1 POTA, 2 Radios, 3 Modes and 4 Bands!

Today was a fun day…

The location is all too familiar, but I set out to do a sort of special operation today. I wanted to complete a POTA activation using two radios, 3 modes and 4 bands in one sitting. This doesn’t sound like a tall order but since I am operating inside the truck cab, this does involve a little logistics to not just have stuff piled everywhere while I am operating. As you will see in the photos below, I still ran into this problem somewhat, but it was manageable.

I setup at the disc golf parking lot again, but this time there were quite a few people there and some of them actually quizzed me about what I was doing. One gentleman, Jerry as noted in my log, actually chatted for a good bit about how he has been looking to get into ham radio but the Atlanta area is kinda tough on locating local hams for some reason. I gave him a card and told him to email me and I would give him as much info on it as I could find to get him on the right path…

As you can see in the photos, I set up ham sticks and this time I started on 40 meters FT8. I wanted to get the FT8 portion of my “sprint” if sorts out of the way first as the other two modes were going to be on the Ten Tec Scout 555. I had recently activated with it and it was acting up with chirping on CW and reports of RF noise on my audio on SSB. I attributed this to poor connection of the 20 meter band module as it was fine on 15 meters. Armed with this knowledge, before I left out for the park, I took the radio to the shop and use the Deoxit for gold contacts and a tooth brush to clean the contacts on the band modules. I even wetted one module pretty good and used it to “clean the contacts in the radio by plugging and unplgging the module a bunch of times.

This improvised procedure worked as I got good reports and the CW ran flawlessly as you will see later. Deoxit is magical stuff, if you dont have any, it is work your investment to grab a small can of it.

I really enjoy using this radio for my FT8 operating and with the upgraded finals and RF deck, it runs flawlessly now with SWRs in the 2:1 and even slightly higher range without problem. Today saw SWR levels on transmit of about 1.7:1 and it happily skipped right along making several contacts in a row at one point.

After completing 6 QSOs on FT8 I figured it was time to get the Ten Tec Scout 555 out of the case and see what I could scare up on CW.

The 40m Ham stick that I have must have a really high Q as it is very narrow banded. So I have it tuned for the CW portion of the band and the SWR in the SSB area can be quite bad at times. For this reason, I chose not to hunt any SSB contacts on 40 meters today. Once on CW (this was about 1/2 hour later as this is when I talked to Jerry) the band must have been closing or the band noise was getting so bad that I could not hear many stations. I was able to work Alabama and Tennessee before the call signs faded into the noise. That is something you will learn pretty quick about HF radio propagation, if you want to work closer in stations, use the lower bands, but if you want to reach the west coast from Georgia on a ham stick, use the higher bands like 15 and 20 meters. When 10 meters is open I have worked other continents with ease… Don’t discount those higher bands, they are truly magical.

In the above photo I have the CW key and keyer staged but not connected. The mouse is actually driving the FT8 machine and makes working FT8 so much easier to be honest.

In these two photos you can see what you have to work on constantly. The above photo shows the cable that came with my Ten Tec Scout 555 when I bought it. This is a common issue you will find with home shop made cables. These were stripped back way too far and as I used the cable, the conductors started breaking and I was beginning to worry about blowing fuses.

I happen to own a tool that is designed to remove these pins from the connector, so I am able to dismantle this connector properly. I dismantled it, then took it apart and cleaned it up, properly stripped and re-soldered the pins, then put heat shrink tubing on it all to insulated and protect it better. Now I am not so worried about it either shorting and melting the wire or blowing the fuses and shutting down the activation over something as simple as a cable…

Once I finished on 40 meters and had two modes in the bag on one band, I switched over to 15 meters CW to see what was happening there. There was a contest going on so it was a little crowded and I didn’t understand the exchange so I didn’t jump into the contest, but rather setup on a clear spot and calledCQ and worked a couple of stations there, one station of which is DX!!!

At this point. I got a phone call from KG4WBI about a completely unrelated matter, which we discussed and I told him to fire up his HF rig and we would see if ground wave would make the trip to his house from the park so I could get Georgia in the log as well as a 2nd mode on 15 meters! Well, it worked just fine and we had a great QSO on 15 meters SSB before he had to sign off and go run errands. So having confidence that SSB was going to work better I started calling CQ on SSB.

I got literally zero replies to my calls… so I went hunting instead. I found two more ops that could hear me and I was able to bag a couple more QSOs and these were Park to Park contacts to boot!

These three photo show me installing the band module into the Ten Tec Scout 555 transceiver. It really is that simple to change bands on this radio. Now to be fair, this is not as simple as just turning a knob, but it really isn’t that bad.

To remove the module you pull out the bottom of the little lever on the front of the module and it will pop out enough to be able to slip it out, then you grab a different one off of the pile and stick it back in the slot in the radio. Push it to seat it and then your ready to go.

At this point, I switched over to 20 meters and since the PTO (notice it is not a VFO) was still up in the SSB area, I decided to see if I could hunt some contacts with that mode. I landed one contact in SSB on 20 meters and was happy to get them in the log.

After working the one lonely SSB contact on 20 meters, I decided to give CW a try as well… Remember me mentioning a contest? Well, it was here too. It was going strong as well and because of this I was only able to work one contact on CW as well. If nothing else it netted me another band!

My last stop of the day was 17 meters. The 17 meter band is a WARC band and therefore it is off limits to contesting. Now, to be fair, POTA has been called contesting of sorts, but as of right now it is not considered a contest but is more in the spirit of something similar to a rare DX station activating on the same band and developing a huge pileup there. So I proceeded to hunt me an empty spot (18.078mhz) and started calling CQ.

This is when things literally took off! I netted a whole page of contacts in about a 1/2 hour span of time! What a day! 4th band in the books and I was stoked!!! 17 meters must have been where all the POTA ops had went due to the contest and I didn’t get the memo…lol. The Scout worked flawlessly after the cleaning and I cant be happier now with the old girl.

One of the great things about 17 meters is the propagation is really anybodys call. I worked Hungary at one point as well as California, Alaska and Idaho, then there is a ton of east coast stations too, it was everywhere today on 17 meters. Ham radio is so cool…

Before closing today I wanted to mention that Aaron KV9L and I have a youtube channel and we just hit 2000 subscribers (as of this writing)! If you are into ham radio and watching videos about it, then we would love for you to come over! I am currently doing a series of short form videos that are teaching CW one letter per day. There is no limit to the number ofd times you can watch them so I am hoping these become long term training aids for people.

Once I get the letters, numbers and punctuation done, I am going to start doing words next. After words will come sentences so we will see how it goes. Anyway, I just wanted to thank the 2000 people that made us as successful as we are!

73

David -WK4DS

POTA AAR using 3 modes on the sBitx transceiver

Today marks the second deployment of the sBitx and me using it on three different modes.

You see, I spent a good bit of time recently solving the weak audio problem with the SSB mode in this radio. I found the microphone input level is really weak and there was a common solve by installing a more powerful microphone element in the hand mc. I tried this approach and it really didn’t help much for me. l was essentially still yelling at the radio to get it to work. Pictured below is what my radio looked like on the work bench as I worked on the audio level for the microphone input.

I ended up building a pre-amp circuit to boost the audio several dB and this fixed my weak audio problem. I wrote about it in the blog and recently published that post as well if you would like to know more.

Back to the activation, it was a beautiful day and wasn’t really all that hot either. This is a nice departure from the July temperatures I had been dealing with recently.

I setup in my usual place but indexed the truck about 90 degrees so the sun wouldn’t shine directly in my open door. This allowed me to leave it open for the most part. I get so much more aurflow with the door open as opposed to just rolling down the window.

I also ran my 20 meter ham stick on the truck hitch mount I made and just deployed the two radials I tuned for 20 meters. I planned on this activation being kinda short so I didn’t setup for any other band since 20 meters is so active I should easily get my activation locked in on just that band.

I do have some future plans for the antenna mount though. One of thise is to incorporate multiple ham stick mounts (2 specifically) to allow for band hopping without having to get out of the truck. This way if I am setup on a rainy day, I can go ahead and setup two bands at the beginning and then just stay in the truck.

I am beginning to think I want to install a screwdriver antenna again like a Tarheel or something like that and just use that for the quicky ones. I have heard good things about Tarheel antennas and it would make a bunch of my activations so much faster.

I use these CB antenna mounts you get from the truck stops for my base connections. It is an easy way to build an antenna mount from scratch as it has everything you need to attach the antenna to the base.

Something else I like about the sBitx is that even though it is a touch screen design, it can also be mouse operated. This makes using the radio about 100 times easier as some of the touch functions can be fickle. Like picking a station to call on FT8 from the list. It isn’t super hard to do by hand but it is MUCH easier to do with a mouse. Because of this, I have started bringing a USB mouse with me on my activations.

Yet another reason I like this radio… lol. It can also use a USB keyboard as well and you can “type” CW with it if you want but I dont worry with that as I really dont have the room for the keyboard at this time. Maybe at some future point I will add a shelf for those items. Haha.

All in all it was a great activation and I really enjoyed the time at the park as well. It was really cool to be able to use SSB with this radio! That alone made this particular trip unique. I think prior to this that I had made just one SSB contacts total! ONE! Now that mode is going to be showing up in the logs more and more and I can’t wait to share those trips with you one here.

73

WK4DS

15 meters was on FIRE TODAY!

I don’t normally chase DX…

But today it wasn’t really an option to do anything else at one point. I had been wanting to use FT8 on the higher bands but had not had much of an opportunity lately. I got a day off and the bands were on fire so I figured it was as good a time as any to setup a POTA operation and see what I could do. As you can see in the above photo, it went splendidly well.

This was the operation position today. The cab of the truck has become a familiar place recently what with the temps being so low. (I really should get the armrest recovered at some point.) The difference was today is that I was just lazy and didn’t want to setup away from the truck. So I used the hamstick antennas and just sat in the truck to operate. It really is a convenient location to setup a POTA activation to be honest. Today also saw the use of my new Christmas present, a small writing table that hangs on the steering wheel. This is handy once you get it setup properly. I was able to log while operating and even was able to do some call sign searches on QRZ.com at the same time.

Above shows another milestone as well, I finally worked my friend KV9L on FT8! He is the person that got me into digital modes to start with and it took me months to finally get on the bands at the same time as him and then find a band that would support our QSO, turned out to be 30 meters today was that band. I worked a bunch of 20 meters FT8 before I moved and tried to find him on 30 meters though, but the antenna I was using has the wrong take off angle to be able to hear him on 20, so that is why we moved to 30. Once on 30 meters, and after our SKED (of sorts) I worked a few more ops there before getting my “chip in the big game” and moving up to 15 meters. Boy did it pay off too! My very first contact on 15 meters was Russia! Then it was DX station after DX station for the next hour, with one lone US operator hopping in as well. I would have to reposition my transmit frequency from time to time due to band crowding and such but the QSOs were steady. People will transmit right on top of you and if you don’t have any power…like me… you move somewhere else. Well with that kind of luck, I figured I would hop on CW and work a ton of CW contacts too…

Didn’t happen like that at all. I worked two ops on 15 meters CW, there just wasn’t anyone on the band and it was fading pretty hard for CW to hold up. I did get one DX station and Paul (KJ7DT) from Idaho so the mileage was still working great, just wasn’t many ops down there at this point. One of the reasons that I think the band held up so well for me today was the nanoVNA. As you can see below, the SWR plot shows that I had the radials positioned perfectly for a broad-banded usage potential on 15 meters, I thought for a minute about hoping on SSB and see what I could do, but really wanted those 20 meter contacts more… lol. With things this good I had to get on FT8 a while and this is where I got all that DX. When the conditions are right, you just get in the groove and have a wonderful time.

As you can see above, I was using the sBitx V3 with the native FT8 software today. It is functional and efficient, but it is the only one I know how to use at this time. Maybe at some point I will get FT4 going too. But for right now I am happy to be making FT8 contacts on this little radio.

Once I got finished tinkering around on 15 meters CW I decided to see what I could do on 20 meters CW. I moved down, which involved an antenna change… This means getting out of the truck, going around back and switching the ham sticks out, then if I have not done it yet for the new band, I have to install the radials. Fortunately the 20 meter radials were already setup so it was just the vertical and back inside the truck to check the antenna prior to putting RF on it and then setup the radio on 14.063mhz and started calling CQ. Well it didn’t take long and the calls started coming in from all over the USA. I had wonderful propagation today to all corners of the Untied States and the logbook reflects this as well. I even worked a VE7 call that was in Arizona! Everywhere from Washington state to Mississippi was there today, it was awesome!

This QSO map says it all, The 15 meter band was a great long distance band on this day. Just look at all those pins in Europe and Russia! If you don’t normally venture far from 20 and 40 meters, I would highly suggest giving the higher bands a shot sometime, you just might be pleasantly surprised at what you find! KV9L said that 10 meters was just as good if not better!

I hope this story inspires you to get on the air and try something new.

73

Monte Sano State Park POTA Activation AAR with a 20m Hamstick

Well, I finally activated a park in a new state… Alabama. You might think this is normal, till you google my address and see that I live on the Alabama state line in Georgia! I am literally two minutes by car from the state line and it took me several months to activate a park in Alabama… Anyway, I decided to activate the [sarcasm]remote and rarely visited[/sarcasm] Monte Sano State Park K-1048!!! Woohoo! Well. it is neither rare nor remote actually being literally minutes outside of Huntsville AL. It was new for me so I packed up the TR-35 and the new 20m Hamstick setup and struck out for Huntsville.

As fate would have it, I had business meetings that were on a time table so I didnt have a long time to stay, I thought once again that if I get my ten contacts I will be happy, well…I got more.

This is the QSO map from this trip. The VERY FIRST contact was with France!!! I thought, this is going to be a good day. Any day that my 5 watts reaches across the Atlantic Ocean, is a good day for me. It is obvious that the band and take off angle of my antenna dictate a certain “minimum” distance that people can hear me. A quick look at the map shows this, but just outside of this region and all bets are off! They piled in and in just over an hour I had 43 contacts in the log, with one being a dupe… It never ceases to amaze me at how well these little radios can perform with some thought and patience, but today the whole patience thing was out the window!!! I just kept getting calls! It was a QRP dream activation, I just wished I had been able to stay longer to see how many more I could have worked… Seems here lately, I am only able to stay and hour or two at best, I hope to remedy this soon, but for now, I will take that!!!

I also worked CU3AA in the Azores and VE2WLD (who also performed double duty as a Park to Park as well) for three DX stations on this trip alone! That is awesome and makes the whole activation just that much more special to me. If you have not ever tried POTA, I would recommend it at least once, it might not be for you, but if you enjoy setting up for field day, then you will probably like this. It is similar, but much more relaxed and lower key… At least that is how I see it. I find myself getting on the air more as a hunter and as an activation now that I have activated. It is just plain fun to go to a park and operated with a battery for a while and answer the passerby question from time to time. Once again, you can see the band opening and closing like waves on the ocean (maybe more like the tide coming in as it is slower than waves breaking on the beach) in the signal reports in the log. I even had a couple of people tell me they had problems with QSB (fading of the signal) towards the end of the activation.

Also of note is that this park has a day use fee (see below), be prepared for it when you get there, they have an attendant at the entrance to collect this fee before you enter the park. Parks seem to have a lot of lattitube in how they collect these fees, I have seen honor system pay boxes as well as no fees at all (Booker T Washington in Chattanooga TN has no fee) and then places like Monte Sano where they collect the fee at the entrance to the park. Cloudland has the honor system boxes as well as a attendant that works at the entrance part time, so you might find a person at the entrance and you might not, it is kind of a crap shoot with this one. You just never know… What I do know is the fee structure is normally really reasonable and to be honest…cheap for what you get. I bought my Georgia park pass back after my first activation and now that I am 47 activations in, that cost average is almost down to 1$ per visit. Once I break 50 it will be less than 1$ per trip. That is a smokin deal if you will be doing POTA ops regulaly at your local state parks (and they offer an annual pass like this one in Georgia). I plan to get over 100 activations at Cloudland before I have to renew my pass next May so then the daily cost should hit 50 cents per visit. Where else can you get a deal that good?

This is the only thing I brought back from that trip aside from my logbook, I don’t know how I forgot to get photos of the setup for you guys…I straight dropped the ball on that one. I guess it means I get to go back at some point so I can properly photograph it. LOL

The Penntek TR-35 is really starting to grow on me. This little radio just plain works. It doesn’t have things like a waterfall display or QSO recording like my IC-705 but what is does have is pretty much CW perfection. I have every control I normally use when doing an activation, at my fingertips and not buried in a sub menu or an alternate function for commonly used features…like CW speed control is a dedicated knob, this is super handy as POTA hunters vary in speed a good bit so being able to slow down on the fly for a slower op and then speed back up for a faster one is really handy. It is being tested out for a potential trip to Central America in a few months so I hope to keep up on using it and to prove it out as a capable machine while I am south of the border.

All in all it was a great trip and I finally got to activate Alabama too! If you have not used CW and want to, there are lots of ways to learn this historical mode fairly easily. It isn’t for everyone, just like SSTV isn’t for everyone, so if you don’t like CW it is all good, that is why we have different modes, at least in my mind it is, lol. If you have not done it yet, please like this blog and subscribe for future posts, Till next time, get your radio out and make some contacts!