Today I wanted to work an activation but I also wanted to grab a couple more bands as well so I hatched a plan to grab some VHF and UHF bands on FM Simplex if my friend KG4WBI happened to be home.
Today was also cold, which you can not see in the photos, but trust me…it was pretty cold. Since it was so cold, I opted to operate from inside the truck and setup a hamstick on 20 meters (I was being lazy today and didn’t explore the other bands) as I wanted to get the activation completed in about an hour since I had to be in Chattanooga for lunch. The 20 meter band will usually guarantee that to happen for me on CW, so I started there.
I noted in the below photo that the one shorter radial had to be pulled taught and the this is where the counter weight was at that held it in position. This is of little consequence other than I am starting to wonder how much capacitance I am getting at the end of the radial from these stainless steel weights at the end of each radial? They are not connected physically to the conductor but are probably capacitive to it through the wire insulation. I used speaker wire for these radials and it has worked really well over the years. I think the next deployment is going to have a smith chart plot where I take the weight off and just tie it off to a stake of some sort. Maybe a chop stick since there is really no tension on these radials. That way I can see just how much capacitance these weights are adding and I can also see if it is helping or hindering performance.
In these two photos I tried to capture something that was of interest to me, today the 20 meter hamstick seemed to tune much better with one of the radials drooped down to the ground and not outstretched like the other one. The one that is pulled taught is the one that is shorter due to the wire breaking over the years and me twisting it back together by hand so I could use it. With this setup, the nanoVNA said the SWR plot was 1.1:1 and it sounded like it on the air! The stations were booming in! I was getting reports back from many stations of 599 with my little Penntek TR-35 radio too!
Once I got everything setup and tuned, I hopped on 20 meters CW to see what I could scare up. Well that turned out to be a great idea as i quickly had a good pileup going and had great fun working through it.
I made over 20 contacts in short order with the Penntek TR-35 radio in bare bones configuration today so that I could get it up and running faster. This radio is a gem to use like this with a simple set of headphones and I dont mind operating like this one bit. This actually makes it easier for me to hear the calls to be honest about it.
Being cold like it was today, I decided to operate in the truck so I could stay warm and could feel the key in my hand unlike the trip to DeSoto Falls state park recently…lol.
Once I was finished with activating on 20 meters CW, I thought I would try to work my friend KG4WBI who lives a few miles away from this location. I knew he had the ability to work me on all three VHF and UHF bands that my HT can transmit on, so I hopped on my trusty HT and gave him a yell on his repeater the KG4WBI/R 1.25meter machine.
He was, in fact, home and he was more than happy to hop on simplex for a few peer to peer FM QSOs so I could add a few more contacts to the log as well as a couple of new bands as well. In the above photo, I had walked across the parking lot to the building in the background that you can see in the photo above. It is behind the white truck in the antenna photo. This spot gets most of the stuff out of the way so I had the best chance at a contact with a HT. Turns out it worked great on 2 meter and 1.25 meter, but 70cm just would not work from here with all the trees in between us. So I gave up on that band and went back to the truck to pack up and head on to a lunch date I needed to be at.
On my way to the truck I had an epiphany. I could just drive down to the lower lot and walk out to the northern most viewpoint on the canyon edge and it should give me clear enough line of sight to make the contact! I would still be WELL within the park bounds and it was the same UTC day. So I packed up the HF gear and headed down to the canyon rim. Called Roger on the repeater again and informed him of my plan, which he agreed to merrily. So we switched over to simplex again and I put in the 70cm call frequency then called Roger’s callsign and he immediately came back with a 59 signal report! Success!!! 4 bands again!!! Woohoo!
The lower photo is me down by the canyon rim where I made the 70cm contact. Don’t I look happy… lol.
I wanted to share this activation with everyone as it highlights a part of POTA that alot of people overlook. Well, actually two parts… one is that it extends to ALL hambands and the second is that you can absolutely use your HT to make short range contacts on FM and they count just as much as those great distance HF contacts. Dont discount 2 meter SSB either. There is plenty of people there too.
Anyway, it was a great day for radio and I appreciate yall coming along for the ride.