Pool Maintenance

This is what happens when you leave a pool stagnant over winter! Time to drain and scoop up the mud and slime. 

CE6LNJ shack operational

It's such a pleasure operating the FT-950 .... Now to build the Solid-State Amplifier! 

CQ World Wide DX contest

More than 600 contacts worked this weekend on 80 - 10m.

New Office / Radio Shack

This weekend I'm working on the finishing touches for my new office space / Radio Shack.

The partition wall I put up needs a second coat of paint and I need to find matching skirting board and cornice for the ceiling. I've decided to cover the painted concrete floor with laminated flooring as it is durable, quick and easy to install.

I've made the hole in the wall for my RF cables; I have a bench that will fit nicely in this space.

Watering system connected

Today I connected the drip watering system to the recently planted strawberry bed. The setup is quite simple; I have 32mm tubing run from our water source to the vegetable garden. A 1/2" hole is made in the distribution tube - I heated a small piece of 1/2" copper water pipe and pressed it into the pipe to make a hole that is just the right size for a rubber grommet which the plastic fixture pushes into, making a water tight seal. A short piece of tubing then connects the control valve, which has a special twist connector on the other end to connect the drip watering ribbon.

Once all the planted rows have been connect, I'll bury the distribution tube to protect it from the sun etc ..

HF vertical

With the CQ World Wide DX Contest just round the corner, Alex - CE6SAX and I decided to see just how much aluminum tubing we could get vertical at his country location near Puerto Saveerdra.

Read more here: http://ce6lnj.com/hf-vertical-experiment/

Preparing the strawberry beds

This year we are taking the strawberry cultivation to the next level. The strawberry beds seen here have been covered in a special plastic, white on the upper-side to reflect the sunlight and a black underside to block light getting to the soil thus keeping in the moisture and controlling the growth of weeds.

A drip-feed watering system has been installed down the center; circular holes will be cut in the plastic for each strawberry plant.

To the right, a small bed of peas are beginning to sprout. 

As always, our son likes to join in :-)   

Spring has arrived!

The days are growing longer and temperatures reached 24c this week. Time to get the lawn mower serviced. 

Partition wall in progress

Work has began to convert the down stairs garage / storage area into an office - Radio Shack :-)

Preparing the vegetable garden

Spring is around the corner, so I've made a start turning over the soil that was occupied by the runner beans.

CQ WPX contest

Fresh Strawberries

Our strawberry patch still producing several kilos of fruit each week. These beauties freshly picked today!

Ist contact on 6m

I made my first DX contact on 6m this evening! ..... I was tuning around the bands when I noticed a strong beacon signal on 50.019Mhz which was XE1RCS/B, so I put out a CQ on 50.110Mhz, and sure enough a Mexican station (XE1RZL) came back to me almost immediately ... we exchanged 5/9 reports - not bad!

QSO with G0VQY on 10m

My antenna farm - CE6/M0CBF, Pucon Chile

Had a nice chat with Penn, G0VQY on 28Mhz during my lunch hour today, conditions very strong; my first G-land contact from our home in the south.

St. Tropez

"St. Tropez" is the pool design that we chose to have built for the summer. Whilst the summer months are quite short in this part of the world, I felt that I could justify the expense as temperatures in summer regularly exceed 86F/30c and it also doubles as an emergency water source in case of drought or fire.

The JCB broke ground early December 2011, a month later than the agreed start date!

The excavation took less than 5hrs to complete, I was truly impressed at the skill and precision of the JCB operator. You'll notice in this picture that the stair entrance is quite narrow, I later modified the design to expand this area into a shallow play area for kids.

Notice the layer of volcanic sand and ash less than 1m from the top soil ... I guess that means that the area experienced a major eruption from the nearby Villarrica volcano not that long ago!   

Finally, the project was moving so I thought .... But the builders disappeared, no materials were delivered as promised and along came Christmas and New Year!

Work resumed early January, which of-course turned out to be a very hot and dry month!

After negotiating the changes I wanted to the pool design, I had to go to Santiago for a week, so I missed the wire framing and early construction - fortunately work proceeded as agreed without me.  

Pool pumps are very noisy, so I insisted that the whole filtration system be located as far away as possible (max 10m from furthest skipper ), and be sub-terrainial to help muffle the sound. A steel hinged cover protects the pump house from sun, rain and curious intruders ;-)

Pool sun deck finished, now ready to paint .... if it only stops raining that is!

Pool painted and illumination lamps fitted .... just add water! It took around 2 days to fill using a standard hose pipe - at some point I'll connect the main water feed. It then took a couple of sunny days to raise the temperature from a frigid 17c to a more comfortable 24c 

Our son Ethan contemplating how to retrieve the 'duck' pool thermometer - ummmm bad idea, I knew I should have purchased the plain model!

Despite the delays, I'm very happy with our new pool ... my only worry now is whether I can get the safety fence built around it before our son takes an unscheduled swim!

HAM Radio

MA5B mini beam installed.

I finally got my rotator and multi-band HF antenna on the tower this summer with the help of a friendly neighbor. This 3 element antenna is not a yagi, but a clever arrangement of single elements and matching circuitry that provide resonance without a turner on 20, 17, 12 & 10 meter amateur bands. It is a 2 element directional beam on 20 & 10 meters.

Despite the obvious sacrifice in gain, I'm nevertheless very pleased with the performance and flexibility of this antenna. I've not been very active so far, but I have received good reports from the US on 20, 12 and 10m.  

Above the MA5B is 5 element mono band yagi for 6m (50Mhz); I did plan to install a VHF directional, but there isn't really enough space without compromising the performance of the other antennas. So I'll mount it in a fixed position further down the tower.

Assembly of the MA5B 

Summer Projects

It's March already, which means that summer is officially over in Chile - the last two months have just flown by! The weather in fact has turned pretty ugly over the past few weeks, heavy rain, wind and the odd thunderstorm.

Still, I managed to squeeze in a few projects which I'll summarize in the next few blog entries.