A simple POTA activation

Today saw me use the Ten Tec Scout again to great effect. Below is the case I carry it in showing the full compliment of band modules (I keep one in the radio and today that is the 20 meter module). Under the radio is the power cable in a pocket just for it and next is the spot for the microphone in a more permanent role. You can see the impression from where it sits in the case currently.

These hard cases come from Harbor Freight and make wonderful travel cases for my POTA radios to be quite honest about it. I need to get two more and kit out my Ten Tec Argonaut 5 and my Penntek TR-35 and the set will be complete. The Argonaut has a nice hard case, but it is really large and kinda hard to maneuver with. I thought it would be a great kit for POTA and it does work, but I would really like something different… As an aside, I store the owners manual to each radio behind the lid foam on all of these. That way I have a instruction book should I forget how to do something obscure that I dont use all that often.

I have not dismantled a band module to see what all is inside it but there is a good bit of stuff going on in each one. They are about 3” long and the circuit board goes all the way to the front. So there is plenty of widgets inside them to make the magic happen.

Today, I only used the 15 and 20 meter modules as I was being a little lazy and only put out radials for these two ham sticks. A quick SWR check with the nanoVNA and I was off to the races.

The above shows my CW key and keyer. The key is made by N3ZN and if you have not tried one then I highly recommend them. It works beautifully for me. The keyer is a Picokeyer from Hamgadgets.com and works way better than it should for what it costs. Since Ten Tec radios traditionally dont have memories for the CW keyers, this is the way to have those memories really easily.

The next thing I did that was out of my usual character is to get the hand mic out and work some SSB today as well. It worked OK, but there were times when the audio was odd and I would get little hints to something being wrong but all in all it worked fine.

As per my usual outings, I had the place to myself today with only a couple of cars rolling by during the entirety of my activation. I like it like this though as there is no ignition noise to deal with or inverters making RF hash, just the peace and quiet of the park and my radio chattering in the truck. During this time of day, the sun will beam into my door if I roll down the window beside me so I usually just roll down the other three and the one beside me just a little so the air still moves through the truck taking away the heat from the radio and making it nice and pleasant.

Just look at that parking lot all for me! HaHa! That never gets old! There is just something magical about the peace and quiet of a park like this.

Something I learned today that is different between the Argonaut 5 and the Scout is that I have to use the key jack to make this radio transmit a side tone in CW. I can key the transmitter with the “mic jack cable” that I made for the Argonaut 5 but it wont produce a side tone with the Scout for some reason. So I instead used this port on the back of the radio to get it to work right (see photo below). Another special thing about this radio to me is that it has a Curtis keyer chip in it and you can plug a set of paddles directly into it and it will work as you would expect, but it is in a different port… Go figure. All these options are hot all the time too. Plug a straight key into it and key it to send CW then you could (theoretically) just pick up the microphone and talk to someone on SSB without changing anything else on the radio. It appears that it is in SSB mode all the time and CW is just the side tone being transmitted instead of the audio from the microphone. This does cause one little issue that a user will notice pretty quickly. The zero beat is the display frequency plus or minus (depending on band) the side tone frequency. The filter is simply a bandpass knob that adjust the filter bandwidth and that is it. A very simple radio that just works.

An example of the side tone offset in CW can been seen in the photo above where I am tuned up on 15 meters. It displays 21.0523mhz but the radio is actually operating on 21.053mhz when transmitting. So if you are near the band edges on say 40 meters CW, just keep this in mind so you are not transmitting out of band. The owners manual even mentions this to make sure you stay compliant with FCC regulations.

As you can see from the log above, I started out on 15 meters CW and worked several stations there before moving to 15 meters SSB till the band essentially faded out. At that point I decided to see what would happen if I went down to 20 meters SSB and called CQ… Well the log speaks for itself. I made 26 contacts in 15 minutes! This has to be some sort of world record!!! LOL…for me that is… It was wild how big the pile up was and how quick it happened! The people were super nice and courteous and really helpful so I thank all of you that called me this day and I really appreciate you stopping by to say hello!

73

WK4DS - David

Dual POTA activations US-0716

This park is the second nearest park to me past US-2169. Since it is a further drive, I tend to not activate it as much. This weekend I was able to actually activate it in both states in two consecutive days.

As you can see above, the band was really active on CW as well as FT8 on this day at Eagle’s Nest and I made quite a few contacts in the mid afternoon here. When I setup here, I am right on the edge of the road so I have a lot of road noise to contend with here. I ended up going to earphones when I operated CW just so I could hear when cars would go by. That was OK though as I could hear plenty well enough to get a bunch of QSOs in the log before switching over to FT8 for a while.

Yours truly next to the sign for this location and the below picture shows where the truck is located in comparison to the road as viewed from the sign. There is an upper parking area too but the spot where I parked today is fully inside the park so I simply setup here if I don’t have a lot of time.

I quickly ran the radials out into the weeds and checked the antenna system on the nanoVNA and it was close enough to use (I think it was 1.5:1 SWR or something near that). I really thought I would simply get 12 QSOs in the log and move on today as the bands have not really been the best lately, but that was not what happened at all!

Getting on FT8 after a strong run on the CW portion of the band was fun as well! I am really starting to enjoy this whole concept of multiple modes in a single activation.

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The next day saw me wanting to activate the Georgia side of the park as I again had some free time in the afternoon. Well, let’s do it then. I strike out to the battlefield and when I get there, my usual spot is completely clear! I am stoked! I back into the tiny parking lot (it only has two spaces for some reason) and get the radio setup in short order. Well, this is where the problems start. I power up the radio and there is this broadband noise that is wiping out the band now! I investigate it for a minute and realize they have one of those huge temporary LED road signs setup across the road. This has to be the problem because there is literally nothing in any direction for over a mile easily. Well drat. I decide to expediently break down the radio to the point that the radials are rolled up and laid in the truck bed and the antenna is just stuck in the bed with the radials and I left the antenna mount on the truck hitch.

This is the culprit as best as I can tell. It is the only thing that was in the area for probably a mile in any direction that was not there the last time I activated this spot. Have any of you ever had this sort of problem with these signs?

So I move down the road about a mile or so and then take a side road out to a pull off next to a field with a bunch of monuments in it and as a bonus, it was also in the shade! These bicycles were about the loudest thing to go by while I was there too. A couple of cars did go by, but they go MUCH slower on this little one lane road since it also has the bicyclers to watch out for.

Getting to operate in the shade is kind of a special thing for me as I dont usually have a setup that allows for that.

And this is what the band scope looked like with me in a new location. Nice and quiet. There was a disturbance in the bands today though as I had a K index of 3 and it was not near as easy to get enough contacts today as it was the day before on the ham radio… In the photo I am working AF4DN on FT8 on the sBitx V3 and it was about to dry up for FT8 contacts.

Once I finished the FT8 portion of the activation, I wanted to use the Ten Tec Argonaut V radio so I switched them out and got it on the air. In the photo you can see that I was on 14.050 mhz, but the logbook shows 14.051 mhz. This because I was calling CQ and after a couple of minutes I heard someone tune up on my frequency and then they started calling CQ… Rather than get upset, I simply spun the dial a little, called QRL (Is the Frequency in use?), and then started calling CQ again. It took a while but I finally worked a half a dozen contacts on CW and at that point I had cleared all the callers I could hear and decided to go QRT and get something to eat.

This is one thing about the Argonaut V that I really like. This radio has a good ole S meter! I love to have a real meter movement if it is feasible to do so. Several of my radios do not have this features and I miss it. My old Ten Tec Omni 6+ and my Ten Tec Omni 7 both have S meters, although the Omni 7 has a digital bar-graph style on the digital display and not a physical meter, it is still there and does give you some sort of indication of the signal strength.

The operating position is starting to get very comfortable to be quite honest about it. I am starting to like operating from the truck more and more. The first year I worked many of my activations from a picnic table in the park and I had to carry all my stuff across the park to the table and back every time. This was not too bad, but it sure is convenient when you can simply setup in the truck cab in just minutes and I can even operate in the rain in this position without much problem, so rainy day activations are a thing for me now.

Two things of note about these last two photos that are of interest to me and maybe you too. The first one is that I have worked W7RF (#14 in the logbook) and this might not mean anything to you, but he is the inventor of the keyer I was using in this activation! He owns Hamgadgets.com and I love his Picokeyer CW memory keyers! I thought I recognized his call and when I ran it through QRZ, I knew I have to email him and send him a photo. he wrote me back and we had a great little exchange over it, turns out he is an avid POTA hunter as well as many other things. I count it as special to have him in my log. The bottom photo shows the parking lot I was at when I started this blog post today. It is also where I apparently left my storage case for my radials with half of the radials and ground weights still in it! I went to breakdown the system at the other location and could not find the storage case. So I packed it up and drove back over to the original spot and there it was, still sitting in the grass right where I left it… What a day.

Classic CW Activation!!! Ten Tec Argonaut V for the win!

I don’t know if you have a favorite radio or not, but I do. The Ten Tec Argonaut V is one of my all time favorite portable CW rigs and for good reason! This radio brings all that is CW and Ten Tec together in the perfect combination of fun and ease of use.

Of course, this radio also has several other modes (although I could not tell you all of them as I have never switched it off of CW) but it will do other modes as well. All that said, it is a wonderful little CW machine and the ergonomics for use with CW show through in the design of the radio. From the minimalist layout to the proper location of critical operating controls, this radio is just about perfect. The only other thing that would make this radio even better would be the inclusion of Collins mechanical filters in the IF..but I digress… (Giving a quick nod to my Omni 7).

You see, when you’re activating a park with a small CW radio, you only need a few controls to be able to work the contacts coming in. The main two being the RIT for stations that are off your beat frequency by more than is comfortable (I had one of these today) and the filter bandwidth adjustment. These are the same knob on the Argonaut 5 and it is a simple button press to switch between these two functions. Another point to consider is these buttons are grouped near each other too so you are not searching all over the radio for the controls you need to work your activation. Along with these two controls the only other one I use while activating is the volume to bring down strong signals and it is also right next to the other controls, keeping the process really clean for me. Honestly the radio seems to be laid out with the “set-n-forget” stuff on the left side and the “active-use-while-operating” controls on the right now that I look at it.

Enough of me gushing on about the radio, we all know that I love this little machine…So onto the key and keyer. The key is my N3ZN travel key and it is fed into a HamGadgets Picokeyer both which are wonderful devices and work exceedingly well with the Ten Tec Argonaut V amateur radio. It has been a while since I have used the Hamgadgets Picokeyer so I had to get out the owners manual to see how to change one of the settings. Taking copies of the manuals is something I am a huge proponent of as it just makes sense. Without this book I would have been searching online, and sometimes that is not available at a park. The paper book never has a “dead battery” and is always ready to serve you. Take copies of the books with you…

A good cup of coffee is crucial to a good activation!

I went to my old haunt today US-2169 to get on the air and work some CW contacts as the space weather showed that the sun was still being friendly. I get to the park and find that it is starting to rain so I hurriedly setup my hamstick for 20 meters (I didn’t want to change bands alot with it raining…) and threw some electrical tape on the coax connector for a temporary rain jacket and got back in the truck. Pro-tip about electrical tape, turn it around backwards with the sticky side out and twist the end of the tape so it is easy to grab and unwind later if you don’t want the adhesive sticking to your parts. Things like the putting it on the coax connector as a temporarily rain shield is the perfect application for this idea. When you are done just unwind the tape and put it in the trash.

I had setup a new radial field design today as an experiment to see if adding a really long radial would work (or even help) and was pleasantly surprised to find it did! I really love using the nanoVNA to measure my antenna instead of a simple SWR meter, even though today I used the SWR function instead of the smith chart.

The power of the smith chart can not be overstated either. What you get to see on the smith chart is the data that the SWR plot shows (well, it shows the impedance and you have to know a little math to turn it into SWR) and is also shows you if your system is capacitive, inductive or purely resistive (the best option if you get to pick). Now this doesn’t mean your signal is going to get out to some distant DX station super well just because the SWR is 1:1, but your transceiver wont have to deal with reflected signals coming back down the line out of phase with the transmitted signal. I was a ham for way to long before I learned the power of the smith chart…and I have just scratched the surface of what can be done with it. All that to say that 1.061:1 is a great SWR for a field deployed antenna…lol

Just for fun I decided to look and see what the SSB segment would be since I tuned this antenna to center frequency on the CW portion and it is still good in this configuration. Dont let any SWR reading below 2:1 scare you, all radios are designed to be able to work into at least that much SWR as EEs (Electrical Engineers - the guys who actually design radios) know that these devices are going to end up in not-so-perfect applications and want them to work anyway.

The measurements, roughly, for these radials are 14’6” and 26’ respectively and they are laid out with the shorter one being 90 degrees to the truck. This is the position that I tuned the antenna at, with this radial as well as it’s mate running out the other side 180 degrees out from this one.

The 26’ radial is run pretty much away from the truck to the rear and it gets the benefit of running down the slope too. This angle adjusts the impedance of the antenna by changing the reactance. This is why discone antennas have the ground plane at 45 degrees sloping down, it presents a near perfect impedance to the transceiver. I will repeat this setup on my next trip and put the smith chart on it to see what it says about the system, I am curious to know now…

I keep this Ultra Picokeyer from Hamgadgets and the N3ZN portable CW key with the Argonaut V so every time I use this radio, I will have a memory keyer and nice paddle to operate it with. It had been a hot minute since I had used the Ultra Picokeyer so I needed to get the manual out for it. Seems for some reason last time I used it, I had enabled the internal tone (for use as a practice oscillator) and wanted to silence it for the activation. I knew how to get into the menu, but I didn’t remember the item name specifically, so out comes the book…

I can not stress how important it is to me to have the manuals to the devices I am using, stored with the kit. The only exception is when the device is so simple and intuitive that you don’t need one anyway (like with the Penntek TR-35 transceiver). So I keep home-made copies of manuals to both the Ultra Picokeyer and the Ten Tec Argonaut V transceiver in the hard shell case with them. They have saved me a couple of times already. Me and my friend KG4WBI (Roger) have this obsession with printing the manuals and then building them into these term paper booklets so we will have them later, I have so many manuals at this point, I have manuals for radios I no longer own…lol.

The 20 meter band was actually really good today. There is supposed to be significant solar problems right now as a problematic sunspot is pointing our way but I was graced with a little time to get on the air and was greeted with quite a few hunters to my surprise! As you can see in the beacon report below I was getting into New Hampshire quite well!

Some observations from today that I noticed were that I was getting states that I shouldn’t have been hearing… States like Alabama, North Carolina and even GEORGIA! I don’t ever get this kind of NVIS operation on 20 meters, I usually have to go to 40 meters to see this sort of thing happen.

Another thing was I was getting some pretty heavy QSB (fading of the signal) at times as well. The QSB even seemed to come and go which was normal to be honest for this sort of thing, but what made it unusual for me today was how deep it was. 599 signals would just disappear for 2 seconds the fade back in. Deep…

Fortunately I was able to get all the information for my log. There was a significant amount of US ops only on this day too. I figured there would be a few more Canadians as well but I only worked one on this day . It is always great to get some of our friends to the North in the log.

The diversity in the log spread today can not be understated. I was blown away with all those southern states coming back to me. Strange conditions for sure, maybe the new radial idea improved NVIS, maybe they have always been able to hear me and when I would activate there just wasn’t anyone hunting… I don’t know, but today they were there and I was stoked! Thanks for coming along and I hope to see you in the comments below.

WK4DS

Little Manatee River State Park K-1898

I had some time today and wanted to get out of the city here in Tampa so I went to Little Manatee River State Park and setup a quick little activation on 15 meters.

This park is really nice and well cared for. It has many hiking trails as well as a creek on one side that you can canoe in…just dont pet the alligators and you will be fine there, but they do have an equestrian area as well. Plenty to do if you want to do something other than park activations for some reason…lol

Today saw me setup on the bed cover agian as it was nice out and I was mostly in the shade so I knew I wouldnt get too hot. I ran CW only as I didn’t feel like messing with the sBitx V3 to work FT8 as I really only had about 30 minutes of operating time and for me, the FT8 contacts come in a little slower than the CW contacts. I did choose 15 meters though which was a little bit of a gamble, but it worked out once I got on the air and tuned around the band a little and found it was active, I rested a little easier.

I ran the Ten Tec Argonaut 5 transceiver today with the N3ZN key and Hamgadgets memory keyer. This radio is a joy to use for CW and I really enjoy using it for park activations. It has about 20 watts full output, but today I was only running 15 watts as I normally don’t push the old transistors as hard as when they are new… probably don’t matter, but in my mind it makes sense. When I am operating, I use 3 things, well 4 if you count the AF gain (volume). I use the multi-function knob to control the BW (band width of the filter) and the RIT control. The same knob does both jobs, you just hit which ever button you need first then set that function to what you want. The display is currently showing the BW setting of 600 Hz. I will open it up if the band is quiet, but this thing is pretty selective and will allow me to go down to 250 or 300 Hz if I need it and works really well.

Today also saw the use of zero radials. I wanted to see what the SWR would be without anything since these antennae are designed to be used without a counterpoise and just work off the coax shield and car body. I was pleasantly surprised when the nanoVNA showed 1.3 to 1 right out of the chute! Seems my antenna for the band is tuned a little low like this. If I add the 20 meter radials it balances better and move the frequency up closer to where I operate and gets that super deep null right on me.

I did experiment a little with how I laid out the coax to see what it would do and the result was minimal to say anything. I think I changed the reading by .01 SWR from start to finish. Totally not worth the extra effort to optimize the coax… The photo below shows me pointing at the best setup I found and the screen of the VNA showing my target frequency on a 4Mhz slice of spectrum.

I had problems with RF in my keyline. I am guessing due to the proximity of my key and keyer to the antenna. With electronic keying, rf can trigger the keying circuit adding unwanted dots and dashes to your code. I solved this by adding rf chokes to literally everything. If you will notice they are on the key cable as well as the keyer to radio cable and I still have that huge one on the coax as well. I have not added them to the power cables yet but might to see if it will help.

At the end of the day, all POTA is good POTA and I had a wonderful time working a ton of stations. The Ten Tec Argonaut 5 is a great little radio and I count my blessing for being able to land one for reasonable money. If you are a CW guy, then I suggest you try some of the Ten Tec radios as they are simply sublime machines for this mody. I quickly became an addict of their radios and will continue to be for many years to come. Thanks and I hope you get on the air and have some fun soon!

73 - WK4DS

Two days- Hamcation and two POTA parks!

Well, it has been two quite long days to be honest and I am tired while I type this up. BUT, it has been incredible to say the least. I have heard about Hamcation for years, but I have never actually been able to attend until now. I will also be honest and say that I was not prepared for what I found, nor did I really expect to find what I found as well.

Of course, I am leading with a photo of me and Tony N3ZN as he makes wonderful Morse code keys, one of which I have and use for my POTA activations routinely. It is always good to catch up with Tony if I have the opportunity. Shameless unsolicited plug – if you are looking for a really high-quality Morse code key, then this is a wonderful place to look, just saying.

Every organization you could imagine was represented at Hamcation. People from the ARRL as well as the Long Island CW club were there, among others such as AMSAT and the local boyscouts troops and so on.

Some notable things that caught my eye were this giant double Tarheel adjustable dipole seen above, as well as the full line up from Flex Radio as seen below. Well, this is the Maestro control head but they had everything they offer up and running so you could play with them. These are some really nice machines to be honest about it. The display is also a touch screen so that is why there really isnt a need for a ton of panel mounted buttons. I do like having buttons, but this is me hanging onto legacy machines that the bigger the radio the more features you could cram onto the front of the radio had back in the golden era allowing for easier access to the functions. The Elecraft K4 shown below is the perfect blend of touch screen controls and panel mounted buttons in my opinion.

Now for something that me and Trey started back a couple of years ago. We would search out all the Ten Tec radios to see what all was out there for sale just to see. Well, below are all the Ten Tec radios that I saw in the bone yard. Some are actually marked as parts machines. This is new for me as normally they are marked as working perfectly (whether they are or not LOL). There was one amp that was marked as a project, probably due to failed tubes that are no longer available and would need a fairly extensive modification to use different tubes. It would be worth it though as the filtering in Ten Tec gear is superb.

Anyway I was surprised that this was everything as there were ALOT of vendors setup in the bone yard. Pickings was a little thin for the brand. To be honest, the main brand I saw on the used gear tables was ICOM and then Kenwood right behind ICOM with a few Yaesu and one Elecraft K3 that I remember…

Below is the new Elecraft KH1 pocket HF transceiver. This radio is going to do two things really well. SOTA and travel radio will be revolutionized by this machine. The fact that is is so small that it is basically the size of a modern smartphone and can talk around the globe, has a built in key, battery, antenna tuner, antenna, logbook AND pen is insane! I really like the concept alot.

I did buy a radio though it was not a Ten Tec. I bought the 40 meter QRP radio shown below that was built by the late W9SR(SK). It is a 40 meter monobander and is really old. Once I get home, I will update the cable with powerpoles as I couldn’t find a molex to fit it at the whole show and then I will test it some into a dummy load to get the power and make sure the frequency is still right and then it will goto a park! His brother was selling some items and this was in that lot. I am glad to know some of the history on it and hope it works right so I dont have to spend a lot of time figuring out how it works internally. Lol.

Speaking of POTA… this is how I did Hamcation this year. Teresa and I are actually staying in Tampa for these two weeks so I drove up each day for the show. Arrived about 8 and since I am “media”, could check in and get photos and talk to vendors a little about things prior to the show opening. This is how I got most of my photos of the booths. Then right around noon or so, I would leave and head back towards Tampa and along the way, stop at a POTA site and get in an activation.

The first one I got plenty of photos and was in the shade the whole time and was outside, the second was none of that. HAHA

I love operating from the bed cover of the truck with the N3ZN key and my Ten Tec Argonaut 5 radio with my Hamgadgets Memory Keyer. This whole rig just works so well and is so fun to use.

This is the first park and was a lot of fun. I setup on 20 meters as I wasn’t sure about band conditions and such and didnt want to take too long, but as you can see in the log, that never was a problem. The little Ten Tec Argonaut 5 works like a dream, I easily secured the activation in 30 minutes and was still back home before 6PM.

The next day I did the same thing with my schedule but with a park that was closer to the Interstate exit so I had longer to operate. I only got one photo of this park and it was of these giant birds walking around in the parking area while I worked FT8. These birds are LOUD when they “sing” if you can call it that. They were maybe 15 feet from the truck when they would make the call. Did I mention that it was loud? Good grief that startled me when they did it the first time!

Since there was no shade at this location, I faced the truck away from the sun, rolled down all the windows and setup in the cab where I was out of the sun. I ran the sBitx radio today since I wanted to work some FT8 as well as CW. This worked great as I had the activation in the bag in no time but wanted to work some additional contacts for a while so I went back to FT8 and made several contacts there while I transcribed my log into HAMRS so I can put it on the POTA site.

Notice on the map just how close the pin is to the interstate in the above image. That was a really nice perk to this park, it was easy to get to and not far off my course heading back to Tampa.

The above photo is a dramatization. Lol. This photo is from a different day but it looked EXACTLY like this duri g this activation as well, I just forgot to get a photo since I was in a hurry.

I hopped on 15 meters at this park, being curious as to how it would work and boy did it! FT8 ran really strong and then CW came in for many great contacts and then I worked 8 more FT8 contacts before shutting down the station and heading home. 41 contacts total with several into Europe on FT8 which is awesome! With my time running out, I packed up the radio and headed back to Tampa for supper with Teresa. This was a great weekend for me as I was able to goto the Hamcation in Orlando AND activate two POTA parks as well! How much better can it get???

I hope you enjoyed this little AAR about my weekend at Hamcation. 73

WK4DS

A POTA activation that was incredibly rewarding!!!

When we activate a park we never know what is going to happen.

So today is Labor day here in the USA. This is the first Monday in September set aside for the workers of this country to grill out with their buddies and such as that. So for me that means going out and setting up a POTA activation somewhere. I decided on Cloudland Canyon after deciding that the drive time to other parks would make the activation very short for me and I wanted more time on the air instead. I choose the upper parking lot since I wanted to use my hamstick system instead of rigging to the trees today. The trees I normally use have a lot of traffic today from hikers and I didn’t want them tripping over antenna wires all day so this just made sense. As you can see below, there was plenty of room for me here today…

I don’t know if I have shared this or not, but I have converted all of my hamsticks to this QD system so band changes are fast. It works really well, I do need to retune my antennas though as this did lengthen them a little and now they are all low on the meter for their center frequency… always something to do…lol.

Once installed, these mounts work really well and the tune is very stable, I have not seen it change at all from the numbers on the VNA since adding these QD adapters. So if you think you might want to use hamsticks for POTA, I really like them. Now to be honest, I don’t think I would use them for mobile (in motion on the roadway) use as there is a lot of leverage on this little mount and the spring is not that heavy to me, they might work fine like that and probably have been deployed that way, but for me, this is a site setup tool only.

Another reason for the hamstick setup is the use of the truck for shade during the activation. By strategic positioning of the truck I can leave the doors open with the engine off and not have RFI from the operating parts of the truck to contend with as well as having a natural shade from the sun too. I use this trick a lot when I don’t have a ton of time for an activation and want to operate in inclement weather like rain. Simple and robust, plus the system just works, look at the logbook below and tell me how hamsticks don’t work…

I carry all of the stuff in the photo below in the hard-shell case that I keep the Ten Tec Argonaut 5 in so I don’t have to search for cables or things like my key. It is all in there and I just grab the case and go. This makes life so much simpler for me. Seen in the photo is the Ham-gadgets Pico Keyer and the N3ZN tiny CW key I picked up at the Huntsville Hamfest. Once I get all the parts out of the case I close it up and use it in the passenger seat for the hard surface to place the radio on so it is out of the way while I use the center armrest for logging and sending CW.

Here you can see how simple the connection scheme is when running Hamstick antennas, there is no tuner or interconnecting cables, just the RF choke to the coax, the power cable (I plugged into the truck’s cigarette lighter port today) and the CW key cable and nothing else is needed. Simple is king here and it also makes setup fast. That is another reason I like using CW instead of other digital modes with this radio as well as my other radios to this point. They all need a computer and a sound card to get them to do digital modes (other than CW) and I normally don’t have a ton of time for all that setup and getting it going. CW is on the air really fast, like SSB. You can also see the silent fan mod I did a while back (there is a blog post showing what I did) and I really like this mod as it eliminated the fan noise entirely. I need to make a screen to protect the fan though, that is still a project to be done…

You have seen this view shown below in the past, but I included it today since I got the moon in the photo too… lol. I do like the system I have built for activating a park with a hamstick, it is really fast to deploy and when I do a rove, I simply coil up the counterpoise wires and lay them in the truck bed. pull off the radiator from the QD base and lay it in the bed of the truck too, unplug the coax and coil up the portion to get it inside the truck and I am off to the next park. The antenna mount can ride in the receiver hitch easily enough so it is not an issue. This sounds like a lot but it literally happens in two minutes tops and I am driving to the next park.

Another thing I did today was hook up the inline power meter. Now I don’t remember why it only shows 8.9 watts of output. I had the radio set to 15 watts forward power so I probably took the photo after I let off of the key as the amp hour meter doesn’t clear till you disconnect it from power. I don’t remember if I had it in tune mode or if I was simply sending dashes. But what I was looking for was the total amp hours of use, this tells me if my little 8A/h battery would hold up to a heavy activation. From this meter reading it will. Now remember, this is with the radio set to 15 watts too, so under a normal activation of 5 to 8 watts, this would last for many hours. Today I went for two hours and got 70 contacts in the log and only used 3.68A/h and that makes me much more confident in using the smaller battery for activations now. I had my concerns before but now I don’t. Another point here is that I normally try to add something else to the activation that has to do with information gathering so I also learn something that I didn’t know before, today it was the amp hour info.

So I get to the park and take my time and listen to the bands a few minutes once the rig is installed and decide to start on 40 meters as the noise level was really low today. I get on the air at 13:25 UTC (9:25 local time) and start calling CQ… It didn’t take long to secure the activation and I had not left 40 meters! I don’t get on the lower bands too often as I am not at the park at night when the bands are less noisy so I don’t get the hams in the closer states like Tennessee or Georgia, it was really nice to get some of those states in the log for a change. Hanging out on 15 and 17 meters nets much more distant stations so I have to remember to come back to 40 every once in a while…

I then move to 30 meters for a little while to see what I could do there and work several more people on 30 meters in about ten minutes of operating. 30 meters at this park is a crap shoot to be honest, some days it is quiet and some days it has this intermittent computer noise that just shuts the band down, today the noise was nowhere to be found to my delight!

Then…I…got…on…twenty…

First off, who doesn’t work Bill (K4NYM) if he is booming in to your station and for a Park to Park no less? So I hunted him before setting up on frequency. It took one try, he is an amazing operator and I aspire to operate as efficiently as him some day.

Things take off once I park on a frequency and start calling CQ. I promptly work a page and a half of calls then I get the one you see below. Not one to brush off anyone calling me, I take the time to have a nice QSO with him as he is working on getting on the air with CW and is having to do head copy only…I later learn… So I take the time to write down what he is sending so I can read it and respond when it is my turn. Turns out he is just now getting back active in CW after taking a long hiatus from it and also, he cant see, hence the head copy only. Talk about a person with conviction, he never gave up. I was so glad Justin called me and feel honored he felt confident in me enough to throw his call into the fray of POTA not knowing what would happen. That took guts.

Once we finished our QSO it was back to the POTA game in full swing. I struggled with one thing today more than anything else… stations zero beating me. It never fails, I get two or three stations that due to modern technology, will zero beat me perfectly. This in itself isn’t a problem and is really the most efficient QSO to have in CW, but what happens is that those two or three stations melt together into the one single tone and it is unintelligible. So If I don’t pull you out on the first try, move up or down 30 to 40 hertz, This will make you off frequency enough to sound different and you wont blend with the other stations and I will get you on the first try, this is an old contesting trick and by golly it works, I will have one station that stands out and is clearly definable and the rest is this one huge tone. I never really understood it till I was an activator trying to pull one call out of the mayhem, then I got it. Now when I hunt I leave my XIT or Transmit Incremental Tuning on and set 40 hz high just for this reason.

Once I hit 70 QSOs today I had been on the air for two straight hours so I went QRT and shut down the radio. It was a great activation and I really enjoyed working with a new (relatively speaking) ham on building his CW skills back up to what they were. So till next time get your radio out!!!

72

WK4DS - David