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.