I had a goal, confirm an activation with only DX stations…
When I started this activation, I wanted to set some sort of goal to give me a target to shoot at. I went through a couple that I had done in the past. Things like getting 30 QSOs before I ran out of time or 3 per band and mode till I get an activation have worked well as goals in the past. Today I logged into the sBitx first to see what I could hear on 15 meters and it appeared to be open…into Europe! Goal acquired! I would see if the first 10 QSOs into the log could be only DX stations and thereby getting a valid activation with DX only before moving onto the USA stations to see how many I could work. What you see here is me succeeding at that goal!
I also forgot my logging computer too, so it was back to paper logs for the day. I like paper logs for the blog post, but I prefer to log straight to the computer for operating as it eliminates the whole transcription process there by saving me considerable time at the end of the day. This is especially true if I end up with a lot of calls in the log. If you log in real time, then the clock doesn’t need updating and this speeds up the whole process from what I have seen.
Once I had my ten calls in the log, I moved down to the CW portion of the band with the sBitx and worked a few more calls with CW before calling it quits with the sBitx and switching it out with the Ten Tec Scout 555 before jumping on 17 meters for the rest of the time I had to play on the air. You can see the orange hard case that I store the sBitx in that is down in the floor where I swapped out the radios. I love the scout as I can now hear VERY weak signals on it since learning that headphones work so well with these radios.
I also have come to realize that I am going to have to work on this Scout soon as there is a high pitched whine in the audio circuit. If you turn the volume all the way down and are listening to headphones, it is loud… so you have to turn the volume up a little to make it less noticeable and this is also a problem… Anyway, I think a recapping of this radio is in order at some point and also maybe an adjustable low pass audio filter as well since I don’t need anything over about 6khz for SSB or CW and that is all this radio does anyway.
I also picked up an ARGO 556 (not with me on this day) recently and it is in good condition but also needs some attention with the front controls so there will be some maintenance coming for these radios soon. Also I think I have found the perfect mechanical pencil too. That one actually retracts the lead holding tube so it will work in your shirt pocket with damage to the pencil or the pocket. I have went through a couple of different pencils recently to figure this out and to learn what I needed and that Amazon sells them. This is the Rotring Rapid PRO 0.5 pencil and is made in Germany. It works wonderfully well too.
Today saw me at the roadside location of Eagle’s Nest inside Park US-0716 and there is just enough room to setup a solo operation. I also recommend operating from inside the truck as it can be really noisy at this location with all the cars in such close proximity to the operating position. Also today while I was setting up, it really looked like it was going to rain. It even start sprinkling when I was taping up the coax, which put me into a higher gear for the rest of job too! haha, I have went up into the park area here before a few times, but this locations works really well as a quick in-and-out POTA spot when time is of the essence.
You will also see that I used the telescoping vertical today too, I didn’t run all the usual radials this time as I was in a hurry, but rather just one radial and the coax shield also works as a radial too from what i can tell. Since I use that massive common mode choke that I made, I don’t really have a problem with common mode currents coming into the radio and this setup seems to work well like this. SWR on 15 meters was about 1.25:1 and on 17 meter it was even better coming in at around 1.08:1 which works great with my radios… I am not super sure about how well it radiates as at the base of the antenna it is closer to 1.3:1 which is still great, but there is some mismatch in impedance of about 10 to 20 ohms depending on the band.
Sometimes I just look at the gear in amazement. This piece of metal (213” Wolf River Coils Telescoping Vertical Whip Antenna) allowed me to make NUMEROUS contacts with a 20 watt radio 1/3 of the way around the planet! That just boggles my mind to this day. Do you still look at your radio stuff like this or are you jaded to the fact that it is basically magic?
Once I got the radio system setup and tuned, I hopped on the FT8 call frequency and started looking for stations that I could call. That didn’t take long either as the band appeared to be open into Europe really well. I just started calling DX stations that had decently strong signals into my location and waited to see what the reply would be. As you can see in the logbook pages, this got me the minimum ten contacts in a little under an hour so I still had some time left to see what I could land with domestic stations. I simply switched to CW on the sBitx and started looking for a station and pretty soon I had four more calls in the log.
The band was fading pretty badly at this point so I decided to switch radios and move down a band to 17 meters to see what I could scare up there.
I have grown quite fond of these fairly simple radios and love the way they sound on the air. I have heard people complain about the band modules not making good connection, but I have not had that experience. Mine seem to work just fine and they even have good weak signal operation as long as you wear headphones. Also had the Begali Traveler out again as well as the Hamgadgets Pico keyer to send CQ calls with. I have been carrying a spare battery for the keyer lately as it has been about a year on this one and it has to be getting close to the battery’s end of life… It is a simple task to swap them, but I don’t want to change the battery too soon and waste a dollar on the old one not being all the way depleted yet…haha.
Also. this was before I realized I was starting on 20 meters and had to change the band module too…lol.
17 meters was coming in strong. That is a great signal report for a portable radio running 40 watts into a compromise antenna on a car… This was coming to me from Canada too, which told me the band was really open and there just wasn’t a lot of people on the radio on 17 on this day. FT8 was going strong, but there were only a few CW stations at the time I was there.
I did end up making 9 contacts while on 17 meters with the time I had left so that was a win! From the looks of the log, I was skipping over most of the eastern USA and only landing in the upper north east region and the radius tracks pretty well around from that and longer. All in all, it was a great day and I had a great time on the radio too. Oh and it never did really rain…
73
WK4DS