Another day without any interesting VHF propagation so we used the time for some cleaning activities long overdue. Heiko (DG1BHA), Uwe (DL3BQA), Peter (DM5DX) and myself had blocked the days after Father’s Day for several small to medium things that needed attention. We cleaned and emptied two complete material shelters and moved two loads of heavy stones as can be seen on the picture to the right. We had put them around the shack a few years ago for some nice stone walls etc. but meanwhile recognized they are more disturbing than helping (or pleasing the eye, hi) so decided to finally put them away. There are probably nicer spare time activities but what needs to be done needs to be done. 😉
Another “needs to be done” was realigning some antennas. Our 20 m beam and the 17/12 m duoband Yagi above are mounted 90° twisted to minimize interference between both. They were misaligned by about 15° now so an easy fix. Much more disturbing was the 15/6 m antenna mast. While the 6 m beam had an offset of about 10° against 15 m, too, which is just not nice but otherwise no problem concerning functionality the whole set of antennas had moved about 100° against the rotator reading in one of the last storms. So getting it back to the correct heading was needed, too, making it much easier when trying to beam for certain DX. 😉 We also made sure that such movements do not happen in the future anymore. Big thanks once more to Heiko who is our tower guy and always doing a great job!
Heiko on the 15/6 m tower to realign the rotator heading
His new climbing safety gear is much better than his old one as he admitted