Plishner Antenna Site Work Trip Reports for July 10 & 20, 2019

By Ed Corn

Trip Report for July 10

My wife and I spent the day at the site cleaning up the last of the electric basic infrastructure build out. That portion is complete with the following items completed.

  • Basic plug ins complete including a GFI plug near the sink and one in the bathroom for portable heater.
  • A pre wire and extra switch in bathroom for future ex-host fan and an electric water heater for shower and kitchen sink.
  • Box and wiring for sewer pump when that project starts.
  • Wall switch and permanent light in sleeping area.
  • The tunnel lights now have a control switch at both ends.
  • 240 volt plugins for amplifiers at the Amateur operating position.
  • The sub main electric panel in the battery room is complete and the main panel has the trim cover installed.

There will be extra plugs and services  that will be needed in the future but basic build out is complete.

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Scheduled Maintenance Trip Report for July 20

Steve and I went down Friday the 19th. We met Paul Berge at the house in Haswell. Paul and his wife came down Thursday and stayed over Thursday and Friday nights. Steve and I stayed in the bunker Friday night.

Paul worked on finishing installing the control wiring in the pedestal in the conduit for mechanical protection, and he installed heavy duty override switches in the override panel in the comm trailer. He also gathered information for some updates on the control wiring. He will be working on the updates at his home computer.

Steve worked on the fiber link from the feed point to the comm trailer. The wind came up Saturday so Steve will complete work later as the wind was a safety issue trying to work up at the feed point. Steve did say the az/el readout worked after cycling power.

I have the two 30 amp plug-in circuits at the old generator building completed to give us 2 more RV parking spots with heavy enough power to run 1 air conditioner in each RV. Just for information to turn lights on in the generator building you will have to turn the circuit breakers on in the distribution panel in the middle  of the North wall.

Plishner Site Work Trip Report for May 18, 2019

(Editor’s Note: This is Ed Corn’s report of our work at the Plishner radio telescope site during the weekend of May 18, 2019 – Gary, WA2JQZ)


I arrived about 9:30 AM and proceeded to the generator shed to install breakers and to survey the conduit route for 2 extra camper hook ups. The breaker box is ready. I will run conduit and wiring during another trip prior to the open house.


Steve Plock arrived shortly there after. We traveled separately so Steve could stay over with Paul Berge, as I have a graduation to attend on Sunday.
We looked at the ham radio tower project. All the hardware is on site but tower climbing is out for most of us. Steve decided we will assemble the tower on the ground, and tip it up with a winch at a later trip. We need a few extra parts to do this which are easily obtained or fabricated. Gary Agranat arrived and went to work on the vertical antenna. The vertical was damaged during the blizzard storm several weeks ago. He has a list of all needed parts for fixing on the next trip.


Steve moved the dish to the work stand and checked the control voltage for the feed to the preamps, and adjusted for voltage drop in the line from the communications trailer.


Steve and Gary then worked on tuning the 16o meter and 80 meter wire antennas. (Gary added: We trimmed the lengths to retune the antennas to about the center of the ham bands. The 160 meter antenna was tuned to 1.9 MHz, with a best SWR of 1.7:1. The 80 meter antenna was tuned with an SWR of 1:1 from 3.8 to 3.9 MHz. Before the tuning, each antenna was slightly long, which therefore gave better performance at the low ends of the bands. The retuning enabled better resonance in the phone portion of the bands, where several members like to participate in nets.)


I moved into the bunker and pulled wire for the sub main panel in the battery room, in preparation for the hot water heater for the sink and shower and the sewer pump system. The sub main is complete, ready for extension of the conduit runs on a future trip.


Paul arrived late afternoon and stayed the weekend with several items he wanted to work on.


Ed KC0TBE

Photos by Gary

Plishner 60-foot antenna

Plishner Site Report – January 25 & 26, 2018

Steve and I arrived at the site about 9:40 AM Thursday. We energized the main line up to the bunker. We than made the necessary voltage checks for each of the branch feeders and energized the entire distribution system. The Plishner site is now on grid power.

All of the battery packs and inverters are still in service. Reminder that any light or plug  sprayed with red paint is an inverter outlet, any plug or light with no paint on the box is grid power. Be sure to turn everything OFF before leaving the site.

Steve worked with Skip Crilly at Greenbank by phone to turn up equipment and point the dish for the data observations. Steve had everything running for the first observation and continued running until 12:50 PM Friday the 26th. We shut down at that time and removed the equipment for shipment back to Skip for maintenance and upgrade. Steve will ship after returning back. All indications are a successful data run.

Between checking equipment, we added wire to the 160M dipole at the bunker. It is better but needs some extra work. Also filled the wire trench in front of the concrete slab at the top end of the ramp to allow driving on to the slab and not having to jump the trench going in to and out of the bunker. This leaves about 500 feet of trench to fill; We will need some help with this in February.

I also installed a dedicated outlet in the generator shed to feed the LAN switch that is necessary to provide cat 5 Ethernet from the Comm Trailer to the bunker. The last item we covered was moving the WIFI hot spot to the bunker. There is now wireless internet in the bunker. We did not have the manual for the converter from wireless to cat 5 with us to configure the unit. This will be completed next trip to provide internet on cat 5 cable end to end at Plishner. This relocate removed the RF from the hot spot in the Comm Trailer during observation times.

Note: The sump pump in the battery room is on grid power and the front entry way sump pump is on inverter. I will change over to grid power after a wiring change. This will be first order of business next trip.

We secured the site and left about 1:30 PM Friday.

Ed and Steve