photos by Finnbjörn Bjarnason of Litlaeyri.
Currently viewing the tag: "160M"
Guy wires broken up with insulators every two meters were installed on the King today.
During the operation, I used the backhoe to hold the King steady while the temporary guy wires were replaced with the new guy wires.
The final tightening of the guy wires will be done tomorrow.
Some of the photos were taken with my camera by my neighbor, Finnbjörn from Litlaeyri who dropped by during the work.
I made a trip to Reykjavik recently to acquire more coax cable for the King and future needs. I rented a small crawling excavator and in two days of work, I dug up 500 meters of 1-5/8″ Heliax cable from the ground.
The work was made easier due to the professional installation whereby the cable was surrounded by fine sand. This enabled me to retrieve the cable without damage…
The photos below show the cable on it´s way towards the King.
I was not quite satisfied with assembly of the 1-5/8″ Heliax splice so I did some research on the web. I did not find the exact assembly instructions, but it became clear that for the assembly of almost all Heliax connectors, it is assumed that the cable is cut at the crest and not at the trough.
I therefore disassembled the splice connector and reassembled it.
This time assembly felt much better and I was able to tighten the connector to my satisfaction.
On the advice of TF3DX, I decided not to tape the connector in an attempt of waterproofing, but rather simply cover it to protect it from the elements and allow the connection to breathe.
I used two plastic bottles with drain holes at the bottom to accomplish this.
The splice was then raised from the ground as can be seen in the photos.
I have run out control cables for the King. The armoured cable contains 4 insulated copper conductors and there was enough on the roll to give me two entire runs out to the King – 700 meters each cable.
It has been extremely hard work to get the cable into position.
The cables may be used to get power out to the site and to install remote current metering or relay switching on the vertical.
I am now installing pole hardware for the guy wires on the two side poles of the 160M antenna.
All guy anchors are also in place.
The 1-5/8″ LDF7 Heliax cable going out to the King is in two parts. I spliced the two cables together and in the absence of assembly instructions, it took a while to accomplish.
If anyone has a copy of the assembly instructions for this kind of splice connector, I would be grateful.
I measured the cable from the shack end with my CIA-HF Antenna analyser from AEA and I measured the cable loss at 50MHz at 3.8dB.
My calculations indicate that the cable loss at 1.8Mhz should then be less than 0.7 dB for the cable run to the antenna.
I measured the cable length with the analyser and found it to be 1966.4 feet (599.358 meters) at 1% accuracy.
The cable has a 88% velocity factor and 0.098dB attenuation/100 meters at 2.0 MHz and the power handling is 115kW.
I still need 110meters more cable to reach the antenna though…am working on this.
The line isolator is a W1JR design purchased from Array Solutions.
The balun has sufficient choking reactance for 160m which is difficult to achieve with other designs.
The working platform at the feedpoint is now completed.
I have now run the 1-5/8″ Heliax cable out, but it was 110 meters short….
The cable was run through the road with plastic pipes for protection.
I am also putting the finishing touches on the working platform at 3 meters height on the King.
