Unexpected calls can sneak into your log with POTA
Today was like most other days at US-0716 Chickamauga Battlefield (Tennessee side), a little on the warm side, sunny and the bands were pretty active…
Now mind you, I decided to go to Chickamauga Battlefield, instead of Cloudland Canyon today, with me needing only one more activation to get 200 activations at Cloudland Canyon. But, I really like activating Chickamauga battlefield as well so off we go… When I got there, it was the usual space on the side of the road for my operating position, and I started to set up the vertical antenna with the two usual radials. I also decided to start on 20 meters and get my activation secured using Morse code on that band. It was a good idea too because something really interesting happened on 20 meters that normally does not happen to me while operating CW on that band. More on that in a minute though…
I used the telescoping 213” vertical antenna from Wolf River Coils. This antenna is pretty easy to tune since you simply telescope it in and out until it matches your frequency of use. I use the nano-VNA to measure the band pass and the SWR plot for simplicity. The nano-VNA really is a wonderful and very powerful antenna measuring tool once you learn how to use it for such things.
The next thing I did was to choose my radio. Today I chose the Tentec Scout/555 and I chose the sBitx as the back up radio. (I secretly had planned to do some FT8 with the sBitx after doing CW with the scout, but I never got around to doing that as the scout was really bringing in the signals). The Scout is a cool old radio with the quirky design of having to remove and install band “modules” to change bands. It has modules to cover all the HF bands and I wonder if it could be modified to work on 6 meters too with a home-brew band module…hmmm.
The next thing you will notice is that I only got out three band modules for the Scout today, hold that thought. I also chose to use the Begali Traveler CW paddle along with my Hamgadgets pico-keyer as well. This setup works exceptionally well for portable operations when using the Tentec radios. You see, Tentec radios do not have internal memory keyers built into them. So you must come up with your own way of CW keying from memories if you wish to use memory keyer functionality.
The reason I only got out three band modules was I did not have time to actually explore a large quantity of bands and, to be honest, I only used two of the three modules you see in the photos. I never did use the 15 meter band module at all.
Well, with the radio set up and ready to go I decided to start on 20 meters CW and look around to see if I could hunt anyone before I started my own frequency activation. Well, I had lackluster results with this idea, as I only worked one contact by hunting before setting up on a frequency and calling CQ. This wasn’t a huge problem as the other stations hunting usually have more output power, and better antennas so my signal was most likely very weak into the other activators radios today.
So after dialing around on the bands for a few minutes, I decided to just go ahead and set up on a frequency and start calling CQ. Well this is where things started to change as I proceeded to work quite a few contacts on 14.055 MHz before deciding to go to 17 meters. Understand this too, one of those was a very interesting contact with a call sign prefix that I don’t normally get to hear. You see, I started getting a call that was down in the noise. It’s very weak and I played with my radios filter a little bit, turned the volume up and down, had them repeat their call numerous times. Finally… up out of the noise came Juliet Alpha 9 Kilo Romeo Oscar… Yes, that is a JAPANESE call sign coming into my little POTA radio on the side of Lookout Mountain, with a somewhat OK antenna on the back of my pick up truck!
To say he was a weak signal was an understatement. We gave each other very low signal reports. I sent him a 339 signal report and he sent back a 329 to me. As you can see that was going a long way with a simple little radio. QRZ.com says it is over 6700 miles from me to him and that is awesome! Now to be fair, I was running about 40 to 45 watts into the coax. I am not certain how much output it has at that voltage and I also know that I turned my Scout down a little so as to not stress the finals as hard too. So, the 1000 miles per watt thing is laughable with this contact, but it was still awesome to hear him come up out of the noise and then me to get confirmation in the log of him too. Just a great moment in an amazing event.
I have really moved into the 21st century too by using a notebook computer to log with. I kinda enjoy using the computer to log now that I have figured it out a little bit. It is pretty easy to work with once you get the hang of it, you just don’t have scratch notes to look at if you are getting partial info and your wanting to piece it together over a few tries… I could open a text document I guess, but that kinda defeats the whole logging in real time aspect…or maybe it doesn’t and I am over thinking it…like I normally do. All that to say, I really like using the logging computer in the field as I am done keying it into the computer right then! I can export the ADIF file to the Documents folder. Then once I get back home, I log into the web and upload it right then. Super easy compared to what I was doing…
Once I got finished working 20 meters, I moved up to 17 meters to see what I could find there. The antenna REALLY likes the 17 meter band with these two radials too as the SWR fell to almost perfect on this band. I am not sure what it is about this setup that works so well here, but it really does work. Right after I got setup on 17, I started hearing ANOTHER weak signal down in the noise. 17 was fading pretty good at this point, but all of the sudden, BAM! He comes out of the noise and I hear his call sign. F4ILH! I got Japan and now France too! This is a good day for DX at a POTA park. You can see where he sent a message in his spot on the POTA website where he also noted the band was fading (QSB). It is always interesting to hear far away callsigns when I am at a park. Sometimes I miss the first letter as it wont be an A, N, W, or K since those are the lion’s share of the calls I copy when activating. I will have to ask for a repeat to make sure I heard something else. That is what happened here. I had the 4ILH part, but wasn’t sure about the first letter till the band came back in.
Here is something else that I have started putting into play more frequently. RF chokes on everything. I still have not added them to the power leads, but at some point I think I will. They technically are points on ingress for stray RF so they need them too. The black cable above is the cable to my Pico-keyer and the other is obviously the Common-mode choke for the antenna. I use this on all my POTA rigs. It is made with RG316 and can easily handle the 50 watts that the Scout puts out. It doesn’t even get warm… The reason it is so big is so I can get the full 6 feet of coax wrapped onto the core. I did some testing with it on the nanoVNA and the performance is incredible. This choke has 29 turns of coax and you should see the plots for the HF bands with this thing in play. It stops over 40dB on some bands and I am thinking it gets nearly to 50 on one, if I remember right. I don’t mind the size of the toroid since I am not back-packing this rig, weight is not an issue for me here. If it were, I would probably make a smaller one instead or use the coax by ABR Industries that has the chokes installed on it. (I have one of these and it is awesome).
I do get some looks from the people passing by while setting up the antenna. It is almost comical how they are completely consumed with what I am doing…haha. Anyway, this telescoping whip antenna and these two ground radials have quickly become my goto kit for these parking lot activations. It does occlude 30 and 40 meters which I can normally reach with the ham sticks, but I am not chasing those bands at the moment so I am good. I like running the higher bands when I can and lately they have been in pretty good shape. Shoot, the other day I worked some 10 meter stations from a park, that might not sound like a big deal to you, but for me it is a pretty big deal. With that, I will sign off and get my gear sorted to go to another park and get some contacts! See you soon and 73!
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