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© 2010 Arctic Diamonds - TF4M
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 
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.
As a new radio amateur in 1984, I noticed a spelling error on the Post Office in Selfoss. The text is meant to be POSTUR OG SIMI, but a tile is missing causing the letter U to be misspelled as H !
I spoke with the station manager in 1984 who promised to see to that the error was fixed but the spelling error is still there !
Unbelievable.
