It has been fantastic weather for December down here in IO90. With my son visiting for Christmas it was the perfect opportunity to make some real progress on the tilt-base for the Nebula.

I started out in the morning by building the workbench that had come from Amazon. At £28.99 i wasnt expect high-quality and i was pleasently suprised at how nice this was. Construction was fiddly, but nethertheless straightforward. Overall, if you want a cheap workbench, you can probably do ok with the Wolf.

Once the workbench was assembled, Paul and I started getting things safely setup outside. I have never used this type of saw before, and i said to Paul to shoutout STOP if he saw me doing anything dangerous/or could go wrong, thankfully it went really well ! The Circular Saw I used is the Katsu 100793. It cost £43.99 and comes with another wood-cutting blade. The instructions were simple, yet useful and reassured me of being able to use the tool safely, having never used one before. Overall I can recommend this a tool you are going to use on on occasion – one niggle is that it really does need a better protective box, as i’ve kept the original but that will only provide limited protection.

To keep the wood secure on the round table we have, I used Irwin Quick grips – these cost £16.99 but really done a good job in holding the wood tightly in place. Operation is easy enough after the first time of use, and getting things clamped becomes very familiar quickly. Overall I can recommend them as well !

I then set about drilling the hole for the steel bolt to go thru. I already have a good Bosch SDS drill (altough i’d love a Makita like callums !) i just needed to order the required SDS wood drill bits. I chose the Yato YT-3300 drill bits. These come in a really nice presentation pack as well, and made easy work of drilling the hole for the bolt to go thru. I measured an inch from the top and mid-way on poles.

The next step was to use an old bit of scaffold i had lying around – i got this off the builders who were erecting my neighbours buildings in his back garden. £10 well spent. This involved another first as I’ve never cut tubing before, i’ve ground things down (usually flat surfaces) but never cut a tube. I already had an angle grider so put on my protective goggles and tried to see what i could do with the angle grinder

Having cut the scaffold pole, the next step is to put the bolt-hole in it. I thought i had some SDS metal bits, but all the ones I have are for plaster-board. A quick trip to Amazon found LATERN 10Pcs Tungsten bits. At £9.99 the price is good for the amount of bits and I’ll only be using these occasionally. As I was getting a little tired and by now it was about 2PM, thought it best to tidy up and put everything away. I’m really happy that my son and I could work on this together and the bulk of the ‘heavy cutting’ is done, plus I’ve increased my confidience in using power tools I’ve never used before !

Weather is not looking so great tomorrow/monday, so it might be next week/weekend for drrilling the hole in the pole but will see how I’m doing.

So it has been a gorgeous sunny day with little to no rain down here in IO90BS today, of course it being a work day means that I am kept very busy ! However I do get a lunch break and made the absolute most of it !

The decision

So after yesterday was, i dont mind saying, hard work to get the mast up, I really pondered what my next steps are. The days are short, the weather, mostly wet & cold, doesnt lend itself to antenna building like those lovely long sunny days of being able to put an antenna and still have sunlight after it.

I watched Callums DX Commander piviot video, many, many times in the evening – and i thought, this has to be the way for me. On my own, getting an antenna up and down, i have to have as much help as I can get where engineering can give me that assistance. This was about 11:30 a night, and most of my sensible friends are asleep at that time, or at least wouldnt want to be disturbed on a Sunday night about ‘is it a good idea to build a mast tilt DIY’ so couldnt get a second opinon.

The build !

I asked my good friend, who we shall call ‘John the Brush’, some thoughts on the video. He is very capable and building and generally ‘making things work’. He was very quick to identify the required parts, which is something I couldn’t do after browsing B&Q and Wickes last night.

“he made that from a bit of M10 st4udding and some 100 x100mm fence post” – now i don’t know what M10 studding is, but B&Q sell it and it looks like the pole that Callum put thru the wood.

I’ve now ordered the wood (From Wickes) and the M10 and nuts and bolts from B&Q, total cost – £42.04 (including delivery). I have plenty of tools, although i have to say i love that Makita drill that Calum uses in his video – what an awesome bit of kit that is – i’ve got a Bosch SDS drill which i think should be able to do the same job.

So, that gives me a short-to-mid term plan for the Nebula, but what about NOW ! I dont like being off the air, it was hard work to get my lience and its a nice enjoyable, relaxing hobby (well putting 18m masts up can be a strain…)

The NOW

So I was pondering, what is the quickest antenna i can get up in the small window of time i have for lunch. I thought about and started getting the bits for the classic – i’ve got all the wires and can get it up and running pretty quick, but things can, and do go wrong.. Whilst i was untanglilng all the radials, i spotted my 40 meter dipole, and remembering Tim (G5TM) had just done a recent video on dipoles.

Dipole it is ! I had everything ready and could get this up pretty quick.

With one end attached to a washing line, another to fence post, it got my 40m antenna up in the air ! Now, time to see, how is the SWR..

So i only had so much time, usually i’d be looking for between 1.5-2 on the SWR, but 3.3 was good enough – i did have to reposition the right-arm of the dipole as it was just touching the mast, that did get the SWR down a further .3 points.

I went in and put it on the 7300, sure enough I could hit the ‘TUNE’ button and SWR was restored to 1:1 – this is on the 7300 internal tuner !

A quick test on FT8 yeilded positive results !

What a result, for less than an hours work, i was back on 40 meters. Then I eyeed the 705.. could i use that with 20m ‘whip’ on the mag mount ? hell, lets give it a try !

This really was ‘plug and play’ antenna, the mag-mount is on my step ladder, which gives some support (it is guyed as well) to my dipole mast. The SWR results on the 705 were slightly higher than the Rig Expert, but still not bad for such a quick, and somewhat crazy, setup.

I was able to tune FT8 audiably, but have nothing to receive. Next project – Raspberry Pi 400 on the IC705 !

Conclusion

So I’m back on air, able to enjoy listening and transmitting on 40m and potenitally 20m as well , as well as a fix in plan to get the Nebula up. I’m really happy that i can quickly get back on line and also progress the Nebula.

Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to test 20m in the day, even WSPR would be amazing, at a push FT8 ? (FT8 requires working/engaging with the app, I’m working in the day).

Big thanks to “John the Brush” (who is a ham, but doesnt go on air!), Tim and of course Callum !

So as predicted, its been typical English weather here today, drizzly and cold. I bumped into a neighbour and we was discussing how “spring” like it was yetersday.. and the forecast doesnt look good for a while..

So what did i manage to do today – well long and the short is that after a couple of trys i *did* get the nebula vertical and guyed in, but the wind and rain was really taking the toll on me, so i had to pack up for the day.

I took the 120 degree pattern and 5m distance for the stakes so (hopefully) my measurements for the ropes would be long enough.

One area where the wet weather did help was being able to get the stakes into the ground, as you can see from the first pic, these are not short at 18″, a good club hammer got hem into the ground nicely, so it was a positive start after measuring and getting them into the ground easily.

I really struggled for about an hour with getting the mast up, its really heavy and i was getting no traction. With a classic i can get it up no problem, but its much, much lighter than a nebula. I was somewhat at a loss as to what i was doing wrong ! So i went back and RTFM’d, in it sugest using two ropes as a ‘2nd man’ on the base. I done this and that at least started to get the mast in the air ! huzzah – but now the guy ropes wouldnt reach 🙁 bummer. So i repositioned the mast and ‘2nd man’ and finally was able to get the mast vertical !

I was happy that i could get it vertical and on the guys, the wind was having a great time vibrating it like heck, and as you can see from the top of the mast was really wanting to send it over – guying the nebula at 3 stages is giong to be a minimum IMHO, anything less, you could end up waking up to a mast on the ground… or worse !

So to conclud whilst I’m ok with todays progress, it leaves me asking some questions. I follow the weather and when there is a warning, the mast always come down (see previous blog postings) – the Nebula is always going to be hardwork to get it up and down as easy as a ‘classic’. I can ask friends for help to get it up the first time fully rigged, but what when I need to get it up and down myself ?

I’m thinking to make the most of the bad weather, get a classic back up, but with M&P cable/connectors, and follow Callums example of a tilt base over the next few weekends, at least that is something I can do in the ‘garage’ in the dry and will mean getting the mast up and down is that much easier. I dont think any of the ‘commercial’ tilts will take a mast with a 3″ diameter, plus adding on more (i would estimate at least £100, if not £150) to the atenna the costs are going up.

I will sleep on it but i suspect the English weather and keeping to a budget on these things will decide for me.