Here we are again, my old friend the sBitx V2 (V3 now but more on that later) and a hamstick with about an hour to get an activation. Plot twist, the bands are terrible as there is a solar storm or something as you can see from the space weather report I captured from the time of the activation.
Just from looking at the above report, you would think that it would be anything but fun to activate a park… and you would be wrong as these reports, while handy for chasing rare dx in distant lands, mean very little for the POTA op, at least that is how it has been for me as a ham in the southeast United States. I have heard that in other places like out west, it is tougher as the density of operators is much lower, but if you live in the South, it seems that getting an activation in 2024 is pretty easy.
Today also saw me back inside the truck due to impending inclement weather conditions as you can see in the photo above. I wound up taping up the antenna connector to reduce water entry and was fortunate in that it didn’t actually rain so all was well anyway. It worked out anyway as I had not charged the battery from my previous outings so I wasn’t sure of the level of charge and this radio demands more energy than my other QRP rigs anyway.
Today also saw the use of the “ratty radials” as I think I am going to start calling them. As they seem to work SO well like this for some reason… haha. I did only deploy the 20 meter radials this time as I was in a hurry and didn’t want to mess with bands that didn’t “produce fruit” readily like 20 meters does. It seems that the bulk of the CW ops are almost always on 20 meters. I have also noticed that the FT8 activity is also much higher on 20 meters as well so that was also a perk for me.
I really like how the sBitx gives me the flexibility to use FT8 native in the radio and with the “push” of a touchscreen button, I can switch to CW and work that mode as well. It also allows me to use a regular mouse (if I remember to bring it) as well as just using the touch screen. Lol
As mentioned earlier my V2 has been modded to the V3 specs by changing the transmitter finals and updating the support circuits to bias them properly. The changes are pretty simple and it works great. I have mine biased just a little on the hot side and currently I am getting 50 watts of 80 meters(it actually produces more but I don’t want to push my luck here with over heating the transistors so I back the drive off to 50 watts as seen from my shack wattmeter in the photo above…) and 30 watts on 40 meters which is incredible for such a small radio. It has lower outputs the higher you go in the band due to the circuits being optimized for the lower bands, but it is still enough energy to make contacts with ease.
I also wanted to make sure that FT8 wasn’t going to cook the IRF520s like it did the old transistors so I setup in the shack and proceeded to work FT8 at this power level for many hours and on several days all with perfect operation so I am confident to take it to the field.
Today saw my SWR running about 1.5 : 1 so the radio was outputting about 15 watts on the display (this is actually about 13 or 14 as the meter on the radio needs recalibrating since the update). If the SWR is lower it will run as much as 22 watts on 20 meters under the current conditions.
I got on FT8 while I started getting all my paperwork ready and such, this is a benefit to me of FT8 in that I can be working QSOs while I am also doing administrative tasks at the same time. It basically allows me more air time instead of having to do the admin stuff then go live with the activation. Well FT8 was going so good that I just kept going with it! The QSO rate on this mode is a little slower for me as I am not really proficient with the mode like others are, but I can pretty consistently make a QSO every two minutes or so and this is fine for me as I am not one who wants tons of contacts anyway.
Also, check out the cool DX station from Mexico as well as the special event station I was able to work once I switched over to CW! it is always fun to work stations like these two awesome contacts above and beyond all the cool cats I worked otherwise as well! With less than 20 calls in the log, this is still one of my more favorite activations. Terrible band conditions due to a solar storm, worked two different modes and made a bunch of contacts…what more could you ask for?
Thanks for following along on my antics and I hope you come back next time.
WK4DS