So following on from the mid-week rigging exercise I could see some more adjustments would be required before adding elements or radials. I set about with my trusty spirit level and a whole load of energy to get the nebula as straight as i can.

So it was quite clear with the spirit level the direction and severity of the tilt that had to be overcome. I set about correcting the lenghts of the lowest ropes.

A bit of patience and some re-tying and adjust lengths soon had the mast in a better vertical postion when attached from the bottom most rigging point. I then set about the 2nd stage.

The caribinas for the second stage attachement are just about visible in the above picture. What I learned from the previous days rigging is that when attaching the ropes at this level I hneed to detach them each time from the ground stakes each time. Whilst this takes time, its stop a tangled mess and getting caught around the house, its more imprortant to take time and get it right, then rush and make a mess/get it wrong.

By now i was getting a little tired, and had quite a few other things to do (including walking me doggo sweety) – with the mild weather it was nice to get a socially-distanced walk and enjoy the flowers in the gardens in our neighbourhood. I came back home and had a good rest before attempting the next stage of guying as its quite suprsing how much effort/energy it takes to raise and lower the mast each time.

So the mast was looking far more aligned and well tethered vertically as I attached each level. The downside to this is that the trees do tend to tangle the ropes each time, but no real hardship in getting them untangled. I will be glad when I dont need to bring it down quite so much though !

As you can see the higher i go, the more the house blocks the ropes passage. Whats good about taking time is that as each time I do this, I get more used to simply unclipping the carabinas from each section. It is tiring with lifitng the nebula each time, but it was satisfying to see the rigging going so well.

So the days are getting ever so slightly longer, where it used to be pitch black quite quickly from 4pm, its staying brighter that little bit longer. I had guyed all the lower sections but still had one last rope on the highest section. At this time I thought, i’m tired, it will soon be dark and i need to get the mast back down safely and packup for the evening.

I done just that and have everything ready to get the last rope in place tomorrow. I will re-measure the vertical alingment with the spirit level once more, but its looking far better than it did, ensuring the mast will stay up in inclement weather. I’ve not had the time to solder radials or verticals yet due to uni assignments/exam revision, but am hopeful i can make some headway into that tomorrow as well.

Until next time, 73 & Stay Safe

Alan / 2E0FWE

Was lucky enough to have a few extra hours of sunlight to get work on the antenna done as my house was having an electrical certification inspection (i.e. no power on at all) for a couple of hours.

In that time i set about rigging the rest of the nebula !

One thing I did not anticipate is how much the trees would interfere with the rope. I was glad i had this extra hour or two to take my time and just focus/learn about the rigging. I started off with the ‘^’ of the triangle in the rigging on stage 2, that went really well with the rope and could hitch it with a carabina no problem. Continuing with the nearside left hitch point, which is too tight, i was able to connect this to stage 2 without problem, where as stage 2 right side required a bit of work to get the rope thru the trees, but a quick bit of of trimming and I was connected !

The mast was quite a bit off center, but it was good to practice and see where this was. Having not ‘rigged’ a mast this tall before it was a question of take it down and put it up each time to get the rope lengths in a good approximate distance. This worked reasonably well and I’m building up a better procedure of bringing the mast down without tangling the ropes.

Undoubtedly I will need to spend more time on the ropes to give them a better ‘balance’ I think the main culpurate is the bottom left point (if you draw a ^ and take the tip as front-center). AS the guying distance is just before 5m its slightly asked compared to the other amount of seperation the other guy-stakes have, but I will be able to correct this so it doesn’t ‘tug’ at the mast and it will be vertical in all directions.

Overall for an hours work i was happy to get all the guy ropes attached. The picture above exaggerates the tilt somewhat as its on .5 zoom and naturally ‘bends’ the shot somewhat more (as you can tell from the bricks in the house). I will get my spirit level out and get the mast truly vertical and set about adding the vertical elements.

Still, i’m still learning and enjoying every moment of it. Fingers crossed will have the nebula on the air not before too long !

Stay safe & 73

Alan / 2E0FWE

So as predicted I’ve been flat out with assingments/revision for an exam on Monday at Uni.

Having had taken Sweeety (our dog) for a walk, the weather was really nice – cold but bright and more importantly no wind. Having received the heavy duty guying kit in the week and now with the necessary tools to tighten the small clamps, though I would take 30 minutes/hour out to just get the antenna erected with the metal guying ropes.

I first started with the worst rope, where i have tied two piece together. As much as I trust my knots, this was the first one to address I could then work on the other two ‘front’ supports.

In no time I had the guy-wire measured out and firmly attached to the hitching post. As you can see that is not going to come loose any time soon, but there is quite a bit of excess wire as its designed for a 10m high mast, where as I’m at about 3.5m vertical on the first attachement point.

The tilt base really did make a huge difference in doing this work, it was so much easier in being able to push the mast up each time and then guy each hitching post. The end result was a very stable mast, even with only rigging point. Nethertheless I will still continue to guy up attachment points 3 & 4 with rope.

i even had time to make a quick video, and got the orientation right !

Overall, i’m happy with the weeks progress, in doing small jobs thruout the weak, such as painting the base, cutting the radials and then at any opputnity i had to get the mast up.

Hopefully next week should be slightly less busy out of office hours and will still have my lunch break to doing small jobs.

I think for next week i will do

cut 80, 40 and 20m vertical wires

solder into groups the radials (need to see how many radial attachemen t points i can use)

then sat/sun complete guying 2 & 3, attach radials & 80, get first S.W.R. reading.

Hope you are all keeping well ! Stay safe, 73

Alan / 2E0FWE

So making good time of my lunch break, i set about creating the lengths of wire required for the radials.

The guide advises 10m radial lengths and 30 from teh supplied wire, with 60 being me the optimal for 80m. I took the wire from the delivered kit and set about it !

So i had time to checkout the base whilst i was in the garden, and apart from the part i couldnt reach, it looks a fairly decent job. I’ll be completing the rest tomorrow in my lunch break as its now flat on the ground as the underside is painted. I used my trust surveyors tape measure, i can really recommend getting one of these if you are making wire-based antennas, it saves so much cutting/adding later on. I pinned down at 10m10cm to allow a bit of room for cutting and soldering the hook connectors on.

I used two mast-brackets to create a ad-hoc spool system – it really made life easy in pulling out the 30 lengths of 10m wire. I have some other spools of wire also, but they are a little larger, but the ones supplied by callum are a really good size to ‘work’ with.

I was glad in the time i had to get all the lengths cut, so I can *hopefully* make a start on creating probably them into groups of 4 (will check how many connectors i have). I’ve ordered 500 meters of wire from Sotabeams, its not as ‘heavy’ as the wire callum provided, but good enough for radials, so i should be able to create the 60 radials for optimum 80m performance. The good thing is that the wire handly gives the velocity factor, so calculating the lengths of wire to match 40 and 20 should be easy enough.

I also received the guying kit which includes steel guying ropes. These are for only upto 10m high, but I’m intending to use these on the lowermost section, leaving guying points 2 & 4 to a good quality rope. I will probably use the guying stakes to secure the tilt base in some fashion.

So despite it being a busy week with work/uni-work and limited day-light hours, have got a reasonable amount of ‘prep’ work done. Hopefully I can at least get 80m working this weekend, but lets see how things pan out, but feeling confident so far !

Alan / 2E0FWE

Another sunny start to the day down here in IO90, having started the day early playing catchup to some cool python programming waiting for the sun to come up, i was soon out working on the nebula tilt base as soon as it was light ! (8:30 UTC).

I assembled my progress and tools and looked at the next steps, i always enjoy watching Calum’s videos so I could see where i am upto in the build. One thing stood out tho, there is a plate at the very bottom of the tilt base. See pics below from Callums videos.

I’m lucky enough to already own 2* Classic DX Commanders – I’ve used them in a very good parasitic array before, so i could identify the plate calum is using as the radiating plate for the classic. I headed out to the garden to source one !

So having sourced the required plate and safely keepng the parts so I only need another ground plate to get the classic working again, i set about checking that the plate would fit on the scaffold pole. Here I ran into an issue, my scaffold pole was thick in diameter, probably only as much as 1cm but enough that that the plate wouldnt slip over.

I used an offcut of scaffold as a template and tried to find the best way with the tools i have to cut a bigger hole, but excessively big, so it would still be a reasonable fit. I used the saw with a metal blade to make small 1cm depth cuts the circumference of the inner-circle, where i was then able to cut the ‘teeth away’. Sure enough, although it looked very ugly, it worked !

I marked out the part to ‘hack’ out so it fitted reasonbly ‘snug’ to the bolts and tilt, i ‘popped’ the base out the Nebula cap and fitted over. This looked like the same base as Callums ! I was making real progress ! Hurrah ! Now the time came to make the supports. I took the other end of the fence-post and cut it in two. This would give me an ok-ish 6cm either side to play with for supports, but then this is a nice bit of 10cmX10cm post.

Having made the supports i needed to get them onto the tilt, the wood is 10cm deep, and need about 5-6cm plus to make any kind of secure connection. I had a quick look online, but was coming up with nothing, darn, was making such good progress ! I am very reluctant to goto any shop, but needed to get this done, so headed to B&Q to get some essential screws. I found the staff incredbly helpful in helping me choose the best screw for the job (self-tapping wood, thickness/end screw type) which I wouldnt of been able to do via the internet, so although I was a bit stressed with going to the supermarket, i was glad of the help i got.

For the side-supports i used 4 self-tapping screws to start with 2 of them went in very easily, the othe 2 needed a ‘manual’ finish to tighten up. I think what helps the most is doing a manual ‘screw’ for 4-5 turns so the screw is nice and vertical, then going in with the dill. I liked the way the combo of a SDS/Manual chuck adapator worked with a torx screw holder, it saved me a fair bit of work !

I then used the last two bolts I had to attach the tilt-base to the pallet boad, these went in the easiest by far, and as you can see the result was really good in that the tiltbase had a very secure ‘ground’ to work from on the pallet.

I then moved the tilt base to the ‘antenna’ area of the QTH, pointing it in the general direction of how i will walk it up. I made a short video that hopefully helps in explaning the positioning.

Having spent around 4 hours it was time to take my doggo for a walk !

I’m hoping for more good weather tomorrow and after tidying away the current 40m and 20m antennas to do a ‘test’ erection of the Nebula !

Until then stay safe and 73

Alan / 2E0FWE

Firstly HAPPY NEW YEAR ! Ok, thats that done 🙂

Its a bank holiday here in the UK and I made good use of the lovely bright sunny morning to get cracking with work on the tilt-base for the Nebula. It gets dark pretty quick here now in the afternoon so maximizng daylight hours and me not getting too tired really means making good use of the free-time.

I set about getting my tools together I would need to continue the build. I had left it at the point where I didnt have metal drill bits and the ones I had ordered were not SDS, so then had to get a SDS adaptor. After a couple of minutes of working out how the adaptor fits, i was able to drill the hole in the scaffold pole. Have to say the drill bits done an excellent job cutting through the scaffold pole like it was butter !

Having now successfully drilled the hole through the scaffold cut off i spent a few more minutes watching callums tilt base video (will post again below for reference) – the next step was to construct the base.

I was lucky enough to hold onto an old pallet that came with some goods i ordered on line, as there was no instruction or request to return it, I was able to use that. It had plenty of wood to cut down and move forward with the base construction. I already have a good electric handsaw, but its more designed for ‘flat’ cutting, so I purchased a Reciprocating Saw, HYCHIKA 18V Cordless Saw with 2x2000mAh – at £83.99 this is not ‘cheap’ but compared to other tools in the price range, it certianly is good value for money. I have ot say i was expecting it to be ‘will do the job’ but was really impressed that it came with two batteries (3/4 charged) and several wood and metal cutting blades. I can see myself using this tool alot on other projects, it certainly made light work of cutting up the bits i needed from the pallet !

Having cut the wood I wanted to get an idea of how ‘wide’ to make the base, so i popped around to see the Nebula mast and do my daily antenna inspection (yep, I check the knots/stakes are safe *every* day). Have to say the QTH antennas look quite seasonal.

Having got the Nebula radial plate i could then size up the base and fix it together. I have a number of electric drills, ironically the most expensive (Bosch) being utterly useless. I have a hand-held black and decker one and I added this electric screwdriver for £21.99 to the armoury of tools. Now for £21.99 you’d not really expect something that was particualy brilliant, in the video Callum uses a gorgeous Makita drill (envy) to get his screws in, but I have to say i was amazed that this little USB charged drill had plenty of torque to get the large screws into the wood. Only the last screw (which I think I put it in at an angle) required manual intervention.

Next I wanted to check i had got the holes aligned, and amazinly i had got them inline to about 50mm of each other. I did take a bit of a ‘wack’ with a lump-hammer to get the bolt thru, but sure enough, it went in !

Getting the rod out was interesting.. i used an old drill bit and hammered away, this did cause some slight damage to bolt, but nothing that wouldnt be seen or stop the build. I then went back to watch the you-tube video to work out the placement of the bolts and washers with the tube, making a sketch so i would get them on right.

At this point i could see that i have either drilled the whole too high up the pole or got a measurement wrong from the guesstimates made from the video. I was able to use the saw with a metal blade to shorten the scaffold pole so it would tilt fully.

I was now able to tilt the pole into position. I made some adjustments with the bolts and used the saw again to cut the excess off the bolt. By now my dog Sweety (yes hes a boy) was also after my attention and had been doing this for about 2-3 hours. I felt i had made really good progress and it was time to take Sweety for a walk and enjoy the afternoon with the missus 🙂

Having tidied up all the tools etc, I started to think about the next steps. I’m going to counter-sink the bolt-holes so they are not protruding and use some good all-weather protection for the wood. Next steps will be to secure the tilt-mechanisim to the larger pallet base, where by it should almost be ready to test out ! Hopefully the bright, but dry weather will continue over the weekend allow a few hours each day to get ever nearer completing and getting the Nebula up and operational !

Stay safe and 73

Alan / 2E0FWE

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.