Yesterday my copy arrived after almost two weeks. UPS can ship a complete rig in under 48 hours from W6 to ON5ZO but regular mail takes 14 days to ship a small book from the UK to here. The stamp says June 30, it arrived July 15. I’m talking about “DX Delights”, the new book by Roger G3SXW. I really enjoyed reading his other two books published by Idiom Press so I’m looking forward to reading it. I made a deal with myself I will not read it before the construction job is done.
In fact, the job itself is done. In short we removed about 90m² of concrete and paving to replace it with new stones. Every drain pipe and inspection hole underneath was changed too. Along the way we changed the shape of the terrace so there was a huge gap to be filled with ground. I’m now leveling that and hope to throw some seeds on it so it’ll turn into a lawn soon. There is other fall out too. The garage door needed adjusting, the whole garage needs repainting, all my coaxes were removed and I will have to adjust the position of the cables and the microHAM relay box. Yesterday we (XYL + me) put a big wooden pole up that will suspend the low band vertical feed point and its elevated radials. Yes, this one. I poured a concrete base that will support a huge outdoor cabinet I picked up as surplus. The plan is to put the MFJ tuner in there so it sits as close to the low band antenna as possible.
All in all there is light at the end of the tunnel here, but it’s still very faint. I hope to make some QSO in the IOTA contest to see if all still works. Probably no activity before that…