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I made it through the CQ WW RTTY contest with just the C31xr for 10 and 15 meters. This was extremely limiting as I could only use one radio at a time for these two bands. I also had a second 40-2CD for 40 meters that needed a home.

September 25, 2025

I had two Hygain 155-CA antennas that I wanted to make into a stack on the south tower. I started putting them back together.

As with the 20-meter antennas, some of the hardware was bent. One of the gamma match pieces had broken off. They didn’t end up perfect, but good enough.

October 1, 2025

I still had the sidemount at the base of the North tower, so I used it to build the 40-2CD.

October 5, 2025

I installed a side-mount bracket on the north tower to hold the 40-2CD.

October 6, 2025

Another beautiful day for antenna work. I was joined by Mike WA3C with the goal of getting the 15m stack and the lower 40 installed.

We started with the 40-2CD on the North tower. It was a very straightforward job to pull it up and work around one set of guy wires. The stacking distance (90′ over 40′) is a bit close, but I was looking for the ability to beam in multiple directions more than I was looking for stacking gain.

We then moved over to the South tower and started by installing the rotating swinging gate mount. I obtained this sidemount from W8JGU more than 35 years ago. It has been very reliable and is easy to work with.

The mounting height was a bit tricky because I wasn’t sure exactly how high I could go before the 15m antenna would hit a guy wire. I did some math and lucked out getting it in the right place on the first try.

Next up was to raise the two 155-CA Yagis. It was easy to work these through the guy wires.

Both 15m antennas were installed by 11 am.

Time for a quick SWR check. Not as good as I had hoped. Since the lower antenna (curve on the right) was the one with the damaged beta match, I will need to do some fine-tuning by moving the shorting bar. The SWR for both is too high on SSB and not as good as they were in MA, but good enough for now.

The station is starting to have a full set of antlers now.

The next project is stacking boxes, feedlines, and control cables.

I had the opportunity to visit Rick, KI1G, for three operating periods during the W1AW/1 operation in Rhode Island.

The first was Tue evening during the opening hours of the operation.  Wow!  Started on 20m CW and the pileups were amazing. Even with the K3, the pileup just sounded like mush and it was difficult to pull out a call.  Even working split!  Struggled with some funky F-key settings in the N1MM software.  Moved to 20 SSB and had some great rates.  Lots of guys chasing the W1AW operations around the country.

Second time was on Friday evening.  Had not intended to come back, but the pileups were so much fun that I couldn’t resist another shot. This time for 6 hours of rate on multiple bands including 100 QSOs on 160 SSB!

On Tuesday morning, Rick indicated he would be coming home early to finish off the week so I asked if I could join him again.  I arrived about 4pm and worked the last 4 hours. Rates had gone down, but still lots of people trying to finish off band modes.

N1MM shows I made just over 2200 QSOs.  I estimate about 16 hours of chair time.

Looking forward to joining Rick again in November!