WK4DS Amateur Radio Blog
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Activating with the TenTec Scout 555 after a 2 month hiatus!
When you love CW, you tend to migrate to certain kinds of radios. I migrated to TenTec and Elecraft rigs mostly, with a few smaller radios thrown in for good measure. I love TenTec radios for CW operation as they seem to have been tailor made for the mode. They work well as SSB machines too, but they REALLY shine on CW. Since we all know this about me, it is a given that if I want to activate with a simple radio that isn’t a lot of fuss, that I will choose the Scout 555 or mt Argonaut 5 over about anything else in the shack.
When you love CW, you tend to migrate to certain kinds of radios. I migrated to TenTec and Elecraft rigs mostly, with a few smaller radios thrown in for good measure. I love TenTec radios for CW operation as they seem to have been tailor made for the mode. They work well as SSB machines too, but they REALLY shine on CW. Since we all know this about me, it is a given that if I want to activate with a simple radio that isn’t a lot of fuss, that I will choose the Scout 555 or mt Argonaut 5 over about anything else in the shack.
TenTec Scout 555 ham radio running cw on 20 meters
Setting up a POTA station at a local state park
When people start out activating a park in POTA, they tend to want to go to a local park first to get the bugs out of their kit. I am no different here. The only real exception is that I love going back to this park over and over. Back to the subject at hand though, I normally setup in a similar manner every time I go to a park. It usually goes something like this.
Find a spot that I can back into the parking space since my antenna mount is built for my receiver hitch on my truck and I prefer to lay ground radials so I don’t want people running over them when they drive by.
Once backed into the space, I will deploy the antenna first. I do this for a couple of reasons. First is that I want to get it up as fast as possible to avoid rain if it is imminent. Second I will spend some time tinkering with the antenna system to see what it does on the nanoVNA and this is kind of fun to me by itself. Antenna theory is fascinating and I love looking at how these devices work. Once I have the vertical up, radials deployed and the coax ran to the truck cab, I move on to the next step.
Tune the antenna to the band I am going to use. This seems obvious, but I have forgotten to do it in the past and it doesn’t work well unless I do it… I use the nanoVNA and I will usually tune the vertical first by collapsing it till I am close to the desired frequency, then I will move the radials around till I have the best SWR possible with the system I have deployed. Usually this lands me between 1.1 and 1.5:1 SWR at the base of the antenna.
Get out the radio and deploy it in the front passenger seat of the truck like you see in the photo above. I use the storage case for the radio as a table to sit it on. This works really well. I keep the keyer and cables for everything in the case with the radio. This even includes the earbuds I use with it. The only thing not in the case with the radio is the Begali Traveler key as it lives in a case of its own.
Setup the computer to log with (if I brought it) or get out the pens and notebook. Go ahead and write all the pertinent data in the log or computer before I start calling CQ.
Spot my activation on the POTA website before calling CQ as well. This has turned into a mess for me in the past to be honest so I do this step before calling QRL too. I want the whole system to be primed prior to starting the activation proper.
Call QRL and find a clear frequency before launching into calling CQ. This is a big deal to me and a step I make a deliberate effort to do so I don’t walk on someones QSO that I cant hear immediately.
Once all of this is done, which takes only a few minutes in reality, I start calling CQ and get going. Now I also understand that my spot and my actual operating frequency might differ due to people being on a frequency that I chose to start with, but this isnt too big of a problem as the RBN will usually update it pretty quickly once I start calling CQ.
Tuning the antenna for use on a band.
As you can see in the above photo, I have already tuned the antenna for use on the 17 meter band. It is centered on the CW portion of the band and I have also tuned the radials to get the lowest SWR possible with the setup like it is. With it like this, I think I am going to use this plot to figure the inductance and capacitance on the Smith chart to see what it would take to get it to 50 ohms resistive or as close as possible to that. This is why I use the nanoVNA too. You can see the plot of SWR versus time here on a portion of the radio spectrum of my choosing. This time I chose 17mHz to 19mHz and the marker is set to 18.080mHz for my point of reference. With it set like it is, I can also see it is at 48.05 ohms of impedance and it is capacitive 440pF as well. I can take this data directly into the Smith chart and calculate the needed components easily.
This is the setup I use currently. I find it easier to use this small jumper than trying to read the nanoVNA directly connected to the base of the antenna. The sun makes it very hard to read this device and adding the short jumper allows me to put it in the shade. Also, just look at how small this instrument is compared to regular antenna analyzers… That one thing in itself makes it a winner in my book.
The procedure for tuning goes a little like this. I will first get the antenna put together. This whip is long enough that it will tune to about 12 mHz if fully extended. This is good as it will allow me to shorten it to 20 meters by simply collapsing a few sections. Then when it gets close, I will pull down the bottom section a little at a time till the curve looks like what you see above on t he nanoVNA. I try to get my rough tune by shortening the top first as those sections are smaller in diameter and doing this will allow for the passband to be the widest possible. I can usually get the whole CW portion of the band this way on everything except 80 meters which has a huge area for CW… also this vertical is woefully short for that band anyway…but that is a different conversation.
The operating position for POTA
The truck will usually look like this when it is up and operational. I really like operating out of my truck, it is so simple for me now that I have the system dialed in. POTA can look like a lot of things and I find it interesting how each one of us comes up with a unique setup for our uses. I prefer to setup in my truck for a couple of reasons. The main one is that in the summer, I can run the AC and keep cool! The second one is that I can access my truck power as I have a diesel and that means I have two batteries in the truck. I dont run over about 40 watts with any of my POTA rigs so this never depletes the batteries even when I setup for several hours. Plus I can simply crank the truck to recharge the batteries too… win win.
This is the operating position for this day. It looks like this on most days as it is the fastest way for me to get on the air with my POTA rigs. You have the Dell Inspiron computer running Linux Open Mandriva, a Hamgadgets Keyer, the Begali Traveler CW paddle, and the TenTec Scout 555 portable HF radio. This is a solid rig for someone who wants to run SSB or CW and maybe could get this to work with an external sound card for some of the digital modes too. My friend, Roger KG4WHI, has gotten a Scout to do FT8 so i know it is possible.
This was the last band I operated on today. I started on 20 meters, made a dozen or so contacts then moved to 17 meters where I made probably 16 more and then I finally finished with me making 2 on 15 meters if memory serves me right. It wasn’t many, but I was able to get a couple in the log on 15 meters as well. Shoot I was even able to get a Spaniard in the log today. They were weak but I was able to get decent copy on them. It is always a good day when you can add DX to the log on a POTA activation in the USA. You can also see something else in this photo. This is how low I hold the volume when I operate a radio on CW. You want the volume just above the noise floor. This allows you to hear stations that would normally be impossible if the volume was turned up just a little more than this. It is a phenomenon that I learned a long time ago and it is real. It works on any radio too.but you have to wear good headphones for it to work.
All in all it was a great day with 30 contacts in the log from all over the country and one from the EU. I decided to break the system down as a storm front started to roll in so I would not have to do it in the rain… haha. This turned out to be accurate as it started raining cats and dogs right after I left the park too. That was a close one…
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Till next time, I hope you have favorable conditions and the DX is calling! POTA on and 73!
David
WK4DS