Paul operated the CQ WW CW contest from the station of Ilya Zozin, 4Z1UF, in Lod, just south of Ben Gurion Airport. Ilya, his wife Raia, children Rita and Buddy, and his location: his two-floor flat is on the top floors of the building and includes a small rooftop area next to his ham radio station. His tower is mounted on the roof and bracketed to the steeply-sloped top section of the bulding which supports the solar panels. There is very little space to work on antennas.
Taking down the old antenna.
Assembling and installing the new Force12 antenna. Ilya assembled the elements on the rooftop patio, and then attached elements on one end of the boom by attaching the boom to the solar panel roof. Then he and Paul attached elements to the other end, extending the boom up the slope away from the tower, until all elements were in place. Then the antenna was raised up the tower. This job was tougher than it should have been because of missing antenna parts. English-sized bolts are not easy to find in Israel, which uses metric bolts. Ilya has a small stash of English-sized hardware. The replacement bolts shipped from the US came without any nuts or washers, which are, not surprisingly, not any easier to find in Lod than the bolts themselves are. The boom-to-mast clamp was sized for US water pipe and would not quite accept bigger bolts to fit over the bigger Israeli mast, but Ilya was able to drill out the holes a little.
The SWR, however, was not good enough on 40m. After much research and some overseas phone calls it turned out that the antenna measurements had been redesigned for the new design of the elements but the assembly directions were for the old design. This meant tipping the antenna on the tower so that the 40m element tips were reachable and could be extended. Luckily, doing so fixed the issue.
Finishing up.
All set for the contest.
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Last modified 20 February 2015