Blogging in April and how about the radio hobby

 Only my third post in April. Yes, I lost my inspiration I think. And also traditionally we have a very busy month at the job causing chaos in my mind. However, I worked some very nice DX this month, something I don't want to mention every time. You can see some nice ATNO DXCC on the right site of the blog if you're viewing it with a desktop or tablet. I'm still active on the HF bands and still DXing. I also have lots of projects waiting. Too many actually. Besides that we also started to rebuild another part of the house. So, you see I'm quite busy.

Well, a sneak preview at one of the first projects. I want to finish this as soon as possible. It is the duoband 4m/6m beam build for PB7Z Bernard. I have most of the parts but unfortunately encounter some problems with the measurements. I really don't know if others have this problem as well. This is what the problem actually is:

Not my picture, but it worried me. I have some stanley tape measures and did compare them as well, and indeed you see differences. If you take the wrong tape measure you will have an antenna that is out of specs. You can imagine the troubles you will get.

I already cut the elements for the length they need to be, but is it right? Besides that I need to drill out the tubes inside from 9,6mm -> 10mm in the center to connect them back together in the center and that counts for the 6m dipole center as well. I have no lathe. So there is no option to reduce the 10mm connecting rods. Have you ever tried to drill alluminium? Just a hole is not a problem, but to drill a inside of a tube is hard without damaging something.

But anyway, I see this as a challenge. In the end I will manage to finish the project for shure.