Continuation of an odyssey

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It's an 80 meter end fed half wave amateur radio antenna. It's better than nothing and it hasn't caught the attention of the HOA nazis. (de W0FMS/7)

I should get the Circupool Universal 40 on Wednesday.

Concrete work done.
IMG_20200419_164520146.jpg
 
I chose the European style of this... I had physics reasons to do that in my case...

pa-11019.blogspot.com

Multiband end fed antennas 3.5 - 30mHz

This is a 200 Watt PEP step up transformer for end fed full and half wave antennas without radials, designed as a 200 Watt PEP u...
pa-11019.blogspot.com pa-11019.blogspot.com

I have transmitted on the first harmonic of that antenna (40m) on the WSPR beacon mode (literally using a Raspberry Pi 3 and a single small MOSFET amplifier.) 100 mW out at 7.041 MHz it has been received in the Canary Islands and in New South Wales, Australia. There still is some magic left in HF/Shortwave even with the sunspot number of zero. I do miss my forty foot tower and tribander that I had on the farm in Iowa, but I have a pool instead to play with now...

And... Remember... You asked. Yes I have had CQs answered..
 
Rattus Suffocatus said:
I chose the European style of this... I had physics reasons to do that in my case...

pa-11019.blogspot.com

Multiband end fed antennas 3.5 - 30mHz

This is a 200 Watt PEP step up transformer for end fed full and half wave antennas without radials, designed as a 200 Watt PEP u...
pa-11019.blogspot.com pa-11019.blogspot.com

I have transmitted on the first harmonic of that antenna (40m) on the WSPR beacon mode (literally using a Raspberry Pi 3 and a single small MOSFET amplifier.) 100 mW out at 7.041 MHz it has been received in the Canary Islands and in New South Wales, Australia. There still is some magic left in HF/Shortwave even with the sunspot number of zero. I do miss my forty foot tower and tribander that I had on the farm in Iowa, but I have a pool instead to play with now...

And... Remember... You asked. Yes I have had CQs answered..
Click to expand...
So, the skip is not running anymore?
 
Rattus Suffocatus said:
Some more work since fall and the preparations for the SWCG. View attachment 133684View attachment 133685View attachment 133686
There is going to be a roof sandwiched between the two redwood fences. So it will be like a carport for all the equipment, sunshade and rain shield.

View attachment 133687

Yes the orange thing is an electric demolition hammer. It's the Arizona handyman's secret weapon. I am still doing this to take a break before the Quickcrete. The next picture is how much pipe I have to work with for a flow sensor and salt chlorine generator cell. I should have fun plumbing this next weekend.

I was going to get some Borax but like everything else now, everyone thinks that they are Martha Stewart and are hoarding the stuff to make "laundry detergent". My TA is down to 90 now but the pH has been a way too stable 7.2... Hopefully the cell will bring that up quickly. I still would like to get the TA to 80, actually but this might be good enough.
Click to expand...

Ha! JUST before I looked at this post I had dug my partial bag of salt out to replenish for SWG start up and it was that same diamond crystal brand, I didn't remember it. thought it was something in a yellow bag until I found it.
 
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monoptn said:
So, the skip is not running anymore?
Click to expand...
Really only on 80m at night 40m all the time and 20/30m during the day. Above that in frequency it's rare now. You aren't going to have too many 11 meter 10-4 good buddies doing "skip" now. But obviously if I was heard in Africa and Australia skip was involved... Both of those were at about 3 AM local.

I could talk about this forever since it was my life and job for 20 years before I came here but... I will go back to just talking about the pool now... :)
 

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If I ever decide to put in a heat pump or a gas heater I'll need that space. For now, once the roof is on, I can probably get a way with using a plastic tote as another pseudo-deck box. As long as it's out of the sun. I will have to play it by ear for a "front", I'll probably use a "sun screen" for that...
 
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Expensive toy arrived... IMG_20200422_184835172.jpgIMG_20200422_184514235.jpgIMG_20200422_184435150.jpgIMG_20200422_184252375.jpgIMG_20200422_184239097.jpg

Can someone explain Phosphate test strips in the "accessories kit"? Don't you think they should have sent salt strips? Sigh. I would have liked to have a second test here too... IMG_20200422_184317656.jpg

And it says US sourced titanium plates assembled with Asian components in China on the box if there is any doubt on this now. Like everything else, I suppose...
 
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:party: OH YEAH!!! Let the TRULY Trouble Free Pool begin!!!

Rattus Suffocatus said:
Can someone explain Phosphate test strips in the "accessories kit"? Don't you think they should have sent salt strips? Sigh. I would have liked to have a second test here too...
Click to expand...
Yeappers-future sales! "If we put these strips in here they will use them and see their phos is high. Then they will buy phos remover!" sigh.............
 
So... The seller of my K-1766 sent another kit because of the mix up I had with getting one that had a broken case and one of the wrong chemicals in it. Yes I need to be drawn and quartered because I didn't buy it from tftestkits, but in my defense I am fundamentally lazy and it was tacked on to another order.

But if anyone needs to have a salt test done in Tucson please let me know as I already replaced the wrong chemical with an order tacked on to an Amazon other order...

So yeah. I have two K-1766s now... One ugly but functional. The other in almost perfect shape.
 
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Rattus Suffocatus said:
So... The seller of my K-1766 sent another kit because of the mix up I had with getting one that had a broken case and one of the wrong chemicals in it. Yes I need to be drawn and quartered because I didn't buy it from tftestkits, but in my defense I am fundamentally lazy and it was tacked on to another order.

But if anyone needs to have a salt test done in Tucson please let me know as I already replaced the wrong chemical with an order tacked on to an Amazon other order...

So yeah. I have two K-1766s now... One ugly but functional. The other in almost perfect shape.
Click to expand...


I have decided those need to be reconfigured for pools, you use one drop of the indicater and up to 20 drops of the other stuff but they are in the same size bottles. :poke:
 
Yeah a C sized bottle of silver nitrate would go well with an A sized bottle of Chromate Indicator. At least both kits gave the same reading.

Started at 800 PPM, added two 40 lb bags of salt, one of Briquettes and one of pool salt last night. Salt was at 1400 PPM this morning. Added two more bags of pool salt at 9 AM before I braved Costco. Got flour and something that will work as paper towels. And a new deck box and a couple of sunscreen materials so forward progress is being made on the salt conversion and sunscreen and general pool completion.

Ace locally didn't have everything I needed to complete the SWCG. So I will probably do it tomorrow. I think I need one more bag of salt because the pool is acting like it's a little larger than 13K gallons that the water meter measure, so I could only find "solar crystals" and not pool salt. Meaning that I will have used every type of bagged salt available in the process of getting it set for the SWCG. Yes even the briquettes worked perfectly fine. I almost will say they did not even take noticeably longer.

And... Woot! Season is officially game on!

IMG_20200424_140043254.jpg
 
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