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Today the winds finally settled and in between freezing rainshowers I decided to hoist up the  60 pound insulators and antenna wires for the King´s antenna.

The antenna wires are #8 CopperWeld – copper covered steel wires with a breaking strength of 2500lbs / 1100kg.

My good neighbor, Finnbjörn from Litlaeyri, Airport Manager, came to assist me on the ground and he took these photos on my camera.

I began by pulling up the right hand side insulator and antenna wires while still on the ground.   I then attached a climbing rope to my harness and the other end to the left hand insulator and antenna wires already assembled on the platform.

Attaching the right hand side insulator went well, but the climbing rope attached to the other insulator managed to wind itself around the feedpoint box at the bottom of the pole.

Finnbjörn came to the rescue and untangled the rope, saving me a trip to the platform and back up again.

It  was extremely difficult to attach the second insulator until I discovered that one of the antenna wires had snagged on the platform.  Finnbjörn also saved me a trip back down by untangling the wire.

This was the most difficult part of constructing this antenna and I am glad it is behind me.  I must be getting old :-)

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I am taking the opportunity while the weather is bad to work inside the shack.

New cables have been routed into the equipment room and a 19″ equipment rack installed for the Harris amplifiers.

Two cables were installed for future use with the ends coming out of the ground in strategic places.

Hopefully I will not need to route more cables into the shack.

Operating position “C” is now fully operational – I tested the Harris RT1446/RF-350K with the 1KW amplifier this afternoon and there seem to be no problems.

It only remains to connect and test operating position “D” and then the station will be fully functional.

I would be interested in comments on the quality of my signals.

The King has risen.

With the help of a 25 ton crawler excavator equipped with a hydraulic rock breaker, a 2.5 m deep hole was broken into the solid rock. The 27 metre long pole weighing 3 tonnes was then inserted into the hole and secured with rocks around the base and temporary guy wires.

New guy anchors will be inserted into the rock and the King will support a 160M transmit vertical antenna before winter.

The photos were taken by Finnbjörn Bjarnason using my camera.

Today I raised the vertical antenna. It is now secured with temporary guy ropes and the Phillystran top guys.
I must have had to climb the tower at least 20 times to unravel the mess of wires coming from the top section.

Work is progressing with the new omni-directional vertical antenna.
The antenna is assembled, concrete blocks are in position and all that is left is to raise the antenna…

Recent additions to the shack include an aerial photo of Otradalur and a new Great Circle Map. I have also installed panels for Bandpass filters at each station A to D.

One operating position is fully functional.   The shack has 4 operating positions and each position can choose any available transmit antenna through a 100 kW Strip Line Matrix Switch remotely controlled.

The remaining tasks are to install panels at each operating position to plug in bandpass filters, install wiring for remote antenna switches and power combiners, install computers at positions C and D, wire up PTT control to the Strip Line Matrix switch (to prevent the possibility of hot-switching) and build an indicator panel for the switch.

I will now concentrate on the farm work until autumn before continuing with the project.

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