Last Saturday Greg VK3LLL, Pete VK3AJ and I continued the work on the VK3SCG JOTA station at Gilwell Park scout camp.
We replaced the balun on the TET – Emtron HB33DX tri-band HF yagi, ran cable tray from the tower to the Storm Hut, ran cable tray down the wall inside and untangled the coax macramé that had formed in the lower cable run of the tower.
We also tested all the HF antennas and found some minor issues with the inverted vee antennas that we can correct later.
We found that the HF yagi still fails on 10 and 20 metres and we may need to replace the traps.
We finished working around 4:00 pm and Greg and I set up to work the VK – Trans Tasman contest until midnight.
The contest was hard going as there was much noise and many weaker signals were difficult to resolve. Greg and I kept at it until about 9:30 pm when, after a local shower of rain, the noise increased further. Feeling quite tired after the day on and around the tower we decided to calls it quits and head home.
Thanks to Greg and Peter for helping out on the day and to those who came up on air and gave us some contacts.
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