I hit a little snag. The 50-foot coaxial cable I used wasn't long enough to reach the antenna tuner at the "operating position". Fortunately, I had a spare 6-foot coaxial jumper and a barrel connector, which I used to extend the cable reach. Not the ideal set up, but it will have to do for now. I will have to replace the cable anyway with something longer and one that had a high power rating, as I planned on using a linear amplifier. After the cable was connected, I fired up the radio and the first QSO (a conversation or contact between 2 stations) was heard. We're now in business !!!

S9v31 & J-Pole

There was one more antenna that needed to be put up. This was my VHF/UHF dual-band j-pole antenna. This was a reliable, low profile antenna, which I won at a raffle during one of SBARA's monthly meetings. This antenna install was a temporary one, and all I needed was to have the j-pole clear the roof. I used a few PVC pipes connected end-to-end, and mounted on an outdoor umbrella stand, high enough to clear the roof. Since communication on VHF & UHF were via repeaters, I was quite happy with the height of the antenna. I just made sure that it was secured and wouldn't sway with the wind. After running its coaxial cable through the window pass-through and connecting it, I turned on the radio and test triggered a couple of repeaters. It worked !!!

The bulk of the work was done. There were minor things I still needed to do, which could be done the next day. I planned on attaching an all-weather nylon rope to the vertical antenna, a third of the way up, and pulling it slightly to keep the antenna vertically straight as possible. I would also purchase additional lawn staples to make the ground radials more secure to the ground. The rest of the afternoon was spent rearranging equipment and fixing up the shack.