2 Operator Activation
Today…I went by and grabbed my buddy Roger (KG4WBI) and took him with me to activate US-2169 for a few hours. Needless to say, we had a wonderful time.
The day was really gloomy with storms predicted for the later part of the day. We have planned to work ops till the storms rolled in and that is exactly what we did. I setup the antenna in the usual spot for getting a ton of activity and we decided we would see what we could scare up on 15 meters first since the Ten Tec Scout is a 50 watts radio. This should give us a good chance at working some people on the west coast. I really love this little eclectic radio. It is so odd that it is fun to use even with the draw backs. What drawbacks you ask? Well the VFO (actually the PTO as it is a permeability tuned oscillator and not a variable frequency oscillator) is constantly drifting up and down a little as you will notice in the photo below, it is high by 100 hertz in the photo. Also there is no real way to fine tune it so you just get “close enough” and be done with it. My machine also has something going on with the mic jack that forces me to not tug on the cable while transmitting or the PTO will just shift up or down about 400 to 500 hertz. I figured out that if I snug the connector with pliers that it would minimize this problem. That is why the channel-lock pliers are in one of the photos.
So there is this funny, yet tragic story about setting up the station that I will share with you. I was working on getting the radial field positioned so that I could operate on both 15 and 20 meters with just antenna changes during the activation and this means moving a radial, then checking everything on the nanoVNA. Then switching antennas and doing the same process over but noting the location of the radials that made a difference on this band. After two or three band changes, I had it really good, but then I decide to swap antennas one more time… Isn’t it always on that last time you fool with something that it all goes wrong?
Seems that if you move crap around long enough, you forget where it is at in space. This ended up with me getting my leg tangled in the coax, stumbling backwards and literally pulling the cable off of the connector at the base of the antenna! Ruined my Wireman coax I bought at Hamcation last year… So not to be shut down by this simple problem, I defaulted to my ABR Industries coax with the common mode choke built into it instead and was on the air in no time. I am going to repair the broken coax with a new connector and sweep it with the nanoVNA to see if it will still work after the repair. Roger has the proper crimping tool to do this job with so it should be a simple task to cut off a 6 inch section, so I can get to good wire again and install the new BNC fitting. Roger loaned me his crimping kit so I can actually get the connector set correctly too.
We also had to setup in the truck cab because “yours truly” forgot the 36Ah battery at home…again…doh! This ended up working out anyway as the storm front that was bringing the rain finally showed up before we finished. I know we would have had a huge problem breaking everything down with the wind blowing the rain in on us in the shelter. Did I mention the wind was blowing? It was, and it was gusting pretty strong at times too. Strong enough to make me worry about it. HaHa. This is why we set it up on the dash like you see here. It worked well like this though as we were able to work 2 operator status easily since the mic was so close to us like it was. Also note how he is holding the mic, this isnt to look cool, but it is to minimize the PTO shift…lol.
I had planned to work some CW as well so I got the travel key out, but we never got to this. Seems that if you use 50 watts and get on 20 meters calling CQ POTA that you will have plenty to do on side-band instead. We started on 15 meters, like I had said earlier, but it was pretty slow going for the most part. We worked 11 contacts before finally moving down to 20 meters.
The 15 meter band was open for the most part. We could hear Europe a couple of times in QSOs with domestic operators, but we never worked one DX station ourselves. What I love about 15 meters is that even though we are running a Ham Stick for our antenna, we are able to easily work the west coast and the north east region of the USA with relative ease. For example, we were able to log California, Washington, Massachusetts and New Hampshire and the California op was also activating a POTA park on his end! That is the reason I love to get on 15 meters, it will go LONGGGGG, if the band is open at all! I love it when I can log those places with a simple radio setup under compromise conditions out somewhere like this. There is just something magical about it.
Another thing I wanted to mention that shows up in this photo. I paper log, you can log with a computer if you want (and most do) but I prefer paper myself. This needs to be decided before the activation starts though. The point of who is going to log and how are they going to do it. If you figure this out ahead of time, then you dont have a mess when it comes time to submit them to the website. I decided to log everything, even Roger’s signal reports and he simply photographed the log so he could transcribe it when he got home and submit it then. When you see the log you will notice that I rearranged the location of some of the data because of adding the second signal report column. This worked out really well to be honest and we had a great time. Since I am more proficient at POTA (this is Roger’s second or maybe third outing) then I could get the callsign easier out of the pile up and Roger could confirm it when he sent the signal report. Then we would hand off the microphone and the other person would confirm the second signal report and would either QRZ or call CQ and with the next contact completion, the other person would be the one to call for a hunter or call CQ and it simply went back and fourth like this the whole activation.
I really need to wipe the coffee off of my seat! LOL! I didn’t even know I had spilled it… I will get that taken care of tomorrow. Here is my bread and butter antenna for truck ops, the 20 meter hamstick tuned up and running radials for that band. This thing never leaves me wanting when I deploy it. I have always had great performance with hamsticks in general to be honest. That is why I keep them in the truck.
I have said it in the past and I will say it again today. These Harbor Freight (Apache) hard shell cases are amazing for what they cost. They mimic a Pelican brand case almost exactly and even have the weather seal around the lid. I have not tested the flotation aspect of them yet…nor do I plan to come to think of it… But they look like they should float like a Pelican case says it will. This case is the Apache 4800 and they have several sizes to choose from. This one is the next to the smallest one they sell in this style of case.
I have the power cord stored underneath the radio in a cut out for it (not pictured for some dumb reason…) but I can keep the whole kit in one place like this. Al lthe band modules and the radio in one weather proof box is pretty nice if I must say so myself.
Well, our luck didn’t hold out after all and the storm started to actually roll in along with some lightening! So we decided to call it a day while we could still break down the antenna in the dry and pack it up kinda expediently… The photo above is what that kind of operation looks like. HAHA! I just shoved all the hard cases into the back seat so they would be in the dry and called it a day.
I did grab a photo of the sky while I was breaking down the antenna as I was blown away by the clouds ahead of the storm. This is what the iPhone captured and honestly it was even more impressive in person. It was sprinkling rain by this point so we got everything taken down and stowed in the truck and headed to Roger’s house to have a cup of coffee…
This might not look like much of a call log but it is actually pretty good as we was handing the microphone back and fourth and then we would also take time to chit chat after clearing all the calls and stuff like that. It was a good day for radio and we had a blast even with these few calls in the log. Thanks for following along and I will see you next week!
73
WK4DS ~David
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