The team of Laurie ZL2TC, Michael ZL2MY, Karl ZL1TJ and Lee ZL2AL arrived on Sunday morning early and got stuck into the work. A short time later Colin ZL4KJ showed up and had a great morning watching the proceedings. Nice to have you join us Colin. Karl the electrician seems to have missed his calling in life as he turned into a very professional painter for the morning and completed all the windows and surrounds as planned. Great job Karl!
Laurie was on a mission to lower the front porch pole and install a new Diamond 144/70Cm dual bander antenna and a folded dipole 2M antenna. Laurie, Mike and Lee quickly got into the job at hand and the pole was lowered to a 45 degree angle so that Laurie could work on the roof attaching the new antennas.
The job progressed nicely as our new low cost painter did his Vincent Van Gough on the windows and the base coat was finished.
The 80m/40m trap dipole was to be placed higher in the trees as an upright Vee rather than an inverted Vee. Lee got out the spud gun and a line was placed high up in the top of the gum tree. While pulling through the nylon fishing line with the guy rope attached Murphy struck! The guy rope was too short and Michael was yelling “stop Lee” he watched the end of the guy rope disappear back up in the tree before he got Lee’s attention. There followed a short session with Michael on a stepladder, 4m fiberglass pole in hand attempting to snag the end of the rope. Almost impossible but nice try Michael! This was followed up with a successful second shot over the tree and very quickly the dipole was secured high up in the trees.
Michael hard at work on the mast
Michael brought a few bits and pieces for his new 5 band Hex beam along for inspection and to test local knowledge. He was about to use copper wire for the elements and a suggestion was made that the elements would sag unless the wire was “hard drawn” A little Kiwi #8 ingenuity saw one end of a 30 metre length of the wire attached to the fence and the other end to the tailgate latch on lee’s van. The start was marked on the grass and the wire was initially tensioned about a ½ metre. A bit of wire testing/bending and more driving forward resulted in instant hard drawn copper wire about a metre longer at not extra cost! Let us know how the Hexbeam works Michael.
It was planned to take down the second pole in the middle of the roof but the team decided to leave that for another day. The shelf in the ham shack was finished, radios mounted and cables from the new antennas pulled through awaiting Laurie’s master touch with the coax cable connector crimper. We actually achieved a very good morning’s work and things are taking shape nicely. More work on the main antenna pole is needed with a new 20M sloper dipole up into the trees to be hung from it. Additional work is planned for the shack sorting and re-arranging files followed by a trip to the tip. A time frame before April looks possible and will be arranged. We are already thinking about the possibility of doing some ZL NZART contests and events using ZL2GT and ZL2G from the clubhouse. More later.