Eccentric POTA rigs… | Ham Radio Today

When I choose a radio for POTA, what do I look for? This is something that I get occasionally asked, but I have never really put a lot of thought into sharing until now. So here is what I feel is the perfect POTA radio…for me.

Ten Tec Scout 555 Portable HF Radio

First there is brand. I love the older Ten Tec QRP or portable ham radios a lot. I am biased too but this is the basis of my choosing them. I love the brand and what Jack stood for with his designs. I have a fairly decent collection of older Ten Tec radios and regularly take them to the field for activations, even with their quirks and short comings compared to more modern radios that are available, I still love them. So I would say the reason brand is first is, it is more personal preference to me than anything. Basically, use a brand radio that you like, not one simply because it is the newest or has the best specs (unless this is the radio you like the most also) but choose one you like to use. This will make the activation more fun since you are using a radio you personally like. This actually does matter more than you think it does.

Ten Tec Argonaut 5 Portable HF radio

The next thing I look for is a radio that excels at the kind of modes I prefer to use. I will occasionally use SSB for activations, but not very often. It just seems I need more transmitter power to get the same result I would with CW. I have tried to activate with 10 watts of SSB power and I will be honest, it didn’t go very well for me. “Maybe there is some sort of trick to use that I am not aware of, but I could not get people to answer me on SSB, then I switch over to CW and make 40 contacts in 40 minutes. This is not an anomaly either, this happens often. Well, it happens with CW often and I have all but given up on using SSB at lower power levels because of this. So I also took a long look at the modes I prefer to use and it turns out CW is number one, then FT8 is next, then SSB comes in third. Knowing this, I choose radios that first perform very well in CW. This turns out to also be Ten Tec radios as well as several other smaller rigs on the market. One in particular is the Penntek TR-35 QRP radio. This tiny radio has so much going for it that I was actually sad when the owner decided to retire and close up shop recently. The next radio that fills my “bill of materials” so to speak is the sBitx v4. This radios is a true SDR and uses a Raspberry Pi 4 to drive the radio, this allows for true digital modes to be driven directly from the radio without the need to have an external computer like every other radio on the market at this point. I have successfully used the sBitx to do entire activations on nothing but FT8. This is awesome when band conditions are so poor that even CW is hard to hear. The beauty of digital modes is their ability to work in even poorer conditions than those of CW. You see voice needs the most power and best band conditions to be comprehensible then CW is next with it working with less power and poorer conditions then digital works when you think the band is closed… IF you don’t think I am right, just dial up 15 meters when you think the band is closed at say, 1 hour after sundown in your area and then scroll through the CW portion to hear the crickets while dialing up to 21.074 to hear all the FT8 stations making contacts. This is why I wanted a radio that could do digital modes native inside the radio, I wanted the ability to activate when conditions were that bad and not need a computer to be able to do it. I wanted this ability so bad that I sold my Icom IC705 with matching antenna tuner to fund the sBitx. I have not regretted that decision yet either.

Penntek TR-35 QRP HF radio with accessories.

The next thing to determine what I choose for a radio has been mentioned already. Size. The size of the radio is important as for me, a radio that is a full base station is off the list. This choice is because I don’t want to have to worry with a huge, fragile, and expensive radio in the field where I could drop it, get rain on it, or any number of other things that could destroy a larger radio. Simply mishandling it and breaking off one of the control knobs would be a huge problem and I don’t want that. So I limit myself to smaller and more portable radios because of it. (I transport most of them in hard-shell travel cases to protect them in transport as well)

I like a radio to be no larger than a large CB radio that would be mounted in a vehicle. That is my personal benchmark for size for my POTA ops. I don’t have one mounted currently (although this is in the process of being addressed at this time). So I can sometimes have as many as four radios in the truck with me for POTA operations… LOL I normally try to limit it to only two (a primary machine and a backup rig in case of failure) but I routinely forget and grab a third radio, since one is usually already in the truck. I am traveling currently with the following radios in the truck;

Ten Tec Scout 555
Ten Tec Scout 555 (newly purchased and in testing)
Ten Tec Argonaut 5
sBitx V4

So you can see I am adhering to my “rules” set fourth above with what I use for POTA. These radios also excel at CW (The sBitx works much better since the latest software release, Version 4.3, from the dev team). The list of radios I draw on are as follows:

Ten Tec Scout 555
Ten Tec Argonaut 5 516
Penntek TR-35
sBitx V4

When I look at new radios to add to the system, I will look at the receiver performance as well as the filtering and the CW break-in as well. I prefer to have a radio with good break-in on the keying and all the radios above have wonderful break-in. Some radios that I would like to add to this list would be Kenwood TS480 (this would be my installed mobile rig if I can locate one), another rig that would be awesome to have is the Elecraft KX3 as well as the KX2. Both of these radios are wonderful machines and I would love to add either one of them to my collection. Finally, the only other radio I would like to get my hands on would be the Chinese radio, the BG2FX radios model FX-4CR. This tiny radios is literally packed with features and capabilities and would be an awesome addition to the armada of rigs I currently have. (Spoiler alert: KV9L has one and I plan to write about it at some point)

HF Signals sBitx SDR HF Portable Radio

Each of these perspective radios has something that the others do not and brings a feature or features to the table that makes them a great field radio. The Ten Tec Scout has 50 watts of transmitter power for days when I need a little more energy to get the signal out. The Ten Tec Argonaut 5 has incredible CW operation and filtering and is a joy to use. The Penntek TR-35 is the most portable and lightest weight rig in the arsenal, it also is completely devoid of menus, which I love. The HF Signals sBitx has FT8 native in the radio, so I can access that mode by simply using this radio. No computer needed to activate. This is not to say that I will only add a radio if it has some unique feature the others don’t posses, but this is what I have chosen these radios for at this time. I am always on the lookout for another rig to help me get those calls in the log…

Till then though, the radios in the first list are what I will use. I will be honest though, as for what I am doing in the POTA parks, these radios works perfectly well for what I do.

What do you think is a good POTA rig? What is your favorite radio to activate with? Let me know in the comments and till I see you again POTA ON!

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ham radio pota cw pota radio portable hf transceiver ft8 ssb ten tec sbitx penntek

David WK4DS