The pole is 22 meters long and weighs several tonnes.   The pole was set in a high point on the terrain (resulting in nearly 30m height of the Rhombic when completed) and pointed in the direction of Japan and will be the front pole of a new full-size JA Rhombic.

I prepared the pole as the others with all the hardware installed – pulleys with steel core flexible wire cables to pull up the antennas and guy wires already attached.

It should not be necessary to climb the poles at all when the antenna construction begins.

The antenna will consume around 2.5 km of wire when built and I estimate that the project will be completed in 2 years more.

Here are some photos from the preparation and erection of the Arctic Queen.

I took advantage of the presence in the valley of a 24 Tonne crawling excavator which was here to build access roads for the forestry project among other things.

These Rhombics when built will have 375´ legs – in comparison the USA Rhombic has 350´ legs and will consume around 5km of wire.

Here are some photos taken during the preparation and erection of the poles.

My deepest thanks go to my neighboor, Finnbjörn of Litla Eyri who assisted me with the preparation of the poles, holes had to be drilled for the pole steps and the steps hammered in.   We used a generator to power the tools and a chainsaw to trim the tops of some of the poles.

Due to my inability to climb at the moment I also had the assistance of Einar from Bildudalur.

We expect to plant 20,000 saplings and access to the area was deemed almost impossible.

Access roads  through the area and all around the valley are being built and very deep cisterns are being dug to collect water for firefighting in case of grass fire.

The weather is turning nasty, the ground is very wet and the machines are getting stuck.   In addition the excavator is experiencing some kind of failure at the moment.

The pieces of wood seen in one of the pictures are branches of wood from a prehistoric forest – possibly millions of years old, conserved in the swamp.  These were uncovered by the digging and constitute proof that this area was indeed covered by a forest a long time ago.

I am desperately working on preparing the poles for 2 large Rhombics.   The only machine capable of setting such large poles – 60+ feet – is such a large excavator, so the presence of the machine is an opportunity not to be missed….

One of the DXpedition operators – Alex, RM2M (ex RA3MR) has operated twice from my station – in 2006 and 2008.

Demand is very high as this is one of the rarest countries in the world to be activated.

The pile ups are fierce and merciless but I managed to get through on 20 meters early in the operation.

Download audio file (7O6T_QSO20MCW_1MAY2012_2218Z.mp3)

Having made certain I was in the log, I was able to turn my attention to working them on 160 meters – the band where the big boys play.

It took a few days to set up the antenna for 160 meters and the first night they had good signals into TF, but appeared to have serious reception problems, very slow rates and finally moving to 80m just about when my location was going into semi-darkness at 2230….

There are very experienced Low Band operators in the group and I was certain they would solve these difficulties and they did.

On May 4th their signals appeared relatively strong and I began calling them around 2200 still in broad daylight at my location.

This time they were working at a fast rate and I was confident that they would hear my massive signals eventually as it got slightly darker with each minute passing.

At 0019 on the 5th of May, I finally made the QSO.   The Arctic King showed yet again what he is capable of.

My country totals on 160 Meters now stand at 177 Worked, 173 Confirmed (latest numbers, I had made a mistake in the count in earlier posts)

Download audio file (7O6T_QSO160M.mp3)

Below are a few images from DXAtlas that show the relationship of day/night of the earth at the time of the contact – it shows well that Iceland just barely gets any darkness at night – during summer we will have 24 hour daylight and 160 meters will probably be dead.

I do not expect to work 160 meters again until next winter – this was a very pleasant end of the season.

The on-line Log Check shows that I am in the log:

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