Hunt for QRM!

Since moving permanently to our country home I have been plagued with very strong S9+ QRM (man made electrical interference) on the HF bands. I've not noticed it before because I previously only operated 2m VHF FM. 

I've been very concerned about this noise since it was making HF operation unbearable with this horrific static. I was worried that the source of the interference may have been coming from a nearby faulty line transformer or perhaps even my neighbor's micro hydro generator! I didn't rate my chances of resolving the problem in either scenario. Who cares that their chinese voltage regulator is spewing RF garbage right? 

Well in a moment of desperation, this evening I decided to start investigating the source. I used my handy Yaesu VX-5 to track down the culprit. To my relief the noise disappeared as I moved away from the house. OK, something inside is generating this horrible noise. Since it was already dark, hitting the main circuit-breaker was not an option without incurring the wrath of my wife and son ;-) so I began eliminating fridges and electrical gadgets one-by-one.

Eventually I found the evil pollutant - a crappy AC/DC adaptor from Taiwan that was providing power to an equally badly shielded GSM box that provides a cellphone circuit to the house alarm system.

What a difference! I can now hear faint signals on all bands! No more QRM :-)

Heating Success!

I purchased the radiators from the same company that supplied the pellet boiler. To be perfectly honest I didn't do any fancy calculations to work out the thermal load of each space/room that I wanted to heat. I just made a reasonable guess based on what I've seen installed in other buildings etc .... Naturally to some extent the radiator size is governed by the physical location, under windows etc ... so I used double panel radiators to ensure that I had enough heating output range - I figure that I can always reduce the flow if the room gets too hot!

So I labored for 7 days, installing all 10 radiators; I had most of the pipework already in place during the initial house construction but I had to make some modifications and additions to accommodate the new location of the boiler and several other radiators - it took me longer than I expected and I'm shocked at how expensive copper is these days! No wonder PVC is now used.

On Tuesday afternoon the heating engineers finally turned up to install and setup the pellet boiler. It took them a day and a half to plumb everything in and setup the system parameters. Then came the moment of truth - to fill the system. Consider the fact that most of the pipe-work was soldered together several years ago and that 90% of the system is no longer easily accessible you can imagine my apprehension and concern for possible leaks! It was also quite late 9:30pm, so even less keen to potentially flood the house!  but the installers were eager to finish the job so I reluctantly agreed to continue.  As the water rushed around the pipes I held my breath and listened for the worst. As the pressure reached 1 bar I began the process of purging the system of air by 'bleeding' each radiator. So far so good! When the boiler reached its operating temperature the circulation pump kicked-in and sent hot water through the system - pisssssshhhhh oh! Water sprayed out of several joints in the laundry - sh#* - part of the pipework that I had modified that day (because the original routing created a potential air trap) had not taken the solder properly - this is what happens when you move/reuse joints; you have to be especially careful to re-join everything with plenty of solder. So the clean-up pretty much killed the rest of the evening.

The next day, the system had to be drained of fluid in order to repair the leaking joints. This took a couple of hours and yet another trip to Villarrica to purchase more anti-freeze. That's one of the downsides to living in the 'campo', you don't have a DIY store around the corner to buy parts. So once again the system was filled, purged of air and brought up to temperature. Success! no visible leaks, but not all the radiators were getting hot. To remedy this, radiators that were hot were closed to increase the flow to those that were cool; after a second round of purging air this did this trick - all 10 radiators were now hot  - fantastic my central heating project is finally complete!

Central Heating Project

This is probably one of the more ambitious projects I've undertaken, especial since I'm not a plumber by trade. Anyway .... the story begins as far back as 2001 when I began to design and install the pipe-work for the heating system. Over the years the house has been slowly finished, but up until now no radiators had been installed since we have mainly occupied the house during the summer months and so the pipework remained unused for many years. But planning ahead, I knew that someday would would live in Pucon on a full-time basis and thus would require central heating.

Originally I expected to use a standard Gas combo boiler (10 years ago when the price of gas was half reasonable); but gas has probably tripled or more in cost today and so I looked around for alternatives. In the end I settled for a pellet boiler due to the very low emissions and cost per KW/hr which works out at about $35 pesos (~$7 cents) at today's prices. I also love the fact that biomass pellets is basically renewable fuel which can even be produced at home from grass and leaves with the purchase of a small pellet mill; and of-course pellets are completely safe and easy to store and handle unlike other heating fuels.

We took delivery of our new 29KW boiler last week. We decided to transport it ourself from Temuco to Pucon to save some cash - but I kind of under-estimated the size and weight of this thing! When the fork-lift dumped the boiler in the back of the truck - which sank considerably (240kg), I soon had a moment of panic thinking how the f$%k am I going to unload this thing back at the house!

Fortunately, we have some good neighbors whom were eager to help. Since no one had a forklift or any way to even use a simple winch, we had to think of some other way to get this beast out of my truck and into the house. Last year we had our entrance/drive way leveled out which just happened to create a level change which matched the height of the rear of my truck which allowed us to slide the boiler out. We (five men) then rolled the boiler over to the house using 3 circular fence posts. It was comical to watch, but effective ... like transporting a tremendous Moai from the stone quarry to its final resting place.

In part 2 I'll describe the installation of the radiators and the Pellet boiler.

Picking Blackberries

Autumn is approaching here in Chile and the blackberries are beginning to ripen. We had a heavy down pour of rain on Friday, so the next day we took advantage of the sunny day to pick blackberries with our son Ethan. It reminded me of when I was a kid picking wild fruit :-)

Our dogs love blackberries!

HF Portable

My portable HF Station set-up on the deck. A Yaesu FT-817 running on internal batteries + Auto turner, fed into a vertical 'Pro Whip' that I picked up last year in England. Propagation was pretty good that evening, with strong signals from Australia and the US.

Country Life

It has been hot all week in Pucon, Thursday was no exception - not a good day for lugging firewood around but we took delivery of a lorry load the night before which they dump at the edge of our property. The ~1.5m logs had to be cut and stored; even with two experienced laborers with a chainsaw, it took us 6 hours to complete the task. I used my truck to ferry the cut wood to our storage area. One thing for sure is that I'm glad I don't do this every day for a living as it is brutal on the back!

Broken Toe to start the New Year!

The new year hasn't exactly started off on the right foot! I don't believe in fate, I know exactly the stupid decision I took that led to snapping my right little toe in two! - That is, it's not a good idea to ride quad bikes with flip-flops - especially off-road :-) At the time it didn't hurt at all; I remember looking down after striking some low vegetation which ripped-off my flip-flop and noticed that my little toe was at a strange angle ... umm that's not good!

But shortly after the pain grew intense and I went into shock. I took a pain-killer and rested a while to recover enough to drive myself to the emergency room. The above x-ray clearly shows the displaced fracture. Actually, the worst part of this experience was the two injections of local anesthetic into my foot - which felt like the needle was being pushed through the bone!

After a few mins the doctor then pushed and tugged my toe to realign the bone - I couldn't watch, I wanted to throw-up at this point! Then to add insult to injury the clinic stung me for $182,000 pesos (~$400 USD) for the treatment - I won't forget that bike ride for a while, but I'm just glad that nothing happened to Anita who was riding 2-up with me.