Today was a good day for POTA as I was able to get contacts with 3 different modes in a single activation. Did I mention it rained too?
So today saw the deployment of so many hard shell cases to the park. I went ahead and staged both radios in the truck cab so if it started raining (which it did) I could have access to both radios anyway without having to get outside in the rain. Today saw me use the sBitx V3 as well as the Ten Tec Scout 555 Amateur Transceiver. I like Ten Tec radios when it comes to CW so I wanted the Scout for this mode. I forgot though that I have not outfitted this radio with an external keyer like I did the Argonaut 5. So with the Argonaut still tucked away in the bed of the truck, I just decided to send everything today by hand.
As you can see in the photo below, I ran the hamsticks so I could stay dry inside the truck if it started raining… seems today that was a good call. I only put out the 20 meter radials and the 20 meter ham stick. I thought about hopping on 15 meters for a little bit but the closer the rain clouds got the less I wanted to be handling lightening rods…. I mean, antennas in these conditions.
I checked it with the nanoVNA and the shape of the curve today was such that the CW portion was really well centered and was 1.1:1 on SWR with the chart climbing to 2:1 at the upper band edge. This was completely usable so I didnt bother to tune anything further and just got on the air…and by “tune” I mean “moving the radials around till the SWR plot moves to where I want it in the frequency spectrum”…lol. I can push and pull the SWR null on the VNA by changing the location of the radials in relation to the truck. I am assuming that I am simply tinkering with the capacitance and inductance of the radials as compared to the antenna and it allows me to correct for things…most of the time.
I first worked a few SSB stations before giving up and heading down to the CW portion of the band to see what I could find down there. Seems there was plenty to find as once I setup on frequency and called CQ a couple of times, I had a nice little pileup that lasted for about 15 minutes straight. I was able to work 15 contacts in that time as well. For me, this is “efficient” CW and really fun.
SSB seemed to be thin on stations today and the band was not really happy with this mode, I struggled to get just 5 contacts in the log today on this mode and normally it is much easier to land many more contacts here with the 50 watts that I was able to use. Maybe I bumped my mic gain and had it turned down or something, I just wasn’t getting any takers on SSB for some reason…
The Ten Tec Scout 555 is almost the perfect POTA radio in my book. It needs a nice brick wall IF crystal filter in my opinion, to be fair, as nearby stations would bleed in on the QSO with their energy sometimes. I could tighten up the IF filter width, but the stations would still numb the receiver occasionally and I think a nice 500hz 8 pole crystal filter would be pretty sweet here to solve that… I am looking at a nice audio filter but who knows…I might just try making an IF filter myself at some point. Once I had cleared the pile up I put away the Ten Tec Scout 555 and deployed the HF Signals sBitx V3 (mine is actually a V2 but I have performed the V3 update so going forward I am going to call it a V3)
The only mode I used the sBitx on today was FT8. I wanted to work a few FT8 contacts as well and had synced the time with the internet prior to leaving the house today so I knew it would be good to go. Boy did it deliver on the promise of getting me some FT8 contacts! Once again I stayed on 20 meters and just ran with it as I am also a little bit lazy at times and this was an easy win for me...haha.
I really like the layout and implementation of the sBitx. It is a really fun little radio. Although this radio is missing some stuff inside but that it what makes it so economical too. Things that some people might call “nonnegotiable” like shielding between the RF and computer sections… but I digress. It works for me even with the little rough around the edges stuff here and there.
Now, below is what the sky started looking like by the time I finished playing with CW and decided to get on with FT8. It was scary dark and ominous and then the rain started to fall. I really didn’t mind the rain as I had taped up the coax connection on the antenna and was confident it wouldn’t give me any trouble. What I didn’t factor in was the lightening…
Well, the rain fell and got more intense and more intense as I happily worked FT8 on 20 meters. After a few minutes, the waterfall on the radio exhibited a strange phenomenon. It turned yellow and red (the colors representing the strongest signals)… the whole thing was showing a 599 +30dB signal that covered the entire segment of 20 meters I was watching. This happened to be 6khz of spectrum on the waterfall and at first I thought something was wrong with the radio. Turns out, the radio is fine, this is simply what happens when the atmosphere charges up with static right before a lightening strike! I noticed after a couple of cycles that I would hear thunder off in the distance and then the waterfall would return to normal and slowly start to turn yellow and red again, till I would hear thunder and the cycle would repeat. This was fascinating to say the least, what was more intriguing though was that I continued to make contacts with that much band noise in play. FT8 is a true weak signal mode if I ever saw one.
This is what I am speculating is static charge up in the atmosphere in the photo above of the FT8 waterfall. For those that dont know, this mode does a sort of “talk and listen” thing where your radio sends a message for 15 seconds, the listens for 15 seconds for the other station. So the waterfall wont display anything while I am transmitting since the receiver is turned off. You can see that the cycle right before I sent and how the band was fine and then I send for 15 seconds and then when I go back to listen again, the band is filled with noise.
Let’s shift gears for a minute, the internet is an amazing place. I made this contact at 16:53 UTC and got this email notification just a few minutes later. That is pretty awesome to be honest about it. I remember mailing cards and it might take a month to get one back…
After I finished the activation and waited on the storm to pass, I wanted to do a simple test of the sBitx for a ham that had sent an email asking about the sBitx and how bad were the “birdies” on any given band. I dialed through the 20 meter CW portion up the the FT8 region (14.074mhz) and found what is noted below. In the above photo, you can see the strongest birdie I encountered on this band. That color means it is quite strong in signal level, so if a station was on that frequency, you would not hear it.
I noticed some were strong but they are also very localized. Literally only 200hz wide at the most. I don’t know if this is really band or not, but there were 4 distinct birdies in just the CW portion of the band. If you were worried about this before and didn’t want to have buyers remorse later, then consider me “taking one for the team” as I didn’t have this intel before. I can still recommend this radio for field expedient FT8 and POTA activations as it just works. Sometimes it will ignore a reply to your CQ on FT8 so you have to pay attention to the display on each cycle, but it mostly catches them.
Something I have learned about propagation is that the three modes I am using carry different levels of signal quality to make them effective. SSB (single side band for the newcomer) takes the award for needing the best band conditions of my three regular POTA modes. If the bands wont allow SSB to work or all the stations are “down in the noise” then I move to CW which requires much less propagation to work for me (especially with a good receiver). BUT it pales in comparison to FT8 when it comes to signal to noise ratio. I am blown away that when CW contacts are fading in and out and are in the noise floor that FT8 will be active and I can easily make contacts with it.
This is a day when SSB was “in the mud” but CW was rocking and rolling and had it been in poor shape, I would have went to FT8 for my ten before quitting and going to lunch. Lol
73 - WK4DS