17.06.2022
Our Stockcorner JC-4s antenna tuner had to be replaced in early spring, because accumulated condensation inside the ATU housing caused malfunction. Fortunately, we had a spare ATU. We assume that the high amount of condensation was caused by the extreme weather conditions on Mount Rigi. The temperature on the surface of the ATU my vary by 40(!) degrees centigrade on a single winter day. E.g., -15 at night to +25 during daytime. The formation of condensation water inside the tuner must be correspondingly high. The JC-4s had no condensation venting device (up to now). We sent the damaged ATU to Casper from Stockcorner. He managed to get it working again, but not only that: He installed an all-new housing with a new control cable connector and a condensation venting device at the bottom of the housing. Because I told Casper that I do not fancy soldering a new plug to the control cable at 15m above ground while hanging on two ropes he made an adapter cable for us, so we could use the control cable as is. On top of that he also sent us modification kits for our JC-4s tuners that we use at home as well as for the Mount Rigi spare ATU. All this at VERY reasonable cost. I must say I was speechless at first (that is VERY unusual). This level of customer orientation and service is extraordinary! Needless to write that the repaired tuner works flawlessly. Great job Casper and thank you VERY, VERY much! Here you can see a happy HB9CQK after HB9RYZ, Wolfgang had completed the test of the repaired ATU on all bands.
As I wrote earlier our receivers were suffering from very broad interference on all HF bands, but most dominantely on 160, 80 and 40m. This interference was caused by our (not cheap) Meanwell 5V Power Supply. This thing needs replacement! Since all our Raspberry Pi's and the Kiwi SDR use 5V we had to take them offline until we find a good new 5V power supply. We still have some interference lines that we need to cure, but the most annoying noise is gone. Please enjoy our WebSDR again!
