Friday - Antenna day!
The goal was to erect the dual, staggered 340-degrees beverage, and replace the current 310-degrees beverage wire with the new UL wire. The 340 was set up with the original Hofi wire at one site, and the new HDS-NEU at the other.
 |
| Starting point of the HDS-NEU 340 wire |
All of this went well. We were a bit surprised though to note that the 310 had a 2.5 - 3 dB gain loss with the new wire. We have a nearby NDB that we use for regular antenna gain checks. We did not see a similar effect on the 340. A snapshot from just before 01Z to 03 shows that the UL does work. The question though is - will it last? We will leave the old wire in reserve in case the UL doesn't survive the coming autumn winds.
 |
| 310 Beverage, first night |
Some indoor chores were finished as well. OJ and Ole have a lot of gear to configure for the coming season. From the photo below it looks like they mean business! Btw the drawing above the HDDs is from a photo taken around 1925 when the house was relatively new, and a lot smaller than today.
 |
The weather was perfect. Calm, partly cloudy and 12-13 Celsius. No mosquitoes this late in the season. We couldn't ask for more.
Dinner! Bjarne's fish soup, made from scratch, is a tradition on the September gatherings. The usual Norwegian stuff - chopped carrots, seleriac, potatoes, leak and haddock, with a red chili thrown in for extra flavour. The Kim Crawford white wine from New Zealand is a traditional companion.
For dessert we enjoyed creamy dessert ice cream with wild forrest berries, topped with locally made cloudberry chutney. The chutney had so much clove flavour it almost felt like Christmas. A bit of Amaretto with the ice cream.
A couple of photos below showing the autumn colours.
 |
| Late afternoon sun (obviously facing west) |
 |
| KONG-HQ (facing north) |
No comments:
Post a Comment