We have been connecting communities for over 80 years
Flex Radio installation, Wickiup, fall 2023
SEARC now has a Flex Radio available to club members who cannot install HF antennas at their homes, and to use to demonstrate HF to school and community groups. This project was funded by the ARRL Club Grant program; many thanks to ARRL for this support for the club and our community outreach!
This project involved multiple trips up the mountain, spread over 3 months. some involving towing up a bucket lift. It also involved a lot of planning starting in fall 2022, before the actual installation took place in fall 2023.
People involved is this project at some point were Bob KK7IHA, Brian W6GKD, Carl KI7RJD, Dave W7PDQ, Dale K7FW, Ellen AA7EN, Frank AA1FV, Jay KK7HDR, Jeff AG7JJ, John KK7HAB, Mike KA7SGB, Ove KI5BUG, Ralph AG7FE.
Special thanks to Dale K7FW, Dave W7PDQ, Jay KK7HDR, Mike KA7SGB.
We are developing a technical write-up and member training program and documents. Please let us know if you are interested in getting access to the HF radio. Technician level members are also encouraged to participate.
Click on a photo to see it full size and scroll through them.
Planning weekends when the bucket lift was available and the forecast was not for rain. No wind was too much to ask for.
Just in case you were wondering . . .
Jay preparing to put the pulley for the end-fed antenna up . . .
. . . in a tree 300 feet from the tower
Mike, watching. Somebody gota do it.
Tongue Point to the mouth of the Columbia.
connector for the end-fed antenna
Bob, Dale, Jay
Ove is ground crew for the end-fed antenna
As the antenna was raised it had to be guided around that tree
pulling it up . . .
. . . tying it off.
Good thing that was Nicolai, not Wickiup. Dave did some troubleshooting there in-between trips to Wickiup.
Jay, Dale, Ellen, getting the folded dipole out of the box
Jay installing the support for the folded dipole
Ove feeding line up to Jay . . .
. . . who is ready to pull up the center of the dipole
Carl & Dave laying out the folded dipole
Dale, Dave, Carl, one end of the folded dipole
other side of the folded dipole . . .
. . . ends here
organizing cables . . .
tower to ice bridge to building
Along with designing the installation, Dale has made a lot of custom-length cables.
New rack ready to install equipment
Top shelf: tuner hooked up to the folded dipole: next shelf FlexRadio; next shelf raspberry pi and a lot of stuff Dale has been working on. Below that on the rack will go a VHF repeater.
Starting to wire things up.
FlexRadio installed, one antenna and tuner in, ready to rock-n-roll!
Dale, Carl, Jay, Ralph, David
Photo credits: Bob KK7IHA, Dave W7PDQ, Ellen AA7EN, Mike KA7SGB.
