Hex Beam set up at Mr. Grumpy's Crooked Fence Ranch

Don KK4DWC hosted a club fox hunt at his Mr. Grumpy's Crooked Fence Ranch near Southport FL. In addition the NA4RR Hex Beam I bought at the Orlando Hamcation was deployed.

This is actually a pre-test for the upcoming Field Day. Marv KK4DKT and other club members did most of the work. The Rohn 9H50 telescoping mast was supported at the base by the rocket club trailer. It was only extended to about 18 feet.. There were 9 guy wires to angle pieces driven in the ground. Marv headed up the assembly and pushing the mast up. We just used the wires for 20 and 15 meters. The SWR was excellent across those bands. No tweaking or tuner required. It just happened that the bands were terrible I only made one QSO to VA. Bob WB8PAF also made a QSO.. So looking forward to Field Day for a real test. After Field Day the Hex Beam will transition to the Panama City ARC club. Hint they have a nice tower.

Marv and Cody assembling

Bob KK4DIV hooking up the guys

Marv KK4DKT pushing it up.

NA4RR Hex Beam Deployed.

A Tale of Two Hobbies: The Rest of the Story

One of my stories, A Tale of Two Hobbies, ended up on page 25 of the Spring 2013 QRP Quarterly. Also see this post. Here is the rest of the story in John's words:

Greg

I was so impressed with your QRP station from the cotton field,

that I built a mag loop and bought a new Yaesu FT 817nd.

I made my first contact today.

E77DX was 59 at my station and he gave me a 57.

First QRP QSO and I get Bosnia!

Hope the pics come thru ok!

73

John/W8JER

He did a great job on the loop. Here are the pics:

APRS/Fox Go Box

The Byonics TinyTrack 4/GPS-2 will combine with an FT-2500 transceiver  magnetic mount antenna and SLA battery to deploy APRS in someones vehicle very quickly. The Byonics PicCon uses the same interface cable and will support our club fox hunts. I threw in a mic, backup 12V cigarette power cable and a power meter for grins.

Down to Earth Antenna

I had seen a post on Markus KD0JKM's Blog about a grasswire antenna. So why not give it a try. I had some left over ribbon cable to make a 100 ft loop. I used two conductors in parallel. It is easier to handle that way. I laid the loop on the yard directly on the grass. I called a few stations and did not snag them. But I found I had some Reverse Beacon spots.

WZ7I N4KGL 14061.1 CW CQ 9 dB 13 wpm 1631z 28 Apr
AA4VV N4KGL 10113.0 CW CQ 14 dB 13 wpm 1627z 28 Apr

Then I raised the loop using 20 ft poles and make a contact with Wink WA8KOQ in Sevierville TN. Now that was nice because I later setup the loop at about two feet off the ground. I found Wink on the air and he gave me the same 579 and said about the same as first QSO. So I'd say the two foot high loop does pretty good. I got a number of RBN spots for it on 20 and 30 meters and I worked WA2HMB Don in SC on 40 meters. I think this qualifies the two foot high loop to be in my catalog of portable antennas. The grasswire loop is inviting me to get a actual contact.  Markus did make some contacts on his that was six inches above the ground. I could see using Reverse Beacon Network as a great tool to experiment with grasswire antennas. I can imagine some emergency scenarios that you have to make do with no supports. I read that in WW1 if the antenna supports were destroyed  they could still communicate with antennas on the ground.

Rapidly Deployable Amateur Radio (RaDAR) Challenge!

Are you interested in portable/mobile/pedestrian mobile or emcomm operations? If you are see the RaDAR Challenge rules on the RaDAR-America Blog, setup by Marcus KD0JKM. Also look for the Google+ community Rapidly Deployable Amateur Radio (RaDAR). The community is for sharing RaDAR ideas and photos but access is not required to participate in the challenge.

Good Luck and Have Fun!

Greg N4KGL

And now for an Antenna you will really like!

My friends Marv KK4DKT and Phil KK4DWI have started using Slinky dipoles for portable ops. I had purchased a Slinky antenna off of Ebay a long while back and never used it. It was one Slinky instead of two.

So having Slinky envy, I have tried a Slinky vertical. The Slinky is stretched over sixteen feet of military fiberglass mast. This is supported by the hitch mount of the truck. I used an existing counterpoise made of ribbon cable with quarter wave conductors for 40. 30, 20 and 17 meters. The resonance seems to be about 6.6 MHz. It tuned on 40 meters but did not tune well on 20. So to make this versatile I added my Balun Designs 9 to 1 Unun in conjunction with the KX3 internal tuner.  Now it tunes 40 meters through 10 meters.

Next, I did a quick test to see if it works. I snagged the International Marconi Day station KM1CC on 17 meters. Then I had a good QSO on 30 meters with WA8KOQ. Now his antenna was an eleven foot gutter and he was S9. I got a S7 with my 5 watts. So they say you can tune bedsprings, a gutter, or a Slinky I suppose.

This configuration would be good enough to work out of a parking lot without much of a profile. So perhaps I'll try it for lunch break ops. I could see running a longer coax to the back seat for inclement weather.

Sandy Point Portable Ops

After the RaDAR ops on April 6th and the weather being nice I could not resist returning to St. Andrew's State Park on Friday April 12th. I wanted to go to the Sandy Point area of the park because it is surrounded by salt water in the most directions. In RaDAR fashion I proceeded to walk 1.3.km to the point with my backpack, chair, table and short pole. I setup the KX3 and Alexloop and decided to try 17 meters. I chose 18.132 SSB and was able to CQ and hold the frequency for a little over an hour. QSOs included OH, TX, NJ, VA, MA and TX again. The last QSO was N5SKH who was also using a KX3. The ten watts did the job with reports from S5 to S9. I'd say the saltwater was a plus. The traffic was mostly fishermen and they wanted to know if the loop had any influence on the fish. I am afraid not, but the right net on the loop might come in handy for landing the big one Hi Hi!

Sandy Point

The pack-up

The KX3 and Alexloop setup

My ship came in!