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

Activating K-2169 and some notes about radials and SWR that I saw today...

Ok. Radials

Today saw the use of the sBitx v2 again as I wanted to work some FT8 as well as CW. I setup at the frisbee golf parking lot on top of the hill and decide to measure the SWR plot as well as check to see the Smith plot as well of the ham stick antenna and add counter poise wires till it quit making it better. I did this because I received a comment from a ham asking about any info I might have onthis subject since he is wanting to pick up a ham stick and mess around with it.

In the above photo, we have the ham stick on the receiver hitch mount that elevates the radiator to about 6’ to the bottom of the antenna. The antenna is only wired to the cab of the truck with a 15’ piece of coax and it terminates into the nanoVNA through a common mode choke. At this point I had not turned on the 2nd trace to see the smith chart…sorry about that. In all fairness, this could be used on the air with practically no worries, I would probably turn the power down to prevent heating of the finals from the SWR, but that is me being cautious. This is completely usable to be honest.

In the above image I have added a single, approximately 15’, radial and ran it straight out away from the back of the truck. This is completely usable and I have had great activations with just this one counter poise wire. Dropping from 1.574:1 down to 1.226:1 doesn’t sound like much but it really is when you are working towards a resonant antenna. Also notice how the null point is climbing in frequency as the radial field grows under the antenna.

In this photo we see the SWR plot has gotten spectacular! I added the tuned radials for the 17m antenna to the one radial I already had installed so now I am using three radials with the antenna and look at that plot. I arranged them 90 degrees apart as this also matters. The more this angle changes the more the SWR changes too. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Notice how it raised the frequency of resonance as I added counter poise wires to the system and it lowered the SWR to 1.028:1 as well as made the antenna slightly inductive instead of capacitive. This shows that the radials are more than simply a ground path but rather part of the tuned circuit that matches the radios transmit frequency and improved that whole system. If you have the space and time, I highly recommend adding counterpoise wires to your system and measuring it with something like a nanoVNA.

Another thing I learned is that I get best performance when the wires are pulled snug as you see in the photo above. I think this might have something to do with when I originally set it all up, I tuned them with them under tension like this which makes the wires the longest and also this changes the capacitance and inductance of the radial from just being thrown on the ground. As a matter of fact, it was when I tensioned the radial shown above that the SWR plot bottomed out like you see. It was the last one to be tightened and it made a huge difference.

By parking in this location I am able to get the radial at almost a 45 degree angle to the antenna or very near it. This matters as it is the point in the radiation pattern where to get a 50 ohm impedance match to the coax feeding it. There is tons of information out there on how to adjust the impedance of the antenna by adjust the angle of the radials…it is like some sort of dark magic to be honest.

I got on the air and started on 15 meters as it looked promising today with the noise floor being good and FT8 being quite active. As you can see though it took me quite some time to get just 6 QSOs in the log. After I worked N7ZLD I went over 20 minutes without a single call, that was when I decided to jump on FT8 to see if I could get a few in the log like that. It was slow going, but that it the fault of the radio software more than band conditions so I was happy to get 4 FT8 QSOs in the log, securing the activation only on 15 meters for a change!

After playing on 15 meters for a while I decided to see what 20 meters sounded like (I didn’t even check the antenna, I just plugged it in and got on with the activation). I quickly found myself in a small pileup working through several call and the calls kept coming in for a good while one after the other and sometimes two at once. This is the pace I really like as I don’t feel like I am missing anyone that wants the park I am at. After a great run on 20 meters CW I once again switched over to FT8 to see if I could get a few there. It took me a while to get someone on the hook, but I did work 5 more and the last one was W0NKA!!! That is (W -zero- NKA) and he is awesome, go look him up on QRZ and see about the special event he is having in December where you can get the golden ticket!

All in all it was a wonderful activation and I hope you enjoyed following along today, until next time I hope to hear you on the air.

72

WK4DS

Activated a new-to-me park today! K-3958

Today was a good day for POTA. I activated North Chickamauga Creek Wildlife Management Area and it was fun! You see, for me to get 80 QSOs in one outing recorded into the log is a feat of the airwaves, so that made this trip one for the books!

K-3958 is also just outside of Soddy Daisy Tennessee at the foot of Mobray mountain. I was concerned when I chose this park that I would have trouble securing the activation as this parking area is right at the base of the previously mentioned mountain. I decided to give it a shot anyway though since I have had great activations at Cloudland in a similar scenario. This WMA is also situated is a gorge and goes right up to the side of the road, the problem is unlike K-0716 on the north end of Lookout mtn where there is a pulloff, this park doesn’t have one on the road. This means my only shot at activating this park today was to find a spot inside the actual parking area itself.

So I roll into the parking lot and start looking for a space that would be suitable for setting up a station out of the truck. I quickly realized that since it was Saturday and near town that it was a popular “waterpark” for the local youth. The lot was almost COMPLETELY full with only a few spaces that were not suitable for most cars. Since I drive a huge 4x4 truck though, this problem posed little challenge for me. I soon found the spot you see in the photos and got started building a radio station. I had just enough room to fit into this space too as you see here, the truck just did clear the trees.

Well, this was kinda tough as to get out of the road, I had to back right up to the bushes. So here I am, bushwhacking my way around the back of the truck as I get out the mount, antennas and run a coax to the cab of the truck. I ran the station from the front seat today in an effort to keep dust under control as the road is literally 7 feet away and is gravel. Compound this with people driving pretty fast as well and it was fairly dusty at times. This was the main reason for giving up on the outside station idea today.

Once setup, I start considering my plan, I figured that I would start on 20 meters so I could be sure to get enough QSOs to secure the activation as the spot page showed a disproportionate amount of activity on this band. Well, let me tell you that my fears about not being able to make contact from this location were completely unfounded. This location could hear just fine. I setup on 20 meters and start calling CQ and it didnt take long at all to get a run of contacts in the log that secured the activation! After that they just kept going and going and going!

Parking is kinda tough here, you have to get the right spot for POTA and on a nice Saturday, this lot is FULL, I recommend coming through the week so there is more room.

This is what the parking lot looked like. Just cars pulled out of the way of moving traffic on the side of the road for the most part. Some spaces were built into the tree line like where I parked and then a ton were like this photo above. Almost all of them had cars in them too. The ones in the trees that were open also normally has something that made a car being there a bad idea, like mine had this huge rock in it but I had enough ground clearance to fit anyway so it all worked out

Today’s weapon of choice was the Ten Tec Argonaut 5 feeding into my hamstick collection. This is one of my all time favorite radios even though it is larger than my other rigs. It is capable of 20 watts but I never run it that hard with 15 watts being my personal maximum output power. Today saw it running at that 15 watt level because I was thinking I needed it to get over Mobray mountain since I was setup literally right at the foot of it. Across the road from where I was setup it starts going uphill and goes straight up the side of the mountain. In my opinion, this is probably the worst possible location to setup a radio, but it worked today so I am not going to complain…

I have found that the hard shell case for the radio makes a great table to sit it on. I like to use the radio in the passenger seat when I run solo ops (which is most of the time). I like this operating position as it allows me to sit comfortably in the truck and operate. This keeps me out of the sun, and I can activate in the rain from this position as well. The Dodge arm rest in the 2005 year model is a huge flat surface too so it turns into a nice little table. Since it is vinyl upholstered, the key doesn’t move around at all on it either, making this the almost perfect work surface for my POTA fun time shenanigans! If you will notice, the window behind the radio was only slightly down. This is because I was trying to minimize the dust buildup in the truck from people flying by right in front of me, there seemed to be no shortage of fast drivers in this tight area for some reason…

Well I sat on 20 meters for about an hour and made contacts the WHOLE TIME! Wow! The hunters were out in force today!!! I made FOURTY NINE QSOs in just over an hour!!! That is awesome! I looked at the POTA page for this park and that one thing alone put me on the top five activator QSO board. It is going to be a great day for the WK4DS POTA operation…

So at this point the QSO rate had dropped off and I figured I would try 17 meters to see what I could do there. Well, there was RF in the shack on this band and this little PICO Keyer is not RF friendly…at all, if there is RF near it, it will start sending strange characters and it would do this on 17 meters today, this told me the SWR was probably a little high due to the position of the counterpoise and so I folded on 17 and went instead to 30 meters.

The nice thing about 30 meters is that it allows you to operate into areas that is only reachable by BOTH 20 and 40 meters. It is strange in that it acts like both bands for some reason. I can make long distance contacts and then the next one will be in Georgia… You just never know with 30 meters how it will work. Well today it worked REALLY well, with me making 28 QSOs on this band in about the same number of minutes. The bands were on fire today! Wow! It did get me quite a few local states as well with North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi coming into the log at this point.

The photos above show what everybody was coming to see. The river is beautiful but the water was way down with only a small stream actually running right now and that made for several pools that the people would congregate around to swim in. I found a couple of fishermen at this spot and they said they were not having any luck due to the low water levels. I grabbed a couple of quick photos and headed back to the truck…

After having such good runs on 20 and 30 meters I figured I would drop down to 40 meters and see what was going on there. Forty meters was not happy today, well at this point in the day that is. Seems that the atmosphere was not happy with my attempt at this band and only allowed me 3 QSOs before I called it quits and went QRT with 80 QSOs in the log for one day. I wrapped up the radio and antenna system and then headed home with a new park and a ton of contacts, what else do you need for a great day of radio? I will go back to this park again but next time I want to go on a week day and see what I can do with less people in the park. But until then, I hope to hear you on the air. 73 WK4DS

Finally got my sBitx V2 radio…so I went to a park!!!

Quick synopsis is I like it. Read on to see why.

When you see this radio, you think it is like one of the big name machines. It is not. It is actually so much more because of the nature of the project that it comes from.

The HF Signals sBitx V2 is an evolution in their radio designs and brings so much to the table that is cant be described in one blog post…well maybe…I can write as much as I want in one post…lol.

The TR-35’s magic is the lack of menus.

The first thing you notice it the lack of buttons or switches like my Penntek TR-35 has on it in the photo above. There are simply two knobs and a display and that is all you are greeted with at first glance.

Well this is a kind of sleight of hand trick as the display is actually a touch screen and almost all of the controls are driven from this display. In fact, what appears to be at AF Gain (volume) knob, is actually like the multi-function knob on my Ten Tec Omni 7 being selectable for an array of things it can control.

Both knobs are also push buttons and the smaller one defaults to volume control if pressed, but the larger (VFO) knob doesnt appear to do anything when pressed, I can not find anything in the literature describing it so it is there for tinkerers from what I gather. You see, this is an open source SDR, this menas you can download the source code and if you are savvy with coding, you can add features or modify how the radio works to suit you. This is the point of the whole project to be quite honest. This radio does work, but it is not as polished as a big brand machine as it is intended for the owner to go inside and play with things, like add circuits or modify existing ones or even write new features to add to the radio outright. You can literally download the schematic and the actual source code from their GitHub… What ever you want to do, this radio is fully “unlocked” so that you can do it.

Enough about the radio in general, how did it do on the first outing to a POTA park? Well, it did really well, I did power it from the truck battery which means I had to setup in the truck somewhere so the power cable would reach the connection I have in the truck. (I finally added a power pole cable inside the truck cable that is fed directly from the batteries so losses are a minimum.

Back to what I was saying, I got to K-2169 and setup in the truck so I have somewhere to sit this time as I planned to stay a while today and didn’t want to have to stand up the whole time. It took me a few minutes to get it all organized, but once I did, everything fit quite well. I wanted to use my N3ZN key, but to be honest, this arrangement literally made it impossible, so I defaulted to the little travel key I have used so much over the last year. I didn’t have a table top that was convenient to setup the other key on and I even tried to sit the N3ZN key on my clipboard, but it was just too difficult and I kept running into problems trying to use it. Hence you see the Gemini cw paddle in my hand for this activation.

Once I settled on the key and radio, I chose 15 meters to get on the air, the band was wide open and even the propagation report said it would do well… Well, FT8 was rocking pretty strong (I tend to use these guys for my beacon report on a band), so I move down into the CW area and start calling CQ…and I call and I call…and nothing. Seems either no one was on the band or they simply could not hear me. It did appear that the band was fading in and out pretty bad though as the RBN would give me a great report one minute and then it would go 3 minutes without a single update. So after what seemed like an eternity on 15 meters, calling CQ with no answers I caved and went down to 17 meters to see what I can scare up.

The hamstick collection at this point. 15 (Green), 17 (Brown), 20 (Yellow), 30 (Blue) & 40 meters (Red) are all represented here (well, 30 meters was on the truck when I took this photo)

So since I had not edited the memories in the sBitx V2 yet for my use, I planned to use the PICO Keyer I picked up a while back, well it worked somewhat, I think it had trouble keying the radio because the radio is looking for contact closure and not a semiconductor so it would work, but it was introducing errors into the code pretty bad. I finally threw in the towel and just used the key the whole time and ran with it. This turned out to work really well though and I really didn’t mind it after all. Once I got home I built a complete set of memories for the keyer complete with all sorts of messages. You get as many memories as you want, they are in sets of twelve, I tested this by copying the CW1 memory and renaming it then I edited the messages and saved it, rebooted the radio (just as a precaution) and the new set of messages were right there in the drop down menu! They are really simple to edit, but you need a keyboard to do it. I didn’t take one with me on this trip hence I didn’t bother with trying till I got back home. If there is demand for it, I will detail how I added a memory and show how to edit the messages and the message names as well.

So I ended up using almost 4 Amp Hours of energy on this activation. Not bad for over 50 contacts in the log. I am happy with that! When I am going to be at the park for a while, I will get all the antennas out and sort them by band like you see below. Well, they are not sorted at this point, but imagine that they are for the story. Then I can change bands quickly and easily as I will lay them near the mount for the truck. The 2” PVC pipe is maxed out too. I don’t think I can get another antenna in it at this point. If you plan to run hamsticks, I recommend that you get some sort of tube to store them in to protect them. They are not very durable in construction so it would be best to try to store them in a way that will make them last.

You see, I know the radio is transmitting as I have been using it at home for the past week or so before taking it to the field. So I get down to 17 meters, find a clear frequency and start calling CQ here. Well things pick up for me here as I get a few answers so I know the radio is in fact working as it should and I didnt do something to it while I had it taken apart… More on that later when I talk about the mods I did to this radio right out of the box.

So after messing around on 17 for a few minutes I hit a dead spot, so I figure it is a good time to QSY down to 20 meters and see what I can find down there. Well, I found all the ham radio ops in the United States and some from across the Atlantic too! I proceed to make over FOURTY contacts in an almost continuous stream in about as many minutes! I was busy! The radio was working great too. At this point, I clear all the callers and decide to try the lower bands for a minute and see what I can do there.

So I hop on 40 meters first as this antenna has consistently been on the upper edge of SWR for my operating preferences, and the sBitx agreed with it showing about 2.1:1 while I was there. Also of note is that the radio self adjusts the output power based on band and SWR from what I can tell. I was running about 20 or so watts on 20 meters and wihtout changing the power setting at all, jumping on 40 meters netted me 9 watts output into the 2.1:1 SWR where on 20 meters I think the SWR was closer to 1.2:1… So I turned up the drive some in an attempt to get the power out consistent across the whole activation. I didnt get it past 15 watts if I remember right… But it was enough to make a few contacts and get some in the log from more local hams as the 20 meter band hops right over the closer states.

Then I finally moved up to 30 meters to see what it could do as well since that was the only antenna I had not tried yet. Well, 30 meters also did not let me down…like 15 meters did… haha. I got it on the band with good SWR and output power and easily made several QSOs on that band to finish up the HF portion of this activation.

The next part is just for fun, but I also recently got a new HT (Handy Talky) radio and was playing with it while out on this day. So I called into the KG4WBI/R 1.25m repeater to see if Roger was monitoring and he was. So then I asked him to switch his radio to VFO and simplex so we could make a 1.25m FM UHF contact. 5 watts was more than enough to make the trip the roughly 3 or so miles it was to his house from my location! So I netted 54 contacts on this day on 5 bands and two modes. I had a great activation and the sBitx pulled quite a long shift on it’s first outing.

Now to discuss some issues I found with the new radio that I am going to look into solving or upgrading. The first one is actually really easy, it needs a fan… or two. The heat sink got SO hot in the two hours I was in the field operating at about 20 to 25 watts. REALLY hot, the whole radio was hot actually and I think this is what made it start doing the next issue..

This is something I noticed after a while, when the radio is getting really warm, it starts to “stutter” in the refresh rate of the screen. I am thinking this is due to thermal throttling of the Raspberry Pi processor in an attempt to prevent sudden death from overheating. I confirmed this was not due to ram overflow by swapping the Pi out with a second one I own that has 8GB of onboard ram and it did it too with minimal use “on the air” back in the shack at home. So my solution is two fold, one is to install a fan on the main heatsink for the power amplifier in the RF deck and a second fan pulling air through the radio chassis where the Pi is located in an attempt to cool the processor as well. I know this will increase current draw from the battery, but I am not concerned with this as my activations normally don’t run over two hours at a time and this limits amp hour usage to usually no more than 3 or 4 amp hours, which even my smaller battery can handle at this time. If adding the fans runs the draw up to 5 amp hours or even 10 in an activation, then I will just take a bigger battery since this is not a backpacking radio in my book. Also, it did work at 25 watts down to 15 watts, depending on band and SWR, for the whole activation. If I were to just turn the power down to 5 watts, it probably wouldn’t get warm enough to matter on the power amplifier considering the size of the heat sink on it. This means I will probably install a small toggle switch to manually cut the power to the fans should I want to run it at true QRP levels in the field. I also plan to wire the fans through a circuit that will automatically turn them on and off as needed to prevent them from just drinking the battery dry when they are not needed. This involves a small temperature sensitive resistor called a thermistor in a voltage divider and a transistor to flow current to the fan. This way if the radio doesn’t get very hot, it wont come on at all. I think I did the math on this device and it will bias the transistor base at about 105F degrees, which is about right for it to protect the electronics. The processor cooling fan could be done the same way (and probably will) but I don’t want this fan to be very large so I am searching for a small 12 VDC fan for this application and also I want to see if I have room to install the processor heatsink, which is not currently installed. This alone will help tremendously, but with long activations the heat will eventually soak the heatsink and we will be right back to square one. This is why I want to add forced air flow to the system…

Even with all the heat buildup, the radio trucked right along and I put over 50 contacts in the log on the first outing! I even got some from overseas in the log!!! It is always good to get some DX in the logbook. I really liked this radio for a station that will be near the truck. The reason for this is that it is fairly large and heavy compared to my other radios, well maybe the Argonaut 5 is similar in weight. This is one of the reasons the Argonaut 5 doesn’t go on activations that stray far from the vehicle too. That guy is heavy, and it is a fairly fragile radio like the sBitx V2. So who knows what I will end up using it for, but for now, it will be one of my POTA radios.

All that aside, the radio works really well for the most part and over time this will be a wonderful little rig to run on activaitons. I plan to get it going on digital modes as well so I can work contacts on FT8, PSK31 and RTTY as well since it does all those modes natively and without the need for an external computer. This was one of the main reasons for getting this radio, I really didn’t want to have to bring an additional computer to the field to do digital modes… Anyway, with all that said, I packed up and on the way out found a few deer wandering around the area and I was able to get a photo of one of them. That was just icing on the cake for a day with so much activity and fun and getting to use my new radio. So until next week, get your radio out and go make a contact with it!

15 meter POTA activation with DX!

Today I went to K-2169 (Cloudland Canyon State Park) and setup my Ten Tec Argonaut 5 and proceeded to work 15 meters with the intent to not get on 20 meters at all. (I did wander down to 17 meters but not till I had secured the activation on 15 meters first.) I just enjoy the pursuit of the higher bands for some reason. I really like to work 15 meters in particular and I have no good reason why either… I pulled the wire up into a tree in an almost vertical orientation but it could still be called a sloper if you held you head right. Probably a 60 degree angle sloper, but it was up in the tree and the 13’ counter poise was 90 degrees to it.

The view from my operating position never gets old. I love activating this park with the view and the tree canopy giving almost perpetual shade it makes for a wonderful location almost all year round.

This is the view directly behind me. There was a fairly lively family reunion or some such happening in this shelter. I had to turn up the volume a couple of times to be able to hear over them. LOL. This is also one of the reasons I like the location I am at, should it start to rain, I can just unhook the antenna wire and battery and basically carry the radio and tuner to the shelter in just seconds.

Once again, the Ten Tec Argonaut 5 was front and center. I have really grow to love this little radio. I can see why they have such a cult following, the receiver is great, the filters are simple to use and effective, the radio has minimal menu options that mainly follow the “set n forget” ideology, What’s not to love for a CW op? I think going forward this will be my main POTA radio for ops where I am near the truck and I will use the Penntek TR-35 for backpack ops due to its small size.

Another thing I did today was bring one of my large keys, this one has been out of the house several times already so it is no stranger to a picnic table. It is my prototype CW key I made many years ago, it works wonderfully too. I actually use it more than the newer model I made later that is still on the bench connected to the Omni 6+…

I am also using the HamGadgets keyer I picked up off of eBay a while back. This little keyer is the reason I now like using the Argonaut 5 on activations. The Argonaut doesn’t have memories in the keyer, so you have to pound out every bit of the code you send with it. This allows me to record some messages like my CQ and such so I can just hit a button and send the whole call for POTA.

Here we have something that a lot of people gloss over. Fuses. Also note that I have the battery connected to the input fuse and I deliberately chose the 10 amp fuse for the Argonaut since it is only 20 watts out. I need to take my inline meter and see what the draw is on dead key and adjust accordingly but for now I know the battery and radio are fuse protected like this. Don’t neglect to add fuses to your portable system, it still matters as much as at home. This is not a name brand fuse bank either which means I wont load it as heavy as they advertise, we all know these are built to the edge of spec anyway.

I wanted to show the case I transport the radio in. This is some sort of surplus military case that we picked up as Huntsville Hamfest last year for really reasonable money. A little cutting here and there and some new closed cell foam and contact adhesive and we have a case to carry the Argonaut 5 and a MFJ antenna tuner with a wire antenna connection input on it as well. You can see the tuner still in the case as I was using my Ten Tec tuner today since it was in the box with the antenna.

Well, I got on the air today on 15 meters and heard a good bit of band activity and so I figured I would check the POTA spots to see who all was on 15…turns out I was the only one on 15 meters on the spot page. I didn’t check it after that for a while but when I did there still wasn’t anyone other than me that was there. I don’t know why other than the QSB (fading) that was happening. You can see the timestamps in my log where I would go 3 or 4 four minutes without so much as a call and then I would get several in a row. You can also see from the signal reports that when they did come in, they came in strong! As I was working through a tiny pile up with NK8O and VE3CT I could hear a weak station near the noise. Once I cleared the other two stations I could hear YS1MS coming out a little louder now! I was stoked to get central America in the log today! Yeah, I know the Oregon call was probably further away, but I got a DX call in the log from El Salvador today!!! WooHoo! When 15 is open is goes WAY out there! KJ7DT came booming in to me right off the bat. Man I love this hobby!

So it seemed that 15 meters started to close or something as I went several minutes without a call so I decided to tune up on 17 meters and see what I could scratch up. Well, 17 did not disappoint. I worked several stations fairly quickly and I could tell that I was on a lower band than before as the station that was coming in loud on 15 that was kind of near me (N2DI) was weaker on 17 meters. I actually worked several hams on both bands today, which is always awesome. But I did notice several hams from out west were on 17 but not 15 meters. You will notice two Idaho stations, two Utah stations and a Arizona station. It was almost like the signal on 15 hopped right over these guys or they don’t have a 15 meter antenna…who knows to be honest. Anyway at about 21:43 UTC I hit a little pileup of 3 or 4 stations and once again started pulling the callsigns out one at a time. I kept hearing this station down near the noise, but it was solid, just the other stations were a lot louder and I could copy them easier so I went ahead and worked them out. Then I started pulling out the call. I got the number right away, it was a 1 and I knew I had heard the CC at the end…what was that first letter again? W? No, that isn’t right. “UR CALL?” J… It was a J callsign!!! I have never worked a Japan call before, I have never honestly heard a Japan ham loud enough to be able to make a QSO with them, I have heard them before but they were down in the noise. This one was weak, but clearly I could hear the call. J…H…1…O…C…C… YES, it was Japan!!! I couldn’t believe it when he gave me a 539 with my compromise antenna and 20 watts of power! I was on cloud nine for a few minutes after this. I even bragged to my buddies about it. It was a great day today. I had hoped to work a few J calls while I was in Hawaii, but never heard one while I was there. That is just how it goes…lol.

I ended up with 29 QSOs in the log today which is a great day as it means I secured the activation as I worked several DX stations to boot. What is your favorite DX station you have worked while operation portable or picnic table mobile or some such?

73 WK4DS

POTA in the rain, it is still fun if you go prepared for it.

If you knew that I had already written this post once already…my rapid fire mouse press killed the first one. So here goes again…

Looking at this now, I look like an old wet hen in this photo…lol.

This day started off with a lot of rain and a ton of fog at the top of the mountain. I got to the location and found it to be thoroughly inundated with water and it actively raining making it even soggier…if that is even a word. Once I found the parking space I like… right smack dab in the middle of the parking lot, I proceeded to setup my antenna.

The antenna is the 20 meter hamstick but since it was raining so much I added my drip proofing kit to it with the empty peanut pack. This peanut pack is metal foil so it is probably interacting with the antenna somehow, but I don’t know if it is as I have not checked yet…

Even with the rain, setup is fast and the system just plain works. Even with it slightly detuned, I still was able to work a little over 40 stations in about an hour. This antenna (a hamstick) with tuned radials just works really well, even with QRP power levels. It takes about 3 or 4 minutes to screw the sections together and spread out the radials and then it is back into the dry truck for the rest of the operations.

Here we have one of the counter weights that holds my radials taught without having to use ground stakes or ropes or anything. Also of note is that it is raining so much that the grass is literally flooded around the truck with a couple of inches of standing water in the grass. I was hoping this would help my antenna, and it may have, but it being detuned hurt me more I am sure…

Just lay the radial in the water, it will be fine…

As you can see here I tested the system once I got into the truck to see what the center of the SWR null was and is it at 13.9mhz, which is about 150khz below where I set it when I first tuned the antenna. Once it stops raining, I plan to have a session where I hook up the antenna and check it again, and probably retune it with new radials and possible tune it to 14.1mhz to get the antenna closer when deployed wet.

The radio of choice for today’s adventure is the Penntek TR-35. I chose it because of the compact size and the fact that it is just plain fun to use. The compact size allows me to set everything up on the console of my front seat in the truck and I still have room to log. That is a big perk of this radio, it is so small that it literally just sits in the corner of the space out of the way and it has a dedicated knob for everything I like to change while operating. What a dream little radio… I cant wait to get a shot at operating the TR-45L at some point, that is gonna be sweet.

My mobile POTA setup currently, as of 2022.

Another big deal about this radio is this feature pictured below, this is the menu for the memory keyer. Yes, it has two memories and that is the perfect amount to have for an activation. More would be better, but two gets me a CQ memory and a closing memory. By having these memories I can do some house keeping between contacts at times like add times or park numbers and such to the logbook. This is super helpful when there is a pile up as I like to document time, band, call, and signal report. This is just my preference though and is not needed for POTA, but it does help when someone sends me a QSL card as I can confirm the contact properly.

The take away from this activation is that you need to check your resonant antennas if you plan to operate in inclement weather as they can change and your radio could see high SWR and not get out very well or worse, it could be damaged from excessive SWR… So I like to check the SWR occasionally now to make sure things have not changed and if they have, that they are still within operational parameters so I can activate with out fear of damaging my radio. All in all it was a great day as I netted 42 contacts in about an hour and this is a great trip for me. I operate alone almost exclusively so I have to do everything myself, this is why I paper log while activating and then I enter the log into the HAMRS app once I get home. I have a wireless Bluetooth keyboard that I use with my iPhone and it goes really fast that way. Thanks for taking the time to read my blog and please hit the like button if you liked it.

Get out there and get on the air!

David

WK4DS

72

Some days are better than expected in spite of band conditions.

Well today the work was grueling and about 3PM, the wife gave me clearance to go do an activation over at K-2169 Cloudland Canyon State Park. So come 4PM I grabbed the log book out of the house and jumped into the truck for a quick activation.

Upon arrival, I was all by myself in the upper parking lot. Wonderful as I can choose any spot I want to keep the sun out of my eyes and back the truck up next to the grass for my counter poise wires. So I deploy the “truck-tenna” as quickly as I can and get in the cab to plug in the TR-35. I got the cab nice and warm with the heater while setting up the antenna and then shut down the truck to keep the noise to a minimum while I activate. I really like my “trick” of having a quiet and warm winter time location for POTA. So for the winter this is how I will roll… lol literally.

The solar data says it wont be a great day for POTA…

So once I got setup, I dialed around on 20 meters a little to scope out the band conditions a little before I started, but it was opened up pretty strong when I dialed through the band. So I went up to the QRP area and found a nice quiet spot, listened for a few minutes while I wrote up my logbook with the usual data for my activation and then made a fatal mistake…I sent a CQ from the keyer memory while I started to log into the POTA website so I could spot myself, but before I could get it open on my iPhone I got an answer! So things are hopping now! LOL I log him then immediately get another call, and this went on for a couple of minutes. So I finally get a chance to spot myself so I can be found on the bands…. waa waa waaaaaa… (The joke is on me here, as I think I could have easily gotten the activation by just calling cq today as good as things were going) But once the spot went up, Dear Lord the gates were opened up! I had a mini-pile up the rest of the time I was able to operate, I literally cleared the pile 1 hour later and went QRT so I could go home.

You can tell if I am in a hurry or not by how I write the time next to the QSO, if I have time, I will write the proper time signature, if not then it is just enough data to log it for me.

Some things I took away from this activation are that a 20m hamstick is not able to hear inside about 500 miles, give or take… Just take a look at the map and it is painfully obvious. But yeah, it works WONDERFULLY outside of that zone! My best QSO tonight was to Oregon with WA7RAR using 5 watts at 2064 miles, not quite the 1000 miles per watt that people want, but it was still a good QSO for me! I still have not bought the other hamsticks yet, I am going to be ordering them soon though so we can play with different bands too.

I did have a few minutes where a spammer tried to shut me down, I didn’t even catch it until I copied the call twice and realized they were just pulling my chain sending random letters with just dits… Then they moved on and I went back to filling up the logbook. Also of note is that I learned TODAY that I could add the “stroke” and special designator in HAMRS and it would take it without killing the call sign! I entered my first mobile contact in my log today. I have logged a couple in the past but didn’t know I could enter the mobile designator in HAMRS… Sorry about that to the few ops that I have not given that info to on my logs.

So for future reference, don’t let the solar data tell you that you cant make a contact when things look bad online. Just give it a shot and throw out a CQ and see what happens. So until next time, just get on the air and have some fun!

72

WK4DS

David

Wormsloe State Historic Area POTA AAR

This is still the driveway for the original family that still lives on the property. It is also the entrance to the historic site as well. I could live with this being the driveway to my house, how about you?

Today I had my first taste of a deliberate QRM attempt on my activation. At least that is what I thought it was when it happened. I was operating on 14.061Mhz and all at once there was a station sending endless dashes on top of my activation.

I was telling Teresa what had happened and she asked if I had considered that it could have been someone with a broken key that was not aware or had pushed their paddle up against something and didnt realise it. You know, we are so quick to judge, it did persist long enough though, that I moved up to 14.061.5 to get clear of it and resumed operations unimpeded.

This got me to thinking, we want to think it is some LID just holding down the key to be annoying, but it could have honestly been a legit mistake by a hunter who was on freq and might have had to goto the door for something and in their haste to get up, they slid the logbook over against the key and since they might have also been wearing headphones, they couldnt hear it sending non-stop dashes over the air. I mean, it could happen…maybe. It could also just as easily have been someone who has a sked on that freq every day at that time and they dont want to move for some reason. We have no real way of knowing unless they tell us.

With CW, this is much harder to decipher since you normally dont hear music or some other non-sense on frequency. It will be a “ditter”or something like that. I still made my activation today with 23 QSOs in the log before going QRT and doing some sight seeing with the wife.

I am starting to enjoy activating different parks, it is interesting when you see different people and they ask what you are doing. I talked with a couple of different park employees and they were very positive when I showed them what I was doing and how my rig was basically a zero impact setup. One actually joked that I should take a look at THEIR radios and see why they cant talk across the park! LOL So word is starting to propagate about our POTA hobby and the response I have gotten so far has been positive. I didn’t think to get a photo with a park ranger for the blog…next time I will remember.

The park has some interesting ruins on site and we walked around and saw them while we was there. It is a really interesting location if you are in the Savannah area with s radio and some time on your hands, it is worth a look. It does have a day use fee though so be prepared for that if you are going into the area, you part to enter per person.

Anyhow, you can always tell if I am activating the park, just look at what way I am parked in the space. lol. I back into the space so I can use my hamstick with the radials run into the grass. I operated today on the truck rear lid as a table, it worked great. I used the IC-705 and weather worked with me too. I am looking forward to seeing what parks I find myself near in the not to distant future with my radio in the truck… I now find myself looking at the idea of rotting a coax into the cab along the chassis so I only need to deploy the antenna and get back in the truck where it OSS warm…LOL It is always something…

Like this post if you enjoyed it and let me know if you have ever had to work around a problem on the air.

72

WK4DS

David

Why do I want to buy so many ham radios???

I find myself wanting every radio I see and with a short look through the bios of some ham operators on QRZ.com I am not alone in this.

What is it with this obsession wiht collecting radio gear that us hams must endure? I mean they literally all do the exact same thing…all of them. Yet we want multiples of these radios anyway.

Now, I understand having a base rig that stays at home and can be integrated into several things and it is not simple to break down for portable operations, and also having a radio that can do specific jobs like SOTA or POTA or ARRL Field Day.

This makes sense but why do we want to have two base rigs or three or five or 10 as well as three or four portable radios for POTA as well as mobile radios stacked to the ceiling and we can only use one at a time. LOL.

You see, I am that guy. I have a base station that has two complete radios in it that share an antenna and I also have FOUR, yes FOUR, POTA rigs currently! Four, really? A TenTec Argonaut 5, an ICOM IC-705, an Elecraft K1, and a Penntek TR-35 and I love them all… I just don’t understand the human brain sometimes, why do I want so many radios? I realized this yesterday when the Penntek TR-45L was launched, I REALLY like this new radio and found myself wanting one really bad, but then I stopped and let reason talk to me for a minute and realized that my current radios ALL DO THE EXACT SAME THING!!! To add to the problem, one of the radios is the Penntek TR-35 for crying out loud!!!! LOL!!! Compound that with the fact that I have yet to use it for a field activation and my wanting the new radio is just lunacy… So how do I combat this? Well, the first thing is to get out these radios and take a long hard look at them and decide if I really want to own these radios or the new one. I personally have also set a limit on the quantity of radios I will own as well…apparently there is an exemption for POTA rigs…but I digress. Another thing I have implemented as of late is a rule of balance. This is where I have to remove something if I want to add something. By doing this I keep the stack a little more reasonable and I can recoup some of the money needed for the new radio from the sale of the old one I am letting go to make room.

The POTA rigs are starting to pile up!

Some will say it is because each radio has a feel to it and some radios have character to them and to this I say they are right! I also understand that once you find the radio that you like the most, keep it and the second most favorite as well and then get rid of the rest of them! LOL. Are they really bringing you joy just sitting either on a shelf or worse…in a box under the bed!!!

You see having multiple radios like me doesn’t benefit the amateur operator in any way other than collecting. If you enjoy collecting radios then by all means, buy as many as you want, but remember if you are not collecting radios then what is the point of buying so many? Of course this is my opinion and this is not a rule in any way, shape, or form, but I do have reason in the thought process. What else could we buy with the money we spent on all of these radios had we not bought them?

I also dabble in the hobby of photography and that hobby is no different from Amateur Radio in that the most appealing or “sexy “part of the system is the central piece which is the radio here and in photography it is the camera body. These are universally wanted by the users of each hobby respectively. Photographers will have gear acquisition syndrome (G.A.S.) and make joking videos about it on YouTube because it is such a problem. It is a real thing as companies spend dumptruck loads of money on targeted marketing to tell you that you need to upgrade to the newest widget or risk falling behind in technology. That is how they get you!!! LOL!!! They prey on your GAS problem!!!

So how do we solve for this? I honesty don’t have the universal answer. For me it took about 40 years of buying too much stuff for a hobby and as you see above with the stack of POTA rigs, I am not there yet… I do know that I am starting to recognize it though and I am working towards scaling back the stack of cases so that I have room for other things in my shack. I hope this helps some of you out there to realize the same thing I realized and that you can do other things instead of buying the newest radio. Anyway, now that we have all did some self reflection, reach over and turn on that radio next to you and see who you can find on it.

73

David - WK4DS