Band conditions can be evaluated quickly.

When I figured this out I was doing an activation and decided to take a bunch of screen shots to show what I am talking about.

The other day I was activating K-2169 and kept getting signal reports with people telling me there was QSB (that is band fading for those that are not familiar with CW shorthand terminology). A little later into the activation I went to the POTA spot page to check to see what my most recent signal strength report was and thought…self, what does the history look like for this activation?

Now you have to take these reports with a grain of salt as the reporting stations are all over the place, but the signal reports as still indicative of what is going on with the band from where I am to the areas these listening stations are in. It also shows that the signal was fading in and out pretty hard every few minutes which is why I would go for five minutes at times with no one calling me back. then I would work for or five in as many minutes. These little short band openings are all I got when running QRP… So to get these reports you will log into the POTA spots page and pick a station that is active and click the little symbol next to the re-spot button and it will pop up on the screen. Looking at the history a little will show if the band is strong or weak or that it is fading in and out and even what the interval of the fading is so you can kind of tell what will probably happen in the next few minutes. I think this is a valuable resource that a lot of people don’t even know is there.

I hope this helps someone on their ham radio journey. 72

Testing a new power pack for backpacking…

This is the idea… I think I want to do some SOTA activations after listening to K4SWL talk about them on his YouTube channel. So this means that I need a smallish radio setup to be able to do these kinds of activations. I have to be able to pack them in and out from the SUMMIT, yeah, the very tip top of a mountain…

Today’s blog post covers the idea I have for a power source. I am going to use AA batteries. I know I can buy a Bioenno battery, but this gives me the options of picking up regular alkaline batteries if need be (I plan to make a couple of aluminum dummy cells for this option so the voltage wont be too high). It also allows me to repurpose the cells for my HT radios too as I have them configured to used these batteries as well. I found these 10 cell battery holders on Amazon and ordered one to try it out. Since it hold 10 cells, the voltage is higher and gets closer to the regular battery voltage everyone uses. The cells are 1.3 VDC when charged so this adds up to just over 13 volts in this kit. I measured the pack today before the activation at 13.2VDC…Perfect for what I wanted. So I load up the new battery pack and head over to K-2169 to test out the power pack life with a POTA activation.

The above photo is an optical illusion that has to do with the shutter speed of me camera and the refresh rate of the display on the radio, to the naked eye it was not gapped like this but looked fine. This little radio is a perfect little radio for SOTA so I am going to use it for that purpose.

Here is the basic radio kit as I plan to deploy it. The headphones are smaller and lighter than my box speaker/battery pack I made. I can also hear better on headphones too so it just made sense to use these instead. These are Sony headphones if I remember right, but I could be wrong. I will also be using my little travel key I bought as it is perfect for this project…till I get the new one that I plan on in the not-to-distant future.

I also plan to use a 40m EFHW antenna for my activations and just work 40m and 20m bands with it. This is the simplest antenna setup I can come up with as it doesn’t require a tuner and is pretty small for what it can do. I might get one of the compact verticals at some point, but for now that will have to do. I will also take a piece of throw line and a throw weight as well to get the antenna into the air. I will also add a piece of coax as this is the counterpoise in most cases. Otherwise I will need a coax AND a counterpoise… so I will eliminate the counterpoise and just work off the coax shield instead. Above is the tuner I used today as it was still in the truck from the last activation and I know how good it works.

This is the beauty of using campgrounds to activate, there are plenty of tie off points for your antenna system. LOL

After working almost 50 contacts over about 2 hours with almost all of it either making a contact or sending CQs meaning there was significant battery draw over these two hours, the battery voltage had only dropped from 13.2 to 12.82VDC. A little less than .4VDC or about 3% of the pack voltage overall. That is great as this tells me that almost any hike-to activation will have plenty of power to make contacts. I dont think I will be doing SOTA where I will have more than two or three hours on the summit for radio as there is the hike to and fro that has to be factored in as well. I call this part a success.

Pro-tip to the new hams just getting going. Grab a cheapo little volt meter for a field meter. This one was only a few dollars and worked perfectly. This technology has gotten very affordable and can be a priceless tool when you need to check the continuity of a piece of coax or to see if the battery pack has voltage on it like here. It has come in handy quite a few times now and stays in my POTA kit all the time. Until next time…72

July 1 2023 Morning Activation AAR

It was perfect weather and my operating position could not have been better today…

Today started out like any other day… (I have always wanted to start a story like that…lol) I loaded up the radio gear for the day, the Penntek TR-35, a TenTec 277 antenna tuner and a 41’ random wire antenna that I built for my trip to Hawaii last Febuary. (There is a write up about that from back in March if I am right)

I set up the radio today at the canyon rim since I wanted to use a wire antenna and this requires throwing a line up in the trees. I have my favorite picnic table that is right in the middle of the trees and is kinda out of the way of the hikers in the area as well. I throw the line up into the tree and it didnt get very high…uggg… Pull it out and rethrow it, again, and again… FINALLY get it about where I wanted it and ran with it. Not optimal as the antenna was running over some branches at the top but it was arial so I let it ride. I also just tied the throw weight to the line and left it suspended to maintain the tension on the antenna and not have to tie it off. I set the box that I carried my extra widgets in, under the throw line and weight to keep people from accidentally walking into it as it was hard to see and people did occasionally come by. I am pointing to the weight in the photo below…see what I mean?

I bought this Ten Tec Model 277 tuner on Flea-bay for really reasonable money and it is in excellent condition too. I like it as it is made by Ten Tec and it has connections for a coax, balanced line and a random wire antenna on it, this versatility is not on all tuners out there and makes this one really desirable for me. It is a simple design with a tapped coil inductor and two air variable capacitors. The SWR meter was just icing on the cake, I dont use it to tune most of the time, but rather the nanoVNA as it shows the “tune” of the system graphically and makes it easier for me to get done much faster. But what is good about the swr meter is that is the antenna changes or I bump a knob on the tuner or anything like that, it will show me instantly that the system is compromised and needs attention. That is a nice perk to be honest.

I also built out this simple kit for my nanoVNA to keep all the widgets I have accumulated for it, all in one place so I have what ever I need when I use it. This makes operating with the VNA a breeze. The yellow case was something I picked up at a hamfest from Gigaparts for cheap and it works perfectly for this job.

Here is a look at the antenna “kit” that I have put together. i learned a while back that it is simpler to find the things you want if you label them clearly. Hence the flagged counter poise and radiator. Also shown are the throw weight I made in the machine shop and the arborist 2mm throw line I also picked up at Gigaparts in Huntsville AL.

Here is the star of the show for the day, the Penntek TR-35 amateur radio. This radio is CW only and has a strong output setup that is pretty much impossible to damage with several temperature and current over protection circuits built into it. I have made a metric ton of contacts on this radio and today was no exception. Although the log sheet is light on quantity, the ones I did get are awesome! I even got an email from WA6YPE showing me his QRP rig that he called me with using a mag loop antenna in UTAH!!! I was also QRP at 5 watts going to him too. When the bands are “on” it doesnt take a lot of transmitter power to go a long way.

I also made another small goal for this day, I was able to make at least one contact on each band the radio is built to use. It is a personal little goal when I have a tunable antenna like this wire with me. If I am using the hamsticks, I can also do it then but it is more work on my part and a lot of the time I dont want to put out the radials for the other bands and will just use 20 and 40 only since they share radials… lol.

Also of note is that I worked DX for the 2nd day in a row that was not Canada (which I still consider DX for me). Today I was dialing aroudn on 17 meters and found XE1CT calling CQ and he was booming into my radio, so I thought he might just be able to hear me too. I threw my call sign to him and he came right back! Even though it is just Mexico which is actually no further than states like Arizona or Idaho, it still makes me happy to work them. There is just something about making contact with a foreign country that is special for me since I normally only activate with QRP power only.

If you think activating a park is hard, dont let it stop you, it is really fun. I have literally only had one outing where I didnt get the activation and that was my fault since I setup on a little used band, with a QRP radio, on a day when the bands were terrible and did so 45 minutes before the end of the UTC day too. Chalk it up to “giving it a shot” and it was still fun. Most of the time if you will just hop on 20 meters right quick, you can get the activation required 10 QSOs out of the way and then if you want to try to get contacts on other bands or modes or what have you, then at least you know you have the activation in the bag first. Simple tactic but it works perfectly for me.

Some days I am bolder and will set up shop on 17 meters and dig out the activation there before.I go elsewhere, but if I am pushed for time or something like bad band conditions, 20 meters is my goto solution. It pretty much always gets my activation. Just a tidbit if your thinking about activating a park sometime and have not done it yet…

There is something therapeutic about CW and QRP for me.

I really enjoy activating parks when I need some time to myself. I tend to not ask people to go with me but instead just go alone and I think I know why now.

Today was a perfect example is why I figured I would write about it. Today wasn’t particularly stressful but rather just really busy with lots of little tasks needing to be completed all day long. This slowly took its toll on me and I really needed some down time to get myself back in alignment.

A park activation was just the ticket. I find activating a park to be very soothing whether I have a huge pileup or no one answers me for minutes at a time. I also like to go by myself as well as I have concluded that direct human interaction is stressful for me and I don’t want that when activating a park. The radio contacts for POTA are rhythmic in nature and give me something to focus on that is low stress. Especially with CW since using CW for me still requires me to think about what I am hearing for now.

Take this operating position above for instance, it is simple yet functional and it is fully immersed in nature. I think this is another reason I like activating parks, it gets to a quiet place away from the busy world around us.

Another thing that is magical about it for me is how I can transmit a simple signal with just a few watts of energy and someone listening on the other side of the continent (and sometimes even other continents) can hear that signal and reply to it. Today was a hamstick kind of day as it is quick to deploy as I only had 45 minutes before the UTC day ended and I needed my “ten QSOs” before that happened.

This 2” pvc pipe makes the perfect hamstick storage tube and holds 5 hamsticks with qd mounts installed just fine. It is actually too long but not by much. It fits in my truck bed…exactly… with no wiggle room so I just use it. Today I simply strung the counterpoise for 20&40 meters and just used those bands since I can usually get an activation pretty quickly with those two bands. So to change from 20 meters to 40 meters I simply unplug one antenna and snap on the other. No tuners needed or anything, just a band change and we are off to the races.

Another thing I like here is the simplicity of the TR-35 radio and how it literally has zero menus. It has everything I need and nothing I don’t. Pure CW goodness at it’s finest… well, it could use 15 meters. Lol.

As can be seen above, the bands were fairly alive today and I was easily able to seal the activation before the UTC day flipped over. Signal reports varied as the bands would fade in and out but were favorable for the most part. It was nice to work so many familiar call signs such as KN1R and WD4DAN and even a few Canadians to boot!

Thanks for following along today and I hope to work you on the air soon. Until then 72

WK4DS

I finally went to a different park!!!

This activation is from not only a different park BUT A DIFFERENT STATE!!! Today I activated K-1039 Desoto State Park and it was a lot of fun even though the QSO count is pretty low.

So let’s set the stage here. I had some business to take care of in Ft Payne AL pretty early so I figured I would find a park close by to activate if I had time. Well, Desoto State Park is only a fifteen minute drive from there, so here we go!

Now to be fair, I know this park well as we have spent a considerable amount of time at this park over the years. Backed with this knowledge, I had a pretty good idea of where I would setup for the activation.

The “weapon” of choice today? The Penntek TR-35 QRP transceiver. I have grown to love this little radio over the past year and it is now one of my primary radios I take to the field when activating parks. Here it is with the supporting kit to get it on the air today.

Yes, the cup of coffee is part of the kit. LOL. Of course the antenna is not shown, but I do have the coax and the RF choke pictured. The RF choke is sort of optional as the radio will work without it but I like having it installed. The black box is the power pack/speaker unit I built for this radio, then there is the travel key and a pen and notebook. Done. Simple. I love it.

Below is what the assembled station looked like for me today. I really like to do my activations from the bed cover of the truck if possible as it is more inviting to passerby people and gets me out of the truck. Once I found a clear frequency I dont really need to be right on the radio so I can set it a little out of the way like it is here and just have the key and notebook at hand for logging.

The location I chose wasnt really the best for someone not wearing headphones to be honest. I was right by the road (as you can see below) and didnt take that into consideration when setting up the station. If I had thought about it, I would have worn headphones to be able to hear as cars would pass by. Cars are a lot louder than I realized for some reason. Lol. Lesson learned, I wont make that mistake twice.

This little parking lot is about half way to the old entrance to the park (it is the first photo above) Sadly, most people never see this beautiful stone work done by the CCC back in the 30’s as the main road into the park now goes a different way.

I always try to back my truck into the parking space so the antenna is out of the way. This keeps little adventurers out of my radials and such. But it also lets me setup like you see here which is over to the side and out in the open. Below shows the logbook and the signal reports are kinda telling. Don’t reference mine, the first column, because I don’t have an S meter on this radio so I am just guesswork. The second column are my received reports and they show the bands were terrible.

Locations that are normally 599 both ways are barely getting in the log today. Still got it done though. Thanks for following along with my journey. Until next time…

72

WK4DS

A picnic table activation for a change!

Well, I was beginning to wonder when I could do this again…comfortably. 😂 I have been operating from the truck for so long now, that I felt like I was at a new park when I went to my old favorite picnic table.

So for this “special” event, I wanted to take something out of the ordinary for me. So I used the Penntek TR-35 radio (this doesn’t fit that description but the rest does) and fed it through my vintage Ten Tec antenna tuner to a 65’ random wire with a couple of 10’ counterpoise wires.

To make tuning simple and fast, I use my nanoVNA and simply unplug the BNC from the radio and plug it into the VNA, adjust the tuner for a nice reading on the VNA for the band I want to use and then transfer the coax back to the radio. This way I am not transmitting carriers over the air while I tune and I can visually see what is happening while I tune. It just makes it so easy for me.

Something that I also built for this is the powerpack/speaker unit. This device houses a Bioenno 3aH battery and I installed a couple of speakers as well as a volt meter (that is activated via a push button to prevent battery drain by the meter) and a Anderson powerpole port (added after this activation). I wanted a device that could essentially “complete” the TR-35 sans antenna… It is missing a key of some sort that might just get added a little later. A simple straight key built into it somewhere would be pretty sweet to be honest.

The next thing is how I put up my wire antenna. I first threw a line over this huge tree limb and pulled the wire over it.

Then I threw the line as high into this tree way back here as possible and hauled the wire up about 30’ or so into that tree. It is making a horizontally run wire of sorts and work’s shockingly well. It also keeps the wire out of the way of park goers as well.

All in all, this map shows how well the little TR-35 with a 65’ wire up in the trees worked. I even dialed up some DX on 17m before finishing and worked FY5KE in south America before going QRT and breaking it all back down.

So I look forward to working many more ops at my local park with my little QRP radios in the coming weeks and not being bound to my truck so I dont freeze to death in the process like back in the winter.

72

WK4DS

AAR from a couple of short activations

The last couple of days has actually been good for my radio habit…errrrr…hobby. Yeah, hobby… lol.

Both were at K-2169 as I am working towards getting 100 activations at this park and it is close to home as well, so I can go play with my radios fairly easily here too. The new part about this trip is that I went to a different part of the park, this section is on the east side of the park and is a trail head for mountain bikers and hikers mostly. I knew I was fully in the park when I saw the boundary sign at the entrance to the parking lot.

These two photos show how convenient it was to setup here. The first photo shows the view from the road in front of the park with the boundary sign out front. It also shows the yellow electric gate behind it as well. The next photo shows my truck parked in the corner of the lot with the yellow gate in the foreground. It was pretty busy here too, there was a lot of people out riding as it was a Sunday and the weather was perfect.

Here lately I have been using the Icom IC-705 QRP radio as it is easy to use, has memory keying and METERS! I can actually confirm the SWR is good before just trying to load it and hoping for the best. Also note the common mode choke too as well as the 8aH battery behind it, I have been using this battery since last summer and it works wonderfully. I can activate at least 3 times with it before even needing to be charged. That is incredible! One other thing about the IC-705 that I like is that it has an external speaker. That is nice if I can setup on the truck bed cover like I did here so I don’t have to mess with my headphones.

Below is a problem I have not had before. The antenna was in the tree branches and I am certain that it was killing my signals. I moved the whole truck forward 2 feet and got out of the branches and immediately started making contacts. So a note to myself is that I don’t need to let my hamsticks touch the tree limbs when I setup in a park…

17 meters has been crazy lately, as in this contact to Italy with 5 watts. I was weak to him, but he heard me! He probably had a tri-bander or a dedicated 17 meter Yagi pointed my way, but I don’t know…

Once I switched to 20 meters the signals were much stronger and I quickly secured the activation and was able to wrap it all up and be back on the road in just under an hour. Not bad for a guy with a few hamsticks and 5 watts of power…

The next activation happened 2 days later and this time I was also only able to stay for about an hour. So this time I wanted to see just how much I could trim off the setup and go full on minimalist with the activation this time. The weather was nice so I didn’t even have to run the coax into the cab of the truck. As you can see, this time I used the internal battery on the IC-705 as the radio will run 5 watts when using this battery anyway and it was super fast this way! I could have probably left the common mode choke off as well but I liked knowing it was there protecting the radio…

I bought a pack of various BNC adapters off of Amazon and here is the male to male coupler connecting the coax to the choke. This makes setup of the cable to the antenna a breeze.

Here is another time saving item I used today, instead of both radials, I used just one of them and stayed on 20 meters the whole time to eliminate the time needed for band changes. It seems to work at about 85% as good as both radials so it gets the job done but if I am not in a hurry I will deploy both radials as it just seems to work better.

All of the strike thru partial QSOs are from what I can only explain as strange band conditions. It was like the band would be fully turned on one minute then like a switch it was gone the next. I would try a bunch of times to get them back but finally figured out the band was dead to that area and had to move on. It was really strange how it kept happening too. I mean they would be LOUD and then gone… Most likely it was them listening for me as I was QRP and the reports are showing not so great reports when I did get contact. So I am guessing I just faded into the noise floor on their end to be perfectly honest about it.

All in all, it was still great to get a coup[le of activations in and have some fun on the air at the same time. Thanks for reading along about my exploits.

My 80th Activation of K-2169

This AAR is brought to you by… wait for it… me! Lol. But seriously, today is special for another reason or two, on this day I activated Cloudland Canyon State Park for the 80th time and I met another ham at my home park!

Today, once again I setup the truck in the lower lot like I did a while back as it is faster somewhat but also it has a different view as well. I normally don’t setup down here as I have had issues with electronic hash noise in this area (I am guessing it is coming from inverters in the campground just over the hill) so that is why I goto the top of the hill where the disc golfers are most of the time. The antenna situation today is as follows, I went ahead and installed all the radials at once as it was threatening to rain the whole time and would sprinkle on occasion during the activation regularly.

I also used my RG-316 coax today along with my rain proof “countermeasures” which consist of a peanut bag taped over the coax connector to keep it dry during the activation. This is a field expedient solve that also happens to be a way to recycle a common piece of trash that would otherwise end up in the landfill. I can even reuse the tape a couple of times if I am careful.

Since I connected all my radials today, I also tried to use the whole suite of antennas that I have currently. If you will look closely, you will se I also installed QD mounts on my hamsticks as well. This made band changes so much faster!

I figured I would start on 17 meters to see what I could hear up there. When I connected it and saw the radio, I had high hopes as the waterfall on the Icom IC-705 had several signals on it. Calling CQ almost immediately netted 2 dx contacts! I worked DL1AX in Germany and SP9RXP in Poland! Did I mention I am only using 5 watts?!?! SP9RXP is 5060 miles from K-2169 so that qualifies for the 1000 miles per watt award! One day I will actually apply for these… HIHI I attribute this entirely to the new common mode choke I made and was using and a nice little band opening that happened at the same time. The choke probably didn’t have much of an impact on this but I want to believe it did.

This choke works so much better than my other one that it isnt even a real comparison. It also seems to help with band noise, but that could just be me wanting to believe it does since I built it more than anything. I know it measures real good on the nanoVNA… lol

While I was on 20 meters this camper van rolls by real slow, I tend to get that a lot with all the radials and the hamstick on the back of the truck. Then the camper van stops right in front of me and the guy gets out and starts over my way. I also get this a lot as people are curious and want to know what I am doing. But then it takes a completely different direction when he says (I am paraphrasing a little here) “Are you doing Parks on the Air?” This caught me off guard as I had never had someone who knew what I was doing, actually ask me if that was what it was.

Turns out this camper was none other than W5DXQ on vacation! He is from Texas and is very active on the air using an assortment of modes. I was in the middle of a QSO so I asked him to let me clear it then we proceeded to talk for about 20 minutes about my rig and CW and digital modes and how he uses the spotter system and SSB and the list goes on and on. Meeting Jeff was the highlight of the activation…well that and working two dx stations right out of the gate on 17 meters… It was awesome to finally meet someone else who does POTA at a park. I am so glad he decided to stop and ask what I was doing. I hope to work him on the air at some point! Now the challenge for me is to meet someone actually activating like Jeff did when he found me today.

Once we finished our eyeball QSO he headed off on his adventure and I got back on the air. Looking at the QSO map, it looks really odd with the two european stations when compared to the North American dispersion that happened once the band opening closed on 17 meters. I normally net at least a few western states but today saw no one west of Texas.

As you can see from the logbook, today 30 and 20 meters were the bands to use but even then the reports were showing how the bands were fading in and out. I did make some contacts on all four bands though so I am super happy with that.

The peeps over at the POTA website even sent me this cool certificate to commemorate the 80th activation! Nice!

All in all, it was a great day for POTA. I hope to hear you on the air soon. 72 de WK4DS

One of the reasons I like POTA

The first picture is one of the main reasons I like POTA. Being out in the field with a portable radio and being able to make a reliable contact with it is just special to me.

The parking lot was almost full when I arrived and fortunately for me, the space I wanted was open! That is me all the way over to the left at the end of the row. The perfect spot to be if others are in the lot as there is no trail here so no one will be tripping over the antenna parts when the come and go.

Today I found I had about an hour of free time and the weather was perfect for a change so I gathered up the gear and went to K-2169 for a quick activation. Since the weather was so nice I opted to setup on the tailgate.

When I operate at home, I am in my “shack” which is actually a spare bedroom I have repurposed for my hobbies. That is the one thing I like and don’t like about it. It is indoors. I like it when it is raining or cold outside but I don’t like it when it’s nice weather outside. This is the biggest reason I like going to Field Day in June, that is second only to the camaraderie with the other people.

Today, since I wasn’t in my regular truck (I commandeered one of my shop trucks while they put new shoes on the dodge) I didnt have my usual antenna kit. So today I deployed the 41’ random wire antenna that I used in Hawaii. I also coupled it to my Icom IC-705 with the automatic antenna tuner as well. This makes band changes a breeze…

I threw a line over a tree beside the truck and pulled the wire up as high as I could and tied on a 13’ counterpoise. The tuner connects to the radio with two cables, a co-ax transmission line and a signal/control cable that is simple a 3.5mm stereo cable commonly referred to as a “AUX” cable. It has two AA batteries in it and works fine with these but if possible I will power it with the main battery I feed the radio with, so I also included a power cable in my harness I made up for it. This harness is 6’ long and allows me to connect random wires right to the tuner.

To lift the burden of the wire tension off of the tuner, I also have a small cord connected to the radio end of the 41’ wire so I can anchor it to something near the tuner. This works really well and keeps me from pulling the tuner off the table when something moves the wire like wind, squirrels or people which in turn would cause damage to my tuner.

Today was a pretty good day too, I got my activation in a fairly short amount of time, I was outside in the wonderful weather and I was able to just play radio a little while. That being said, I netted less than 20 QSOs today with signal reports showing I was not very strong…probably because the wire was poorly deployed and not even all the way.

The key of choice today was once again the Gemini I picked up off of eBay a while back. I have ran into two problems with it since getting it. I also use it a lot as it has a great feel and normally works very well. Issue number one is detailed in a previous blog post where I bumped the lever arms at some point and this shifted the action off center causing it to send dits nonstop. I dismantled the key and realigned the lever arms, which is really easy once you see what needs to be done. The second happened just the other day during an activation. I got all setup and started to call QRL and it was just sending trash. I couldn’t get it to send anything correctly at all, just a mess of dits and dahs with no coherent outcome. So I fell on the backup, the N6ARA key and it saved the day. Once back home, I took the key apart to find that the center ground post that the contacts touch when keying, had worked loose and it was about to fall out. It has one small screw that holds it on the base plate and I simply tightened this screw and it was back in business. The lesson here is to have a spare key with you…fortunately I had one and was able to get the activation.

Looking at the map, we can see how the radiation pattern started about 700 miles away probably due to my terrible antenna deployment, but people were still able to hear me so that is all that mattered. lol…

Do you have any tales from the outer planets that relate to anything like what has happened here? If so, let me know in the comments. I look forward to working all of you on the air at some point.

72 de WK4DS

So I have had this nagging thought about toroids.

I have wondered if the hype about certain “mixes” of core materials made THAT much of a difference in things like common mode chokes and such.

FT240-43 Ferrite Core

Well, it turns out, yes…it matters alot. Like more than you could imagine kinds of alot. Let me share my experiment numbers with you.

T130-2 Powdered Iron Core

So to do this test, I used my nanoVNA and the S21 input set to LOGMAG so I can measure the difference between port 0 and port 1 in dB. I also swept the entire HF band space to get points from 1.8 mhz up to 29.7 mhz.

Note this test isn’t to determine which setup is the better setup, (well maybe it is if I am being completely honest) but rather to see if there was enough of a difference to warrant getting the specific composition toroid. If you will notice, the ferrite choke is much larger, this is because I learned from my mistake with the powdered iron version I used in the beginning. I struggled to get 14 turns of RG174 through the powdered iron core so when I ordered the ferrite core, I made sure it was big enough. Lol. My QRP setup for POTA is not ultralight weight, super minimalist portable but rather a “drive the pickup truck to the park and setup near the truck” kind of portable. I also learned when the ferrite core arrived that it would hold quite a few more turns of coax. Well… following my “more is better” philosophy I figured out what length would basically fill the toroid and that turned out to be 6 feet of coax. Hence the ferrite core has 30 turns of RG 316 coax on it.

The next thing I needed was a way to actually test the common mode current suppression. You see common mode current flows on the outside of the coax shield only.

This in turn required me to make up a cable that would allow me to connect the coax shield of the choke to both the port 0 and the port 1 inputs on their center pins while coupling the input shields together from those ports.

Enter Youtube at this point on how to use the VNA to perform this test. Of course, the test isnt 100% accurate as I couldnt perform the calibration correctly with the built up cable installed, but it does give me a close approximation to the performance I can expect.

As you can see from the picture above I simple cut a short jumper in half, soldered the shields back together and then soldered the center conductors to the shields attachments of two BNC connectors so I can pass the test signal over the shield only of the cable under test. This works surprisingly well but it is fragile so at some point I plan to put this in a simple project box.

The first one to test was the powdered iron core, which is the one currently in use in my POTA kit. I had bought this core with not much though being put into it. An RF choke is an RF choke is an RF choke was the thought process here. So I added it to my coax and happily used it for a while but occasionally got unwanted dits and dahs on my code if the coax was near the key cable. I noticed I could simply reposition the coax and it would stop causing interference. This made me question the choke’s effectiveness and here we are now. The VNA is set to 10dB per division and the whole amateur band with 1.8 mhz on the left and 30 mhz on the right. To save you from squinting I made a chart at or close to the bands I use to see the relative suppression and it is below for this choke.

As you can see from the chart, it works really well on 17, 15 & 24 meters but not really well past those. I dont know why it produces a 54dB null on 15 meters but that is kinda awesome. The performance on 1.8 mhz though is abysmal and I am guessing this is why I was getting RF induced into the keying line on 40 meters with only 13dB of suppression. So then I put the new ferrite choke into circuit and the waveform and chart are below.

Holy moly what a difference! The first thing I noticed was how broadbanded it was and the next thing was how low the waveform was! The poorest performers were the high and low portions of 10 meters and they still almost made 30dB!!! Wow! That 80 meter null is phenomenal and has me wanting to try a hamstick on that band. So this simply proves conclusively that I am an idiot and should have listened to start with…

Following my idea of “more is better” I decided to couple both chokes in series to see if the deep null on 15 meters from the powdered iron core and the 80 meter null from the ferrite would simply “add” together for some sort of magical double dip monster choke.

Well…It didn’t go quite to plan. There are two distinct dips… Instead of adding the two plots, it seems to more have averaged them together. This result is kinda disappointing to be honest. I was hoping to get over 50dB on two bands, but so is life. I am sure there is solid math somewhere that explains this in detail, but I honestly don’t know it, this is why I like to experiment and tinker with things. I can still learn something even if I dont have all the background (like the math knowledge) for a given idea. Also a quick note, my note at the bottom is wrong as it improved 17 meters as well. But it was late and I was getting tired. Lol.

In conclusion, if you plan to make a common mode choke for your HF coax, use the 43 mix ferrite for good performance across the band. Also, I didn’t try varying the number of wraps either. This will change the performance characteristics of the choke as well, so at some point I will probably do that but for now, I will just get on the air with my new choke and be happy.

I hope this helps someone on their common mode choke journey and keeps them from having to learn the same things I did the hard way so until next time, get on the air!!!

My activation with 9/10th of a watt… on CW.

Today marks a new milestone for me. I did a complete POTA activation with less than 1 watt of transmitter power. This is only 18% of my normal power of 5 watts. The numbers seem impressive now but just wait.

I went to K-2169 to get a quick activation in before they closed the park gate as I had almost two hours of time to do it.

I have several things that would be considered road blocks to this being possible.

The first one is the power obviously. The second is I am running that power into a hamstick antenna, which is not known for there efficiency. Lastly I setup at the foot of a mountain, literally… so let’s see what happened.

Spoiler alert…it went really well. I did have a bit of a rocky start as I wanted to get on 40 meters first but no one was there from what I could tell. After a solid 5 minutes of calling CQ I got zero answers, so I checked the spot page and saw there was a bunch of activators on 20 meters, so I changed the antenna to 20 meters and got on there.

Things changed when I did this. My first contact was with Paul KJ7DT in Idaho! That is right at 1780 miles on 9/10ths of a watt! He even gave me a 559 report, which I couldn’t believe! Wow, this just might work!!!

Well, as you see in the logbook, it went surprisingly well and I was able to complete the activation and get back home well before dark too. This was a pleasant surprise to be honest about it. I have turned down my power before but never this much. Now, I am going to do a series of self challenges to see how low I can take the Icom IC-705 for output power and still get the activation.

There is an award from the QRP-ARCI called the 1000 miles per watt award. I won this award at least six times today (if I were to actually apply for it that is). That just boggles my mind. I think my furthest contact was VA7AQ in British Columbia at about 2120 miles. That comes out to 2355 miles per watt!!! That is crazy!!!

Radio waves are a strange thing sometimes. If the sun is cooperating and the earth is also happy, it is easy to get across oceans with just a watt or two of radiated power. I plan to test this theory more this summer as the solar cycle improves even more towards the maximum.

What really impressed me is with POTA you normally send more honest signal reports than in say a usual DX pile up or a contest. If you will notice, 20 meters was going strong at that moment and almost everyone was booming into my IC-705 in the rain that day. (I was inside the truck but it was raining). 9/10ths of one watt is what most hf rigs would consider the pre-amp stage. Lol. So the next time you have 100 watts and 2:1 SWR, dont sweat it too much, you still have something like 90+ times the radiated power I was using today. That should make you feel a little better about it. Haha. Until next time, warm up that atmosphere!!!

Addendum: Well I now have to get crazy low as Thomas (K4SWL) has a video where he activates with 100mW of output power… more to come…

Who owns a POTA “activation”?

Addendum: It seems a lot of people misunderstood what I was saying with this blog post and it subsequently hurt a lot of peoples feelings. I am sorry for that as all I wanted to do was shine the light on the hunters as well as the activators. But this seems to have missed the mark. If you are finding this for the first time, you have been warned…on with the article.

I have thought about this a lot lately. You hear people asking things like how to handle pile ups and what frequency to use and so on. The usual answer is along the lines of “it is your activation so do it how you like”.

The IC-705 makes a great QRP PTA radio.

I am going to go out on a limb and disagree here. You see, I am both an avid hunter and a frequent activator as well. So I can see both sides of the discussion with this issue. Having this perspective had given me a position that differs from the usual.

I see it like this, the activation belongs to both the activator AND the people hunting the activator. I do understand that the activator has the lion’s share of the work involved. They have to pack up the gear, travel to a park, setup the station, operate in less than ideal weather sometimes, then breakdown the station and pack it away and finally travel home and upload the logs so the hunters get credit for it. The hunter simply grabs a hot cup of coffee, walks into the shack, juices up the radio and calls the activator once he checks the spot page. Done. So I can see where the mindset comes from that the activator owns the event.

CW works surprisingly well for POTA activations.

I propose a different idea though. The activation wouldn’t be an “activation” without the hunters… except if there were enough park to park QSOs to get the minimum of ten. Which I normally dont have when I can go do an activation. So the activation hinges on the hunters answering my CQs. They comprise a full 50% of the QSO and are equally invested, as they might not be investing in field kit but instead they are giving me something much more valuable…their time. Each one of those people are willing to take their time and use it to make contact with me. The is huge in my book. Each person has a finite amount of time and we take this for granted for some reason.

My “hunter” ham radio station at home…

My “hunter” station…

So if I have a big gun power through a bunch of weak signals, I work them. They have spent a considerable amount of time and resources to be able to do that. If I get a letter of a call before the “big gun” comes in over the little signal, I will ask the little signal to repeat. I am just saying, all of my hunters are valuable to me. I do my best to work all of them when I activate. That is why I worked over 100 QSOs the other day, I answered the calls till no one was left. We are all in this together and we are all valuable, so when it comes to the “activation” remember the hunters are spending their time to hunt you just as much as you are spending your time to be hunted.

I hope this helps some new ham with their POTA journey and we can get those calls in those logs!

72

David - WK4DS

A centurion style activation that almost didnt happen…

Here is the setup. I wanted to activate my local park after work and had a couple of hours to do so. I had a long day at work and then had some other stuff to do after that, but wanted to goto a park. We worked out the small stuff that needed doing right quick. This makes me think I don’t have time to get in an activation before dark, but Teresa assured me that I had time…how did she know??? LOL. I load up and ride over and find the frisbee golfers are few in number today so parking was easy. I grab my favorite spot at K-2169 and put up the 17m hamstick and get started… I was not ready for what was about to happen…

Here is the operating position for the afternoon. The cab of the truck works quite well of POTA. I figured out how to setup the Icom IC-705 so that it is out of the way, yet easy to work with by propping it on the bag that is sitting in the other seat. This works fine for solo ops, but will be a problem if someone goes with me.

I finally tried installing more than one set of radials at once this time and it worked! The SWR on 40 meters was pretty high at 2.3:1 but it worked fine as evidenced by the pages of QSOs I logged with it like this. I have done a lot of research and 2:1 SWR isn’t really a problem as much as some would think, it does loose efficiency, but not that much. So little that I ran this high SWR for over an hour and the radio was barely warm and it worked wonderfully well. I still need to make a set of dedicated 40 meter radials and a set of 15 meter radials now that I have the 15 meter stick…

So I get in a good spot and deploy the antenna system and this time I go ahead and rig the radials for 17, 20 & 40 meters (20 and 40 share radials) so all I needed to do was change radiators to change bands. The idea is that the rf will find the right antenna and radials and ignore the others and it does.

Side note: I am making a part to allow for 4 hamsticks to be mounted at once on the base so I will soon be able to just change bands on the radio without having to go outside of the truck. This system has proven itself viable for portable operations like this.

By the end of the activation, I had the place to myself. Well there was a herd of deer just out of camera shot that I saw when I left…

I started on 17 meters with the hopes of getting enough to have an official activation just on 17. It took me a few minutes to get going so to speak, but once it did, I had a constant stream of contacts. Finally it died down a little so then I switched over to 20 meters because this is where the “scores” can REALLY change, to borrow a line from some gameshow I used to watch. I think it was Jeopardy… but anyway, QSY to 20 meters…

Well, 20 meters DID NOT DISAPPOINT!!!! Holy Mackerel you guys brought your A game!!! I even worked a contact in France while on this band! I finally caught a lull after some kind of crazy nonstop run on 20 meters (something like over 40 contacts on 20 meters alone) and decided to QSY to 40 meters.

Here is where I didn’t really expect to get all that many calls as 40 meters is more localized for me with the hamstick antennas. I get the closer states more than anything else. Well, this didn’t seem to matter either as the calls started coming in! I worked something like 46 calls in a little over an hour on 40 meters before there was a lull so I could go QRT and pack it up. What a day!

The sheer density of the QSO map should say it all. Just crazy to me at how many people answered my little call that day. Some of these call signs have more than one contact too since they called me on multiple bands like KJ7DT did.

That is a lot of QSOs in one day for me! Thanks y’all!

Check out the log for this day, I have several ops that I worked on two bands as well. I love these kinds of days but to be honest, they are a little overwhelming when you are accustomed to making 15 to 20 QSOs in an outing…still it was awesome.

Just looking at the logbook shows that the bands were on fire and the ops knew it and got on! I have never had so much fun with a 5 watt radio that I can remember. I have only had one other outing where I got over 100 QSOs in one day so this is really special for me. Thank you all for replying to me and allowing me to have such a great day!

72

David - WK4DS

Today is the day I went roving in POTA parks.

The rover award is when you activate at least 5 parks in one UTC day.

My final location of the day, Booker T Washington State Park K-2933 and it worked wonderfully!

I have been interested in this whole “rover” thing for a while now. So I finally dug into the rules so I would know what is required and laid out a plan. I found 5 parks that I could access easily and set out a route to them and just loaded down the truck with gear in anticipation of needing backup stuff. I didnt need it, but I had it. Like what you see here is three radios. The TR-35 (which is what I used for most of the day), the Icom IC-705, and the Elecraft K1 makes for a strong QRP expedition.

Anyway, so I figure I would start with my local park since I know where the parking lot is and the proximity to the main road is really good. I chose the Sitton Gulch parking lot at the bottom of the mountain because of the main road noted above and the fact that I have had great luck here in the past.

I got the activation, plus a few more contacts than I needed, in about 20 minutes of air time. Not a bad start! Well, I got excited once I cleared the pileup and had the activation in the bag and completely forgot to get a photo of the truck here. I realized it at the next park… If you want to know what that looks like, just read this blog post K-2169 POTA Activation at the very foot of a MOUNTAIN - AAR. It has a few photos of this parking area and I was in that lot.

I wanted to make sure I had enough time to activate each of the five parks AND not leave people calling if at all possible. Since I am using QRP power, this should not be a problem though and I normally dont get more than four or five calling me at once with two being the norm for me. Basically, pile ups are small for me. So I wanted to shave time off of the other parts to leave more time for “ON AIR” activities. Below is a quick photo of the cab of the truck showing how I left the gear when changing parks.

I just left the TR-35 connected and laid it on the dash to where it would not slide off and broke down the antenna by just removing the hamstick and disconnecting the coax. Then I put the yellow mount with the radials still attached in the truck bed ever so carefully and rolled the coax into the back seat and I was off. This made park changes really fast since I was sticking with 20 meters for this trip as I had good confidence that I could get the activations with just that band pretty quickly.

The next stop was the Zahnd WMA, which to be honest, I had never heard of till I started looking at doing a Rover. It is literally next to the road so it was in and out with a cleared little pileup and on I went. Below is what the parking area at the WMA looks like, it is actually really nice for a WMA parking lot. I had the place to myself since nothing is in season right now. Something else of note is that when I was working the early parks, I would cross 10 QSOs and then once I worked all the callers, I would go QRT and move, but once I got K-0716 activated I started getting comfortable with achieving the goal and would call CQ longer. For now though, as you can see below, 10 contacts (and just a few more) and I was off to the next location.

So the next location was about 10 miles down the road. I have activated Otting WMA before so I knew what to expect when I got here. The parking are is also right by the highway (which is why I chose this route to be honest) so access time is minimal.

You will notice I back into the parking location as much as possible to get the antenna out of the way so people and pets do not wander into it while I am transmitting.

Deploying the system involves, backing into a location to get my antenna out of the way and then opening the bed cover, installing the yellow antenna mount, laying the two radials out, then screwing in the radiator. Next I open the rear truck door, grab the coax and plug it into the antenna mount. A couple minutes arranging the cab, while listening to the band for an opening then I spot myself on the website and were off to the races. Below is the info kiosk at Otting, all these WMAs seem to have one now which is nice so I can see if there is a managed hunt or what.

Something else I like about the rover idea is there is a lot of driving in the country here. I passed through the town of Menlo GA between parks 3&4 and stopped to grab a couple of photographs. Some with my camera and some with my phone. Small town America is cool…

So for my next stop, I went to the Chickamauga national military Park, which is K-0716 and set up in the parking lot of what is known as the “tower” by the locals. It is actually known as Wilder tower and is a really common attraction in the park.

I backed into the space, even though they are angled in such a way as to promote pulling into them so this took a minute, but that allowed me to spread my radials in the grass strip between the parking space and the road. I have found that getting the radials out of the way of other people so they don’t trip over them is critical and backing into the parking spaces normally allows this. Another thing of note is do not transmit when there are people that can touch the radials as even at QRP power levels, there is enough RF energy on the radials to shock someone ever so slightly so the smart thing to do is not transmit while people are around your antenna. I had to be very mindful of the other people in the park while I did this particular activation, as I did not set up in my usual spot where there are very few people. In hindsight, I should have just used the usual spot as it is out of the way, and most people do not ever bother going there. Another thing to note is that by this point in the trip, I had gotten good at setting up and breaking down the antenna and radio to move to the next park. I knew exactly what I needed to do to get the radio in a position to where I could just set it out of the way and move to the next location without having to do a bunch of unnecessary, connecting and reconnecting of wires.

Once I got to this park, I realized how much time I still had and I decided to work contacts for a little longer here. I still continued to use 20 meters only because I did not want to get too comfortable with band changes and getting out additional equipment until I got to the fifth park. This park was actually fairly busy with people coming to see the tower, jogging and walking their dogs. Seeing this helped me to decide to keep the extra gear put away as well and figured I would play with the other bands once I got to the last park. I also knew the area at the last park pretty well and knew I would not have to worry about kids and pets getting into my antenna there.

As you can see though, I had a good run of a little pileup and it took me about 35 minutes to clear it. Once it was clear and I took a call from Teresa to sort out some shop problems, I was off to the last park of the day, K-2933. This has been one of my easy parks that if I am in the north east portion of Chattanooga that I can get to and have a nice quiet activation. so I go by there every month or so. I will probably get my repeat offender award for it at some point this summer.

Here is the storage tube I put together out of 2” PVC pipe to keep my growing ham-stick collection from getting damaged when not in use. It was cheap and I didn’t even glue it together, just friction. It fits diagonally in the truck bed with almost not play so it doesn’t roll around at all. Currently I only have 4 ham-sticks in it so I have plenty of room. You can also see the spare radials for the other bands I used here today laying on the ground for band changes. Like a genius, I tuned each band with out the radials for the other bands on the base and to prevent me from having any sort of problems arising from tuned stuff in the area, I just used them like I tuned them. Of course this worked beautifully well, but it did add a little more work. I am going to make the antenna mount to where I can install four ham-sticks at once and since they have such great out of band rejections, the RF for each band should find the right antenna without having to change them out. I just need to put the whole thing together and tune it first.

Mu impromptu sunshade for the Icom IC-705 worked really well.

Another surprise for this trip was that I pressed the Icom IC-705 into service as I have not used it in a while and wanted to play with it some today. I had also brought the Elecraft K1, but just as backup incase the other two radios failed on me…lol. The IC-705 is touch screen technology so it is easy to do all sorts of things like band changes and sending from memory when calling CQ. Plus it has a built in speaker which is nice when there isn’t a lot of noise in the area. Headphones are great when I am alone, but it is hard to explain to a passerby what I am doing if they can not hear the radio too. This is one of the only oughts I have with the Penntek TR-35. It has no internal speaker…

Here is your free tip of the day, most of you probably already know this, but some of you may not. Use colored phasing tape to color code your antenna and matching radials so you know which radials go with each ham-stick or what ever antenna you decide to use. This makes putting the right kit together a simple task instead of frustrating when the SWR is acting strange because you used the wrong radials with the vertical that you have on the mount.

Now as you can see below, I started on 30 meters. I ran into a problem here though, there was some sort of broadband QRM that was spaced in intervals across the whole band space. I finally found that 10.116mhz was fairly quiet and started calling. I got 4 answers before giving up to the QRM and moving to 20 meters where I had a great time free of this pesky QRM that was down on 30 meters. After a solid run of 18 contacts on 20 meters I figured I would give 17 meters a shot before calling it a day. I had somewhere I needed to be later so I had to pack it up by 19:00 UTC. Anyway, I do the band change to 17 meters and start calling. You can see in the log that it took me about 5 minutes to do the band change and get back on the air. This is why I laid all the stuff out like I did. I wanted to make it easy to do till I can get the multi antenna system done. Well I netted another 18 QSOs on 17 before having to go QRT for the day. Total for this park FOURTY in 1 hour and 20 minutes (80 minutes). I could have probably gotten more if I had not messed with the WARC bands and just stuck to 20 meters as it was going crazy. BUT where is the fun in that? I had the activation so why not play on the other bands a little since I have the stuff?

If you see your call in the log and want to swap QSL cards, I only do paper cards and I will respond to all that I get. This was a load of fun and I think next time I will take a helper to help with logging and band changes and stuff, I went solo today and it was … quiet… at times. This makes for a great times if you don’t mind the solitude, but for some it might be a problem. I was busy all day so it didn’t bother me in the slightest. Just be aware of that.

So till next time, get your radio out!!!

72

David WK4DS

A bunch of POTA activating in one day.

The sunspots were being nice to me today with my tiny ham radio and CW key…

The amateur radio of choice for today is the Penntek TR-35

Well I went to a bunch of parks today. It wasn’t planned, I just found myself in the right areas to be able to get to several parks in one day, so Carpe Diem! I found out later that I only needed two more to get a rover award so now it is on! The first level is 5 parks in one day. The goals go up from there to insane numbers of parks. I am convinced that at the peak levels, you have to operate mobile with vehicle mounted antennas. You just dont have time to activate 20, 25 or even 30 parks in a single day otherwise. It takes me ten minutes to get into the park, stopped and just get the antenna deployed then just as much time to break it down. So all that wasted time has to be eliminated. It would have to be a military style operation to be honest, having someone log for you too if you wanted it to go easily, but 5 or ten should be easy enough…right?

Back to what happened today…

I first made a short stop at my local haunt of K-2169 Cloudland canyon state park. Then I spent the mid day with the family and doing some chores. I wanted to get in an activation before I went to father/daughter brunch and was able to do that with ease. Unfortunately, I had to leave the activation before I wanted to, as there was a decent pile up going and I really don’t like to leave anyone hanging…but the kiddo was waiting for me so off I went.

This parking lot is literally at the bottom of the mountain.

I ended up at the foot of the mountain this time as it saved me a solid 20 minutes of driving by not going to the top of the mountain. This allowed me to stay on the air a little longer and added about 15 QSOs to the log because of it. Signals were strong even with the mountain right beside me. I was honestly impressed with how strong a lot of the ops were on my ham-stick. I used 20 meters as I wanted to be sure to secure the activation in the time frame I had, which was only about 30 minutes from the time I powered the radio on. This is why I didn’t goto the top of the mountain, the drive up there would have eaten all the operating time. As you can see though, the inbound signals were strong and I got a lot of good reports back as well. This location isn’t all that bad to be honest as long as there is room to deploy the counterpoise wires.

Later in the day, after brunch with Sierra (KK4RJW), I was near Harrison bay state park so I figured I would try to get another activation before the day drew to a close. (I was also working on a youtube video for my photography channel and wanted somewhere fairly quiet to record it and this sounded like a good spot). During the weekdays these parks are normally ghost towns and I usually have free reign of the place. This is why I like them for recording video content.

The park is home to a really nice marina and boat ramp and I chose to setup in the far corner of the parking lot where the boat trailers are parked. There was plenty of room here for my radials so no one even gave me a second look. I opted for the 17 meter band as I wanted to see what I could do with it and I wasn’t under the time constraints like I was earlier in the day.

I noticed a lot of these trees were blooming at this time too. I think these are called red bud trees, but to be honest, I am not sure. They sure were pretty though. So I thought I would grab a quick photo and add it to the blog for color.

Since I was wanting to record the footage for my video, I stopped calling CQ after I got 15 QSOs in the log. I always like to go over by a couple so that if I find out I copied a bad callsign, I still have enough for an activation. This one went a little slower since I did the whole thing on 17 meters and didn’t bother to change bands during the activation. You see, right now, to change bands involves me going to the rear of the truck and changing whip antennas as well as the counterpoise wires as these are all tuned independently. I will eventually build the mount that holds 2 or three of these at once (maybe all four) and I will retune the radials to work with all of it set up at once. I checked the ham-sticks and they have unreal selectivity with there being only one resonant null on the nanoVNA across the whole spectrum up to 30mhz. There aren’t even any harmonic bands, just the one they are tuned for.

Well on the way back from Harrison bay, I drove right past Booker T Washington state park…so I said to myself “Self, we should activate this one too” and with that I swung the truck around and went back to get 10 more contacts with the TR-35 and my newly minted ham-stick collection. Turns out this was a good call as you guys came in the clutch! Wow! FOURTY QSOs in short order!

I got there and setup near the playground on top of the hill. These are old campsite spaces that the park no longer uses for camping. The parking spaces are still paved and the grill is still at most of them so people still use the sites to do cookouts now. This in turn makes them perfect POTA parking spots as I spoke with the park ranger and he said it was perfectly fine to setup in these spaces and play radio anytime the park is open. As you can see below, it makes for a great location and there is plenty of room for the radials if I back into the space.

The radials dwarf the ham-stick antenna but the sure do work well.

This time I chose the 30 meter band to start with and then changed over to the 20 meter band to finish up as I was getting a lot of calls from this location. Doing the band change is not really that bad but it is slow enough to make you not want to do it a lot. I think the multi mount for the antennas will make this a great all day rig where I will setup for several hours and want all four bands.

Signals at Booker T Washington park were strong today!

I have figured out how to get the radio to rest on the dashboard of the truck so that I can free up more space on the armrest for the logbook. If fits here perfectly and allows me to connect the headphones and key with just the right amount of room on the wires. It also gets the VFO knob out of the way so I don’t bump it and push myself off of frequency (which I have done in the past). It is still in a location that I can access easily though for speed changes, memory access and such.

Below is my “POTA tote” that I was gifted at Christmas last December. It holds all my POTA stuff and a bunch of extra things too. The tote almost has two complete rigs in it at this point there is so much redundant gear in it. But it is convenient and I can just grab it and goto a park as the ham-sticks live in the truck full time now in a pvc storage tube I made for them (see photo below). I keep them, the trailer hitch mount and the radials all in the back of the truck together so they are ready to deploy when I arrive on location. Easy.

After a good little run of QSOs on 30 then another one on 20 meters, I cleared the pile up and called QRT to go find the wife and have some supper. Little did I know at the time, but I was over half way to a Rover accomplishment. I now know that I only needed two more parks to get the first level award in that and I already know which two I am going to use… LOL So next time I will get my 5 in one day.

Thanks for following along on my little CW adventure in ham radio. 72 WK4DS

A “quickie” POTA activation…lol

What happens when you plan to do something “right quick”? That’s right, it doesn’t happen like that at all. Haha.

I had about an hour of free time today between activities with the XYL and K-2169 was … technically… on the way to meet her, so LET’S POTA!

K-2169 Cloudland Canyon State Park is a 15 minute drive from my house so if you look at that park on the POTA site, you will find I go there a lot. Today, I wanted to get setup quicker than normal, which means I opted for the lower parking lot. This parking area is next to the canyon proper and is where I like to setup my wire antennas in the warmer months.

The lower lot was pretty sparse so I was able to get in a corner, out of the way, which also afforded me the ability to use the side of the truck to shade me from the setting sun. I grabbed a camp chair out of the back of the truck, threw up the 17m hamstick and got on the air. The truck tire made the perfect “table” for the Penntek TR-35 QRP radio too. I used the battery to tie down the coax so it would not slide off the truck and pile up on me (like it did right before I sat the battery on it) and made the station nice and tidy.

I started on 17m calling CQ as I heard quite a few stations having QSOs. After calling CQ for a few minutes I got an answer from NA7C in Utah and then a little later KJ7DT came in strong as well from Idaho. But then I called for a long time with nothing coming back so I decided to change bands and see if I could finish up on 20 meters.

Once on 20 meters, I found a clear spot and started calling CQ again. Just a moment later KJ7DT came back again! This time even stronger!!! Idaho was booming into Georgia today. That gave me hope! So I worked Paul leisurely, as he was the only one to answer my call, and then cleared him to find myself in a ginormous pileup! Where did everybody come from!?!?!? Good Lord I had trouble pulling out single stations. I have never really had to deal with a legit pileup before. Oh sure, I have had 4 or 5 stations call at once but this sounded like 20 or 30! I start plucking out callsigns and in the process of the next 38 minutes I put 38 QSOs in the log. That has to be some sort of a record for me!

Some items of note from today that I found interesting were that I worked KJ7DT back to back on two bands without coordinating that with him, then I ended up working three DX stations today with one of those being DL1AX in Germany, another was VO1SW in Canada and finally CU3DI in the Azores! I even worked a Park to Park for a 2Fer! Sweet! Speaking of sweet, the dogwood trees are in full bloom as well making for a beautiful scene on top of a 40 QSO run on my tiny little QRP radio in just under an hour and that includes an antenna change!

Check out the QSO map I got from the HAMRS app showing the spread. Side note about HAMRS, if the op isn’t found in the Hamdb database, then search them on QRZ and get their grid square and add it to the QSO info if you want them to show up on the QSO map. This is how I get non-POTA ops to show up.

Here is the USA map without the tags so you can see the radiation dispersion of my 5 watts and a hamstick antenna.

I think that I could have most likely worked most of these ops today with SSB and it would have been successful. 20 meters was that strong today. This comes on the heels of the previous evening where I worked Ian in New Zealand on 10 meters via greyline! This has been a good 24 hours for radio! Confirmed via QRZ in real time no less! I am sending him a real QSL card anyway but that always gets me excited. It isn’t everyday that I can even hear New Zealand on 10 meters much less them hear me.

Here is another tidbit about me. If at all possible, I will always clear the pileup before going QRT as I know some of them are needing my park for one of their goals and if I can help them with their goal, whatever it might be, I want to do that. I had not initially planned on staying for an hour but it was so rewarding that I just couldn’t power down the rig. Lol

Today was a pleasant surprise and I look forward to more like it in the future.

72 and I hope to hear you on the radio!

de WK4DS

Activating an Off-road Vehicle Area is not always a great idea.

Sometimes things look better on paper…

But in execution, they are not a great ideas.

This is the story of me (WK4DS) at K-5493 Franklin-Marion State Forest.

On my way over to the park, I passed through South Pittsburg, Tennessee to shoot a little photography first since it was on the way to the top of the mountain to do an activation…

When I arrived at the park location I liked, it was perfect weather and quiet and as you see from the photo, I had the place all to myself. Well, that changed in about 15 minutes from the time I took this photo. You see, this “park” on the POTA map is actually a state forest with OHV trails on it. I parked in a clearing that is about 100 yards off of the paved road and is next to an old forest service fire tower. The luxury to this site is that it is literally on top of the mountain and 100 yards of gravel road from the pavement. So I have a great elevation profile because of that and easy access to a good site.

This is an old forest service fire tower. It was on the other side of the clearing and is so old that it had trees growing through the framework and the building at the top had no floor in it anymore. I remember these in use as a kid, but at some point they stopped using them, and from the looks of this one, it was probably in the 90s. There was another feature that I noticed as well… Have a look at the photo below and take a guess what made all those holes…

I cant go up there and see, but I am pretty certain those are bullet holes. That is one thing that “rednecks” are good for, shooting things like this… I don’t know where this mindset comes from, but they tend to do things like this. It is unfortunate too as this is basically destroying relics from our local history for simple entertainment.

Another thing that I ran into on this trip was that the little adapter shown below that goes on my headphones has failed. It was causing some heavy shorting issues and I ended up figuring out that if I spun it to the right position it would not cause a problem, but spin it just a little and it would make terrible feedback. I didn’t have a spare either so I ended up using it and just being super careful with it…Always have a spare is the lesson here.

In the photo below you can see what I am talking about when I say there were ATVs going by while I was operating. Lots of ATVs would pass through at times, like 4 to 6 in a group at once. These vehicles also don’t have great mufflers either so it would be hard to hear while they were going by…

Since it was nice weather, I wanted to use the truck bed cover for my operating position and because of this, I was right next to the antenna. Also if you will notice, there was a couple more hamstick antennas this time. I picked up a 17m, 30m, and a 40m Shark brand hamsticks from Chatt Radio and spent the morning before the activation today tuning the 17 and 40m antennas. I didn’t do the 30m unit yet because I ran out of time as I wanted to try an activation today and I still had to make all the parts for the radials for the 30m antenna from scratch… Once I got the 17m radials made and tuned and then cobbled my 40m hamstick radials together so it would work (I think I need to revisit this one at some point and make better radials for it), I was off to the races! This design of antenna and mount work extremely well for their size.

Today’s weapon of choice is the Penntek TR-35. This radio has everything you need and nothing you don’t. It is just a great little CW rig that is simple to use and works really well.

This is a close up of my 17meter radial tie down, that I dubbed “Gen 2”, ground weight design. I can remove the weight easily from this plastic connection plate and use it on a different radial if I wanted to change bands or something like that. This worked really well and was easy to setup and tear down too. My old design coupled the weight to the radial making it a dedicated weight, which is simpler to make, but not as versatile to use as the weight is part of the radial.

Below is the complete antenna kit as of today. This doesn’t show the mounting bracket that I made to install these on, you know the big yellow one, right? But here are the radials and antennas that I currently have tuned and are ready to get on the air. Once I get time to work on the 30m antenna, I will add it to the stable. The ham-stick is a very viable option for the QRP POTA op. I used these today to get the contacts below and you can see that the signal reports show it works just fine. If you have one, this is something that I suggest you try to use. They need the radials though to get the best performance. I have found that is important. Supposedly they are designed to not need them, using the coax as the counterpoise but they just get out so much better with them tuned to the band with a proper counterpoise.

If you will notice, I make lots of notes as I go in my log, but I had a great day on all three bands. It was cool to get some contacts on 17 and 40 meters today, but if you will notice, all the magic happens on 20 meters… That is where the bulk of my contacts happened today. I also was able to work the same ops on multiple bands which is kind of cool.

So even if you run into problems with the location like I did, just get the radio out anyway as it just might be the day you put over 70 QSOs in the log! So till next week, get that radio out and throw a wire up into a tree!!!