March 2019 – Lots of little Updates at K9ZW

Lots of little updates:

Skipping Dayton 2019 – just doesn’t fit into my calendar well and I really should be somewhere else when the show is running in May.

Tentative on the W9DXCC in September – I think they are at a new place and I’ve penciled the date on the calendar.  Will make a final decision in summer.

Progressing on the rack project – have started putting gear in place but haven’t wired anything.  More getting the look and feel down at this stage.

New Radio Room is progressing – new floors are varnished.  Waiting on the electrical, underground fiber & phone to be pulled, and lighting to finish up.  Everything has to come out of the original area so I can clean and varnish the original floor.  This is going to have a bunch of two-man tasks, so I’ll need to enlist some help. Also have two more replacement windows on order that need to go in.

Have a 2-meter repeater in Coordination – the 145.110 repeater became a personal project in March 2019, and I’ve applied to the Wisconsin Association of Repeaters (W.A.R.) to (re)coordinate the repeater under my call sign.  Once the coordination is complete a Yaesu Wires-X/Fusion Digital Repeater will replace the old gear.

Wrapped up my leadership involvement in ManCoRad – the Manitowoc County Radio Club became a subsidiary of another area club, and won’t need a separate Secretary/Treasurer.  I’ll be a plain old regular member of the combined club.

Planning the Station Move from our previous Shepherd Lane QTH to the new Branch, WI QTH – as the old house remains on the market it is time to get the tower down and the rest of the station moved over.  I’f like to get a tower up at the new QTH before pulling down the present station, as I do like using it remotely and during my house-checks every other day or so.  Lots of work involved.

Lots of Winter Road damage and wash-outs to fix at the new QTH – there is approaching a mile of private one-lane road on the new QTH property  with a dozen or so culvert-bridges over two unnamed streams that have taken a beating with the massive snow and sudden melt-off.  Presently waiting for it to dry up enough to get at the work.

Island QTH is going to get some sort of Tower this year – I’m in a bit of a redesign phase on exactly what, but now that the Garage Project is done it is time to get something more serious up for an antenna and to get the feed lines buried.

Lots more small stuff of course!

73

Steve
K9ZW

Varnish and Vistage

Been busy working on the radio room and workshop.

the expansion area received a couple of coats of polyurethane this weekend.

First coat going down

Less about pretty and more about durability. Should make the floor much easier to sweep and clean as well.

Did the two rooms this weekend that will have all the woodworking equipment. The rest will get coated in a couple weekends.

With the smell of the coating making the radio room and workshop inhospitable my weekend radio operations moved into the main house via Maestro remote.

Operating from the Snug

We call this room “The Snug” after similar areas in old British pubs. The views are great and the fire makes it cosy.

Haven’t made all that many contacts given the time spent finishing floors and other weekend household chores. Since I’m paper logging less contacts is okay rather than facing a big chore to put the logs online.  I really should drag out a laptop and put QSOs in the electronic logs right away.

73

Steve
K9ZW