I have a Penntek TR-35 QRP radio and it keeps growing...

So in this installment of how do you make a tiny, compact QRP radio MUCH bigger, I set out to add an S meter to the system! Now were talking!… or maybe more accurately were using CW … since it is a CW only radio. Anyway, I have been wanting an S meter for this little radio for a long time and then when the ham who invented this radio came out with the next generation (TR-45L) it had an S meter!

Pictured above is the new S meter and beside it is the power pack/speaker assembly, and in front of that is the Penntek TR-35 radio.

Now to be fair, I do have this radio kitted so that I can travel with it very efficiently. I have a kit that has everything I need, but nothing in the way of “frills” and this kit works great. It is small enough to pack in my carry-on bag and even has a power pack too. (Not the one pictured in the blog post but a smaller AA battery tray that holds 10 batteries.)

When I set out to add the S meter to the kit, I started looking for something small that I might could build directly into the radio housing. When I looked into how the radio is actually built though, this turned out to be less than ideal. You see the radio is one circuit board and it is connected to the front panel with ALL of those switches and knobs! Who wants to do all that work for a simple S meter install??? Well, as it turns out I would be that guy. The build to add the S meter as a stand alone part of my little kit was a lot more work than I thought it would be and then there was the trouble shooting and such… lol. Such is life and I now have a really cool, vintage S meter for my tiny station that I am putting together.

The S meter project I chose to build is brilliant to be quite honest. I am not sure who designed it first but I found the schematic on SeekIC.com and proceeded to build it based on this print, substituting parts as I needed due to what I had at hand. Since I did this, it took some experimenting to get the meter to read like I wanted as the final amplifier stage needed the gain adjusted and since I didn’t have a pot big enough, I had to swap resistors till it worked… but it worked. Sadly, I didn’t document the build at all, nor did I bother to even take photos of the internals for some reason, but suffice it to say that I am happy with the result.

Below is my heavily noted printout of the circuit from SeekIC.com. I initially built it without thinking about what was happening and it worked very poorly. This is my fault as I should have looked at the circuit more closely and realized what was going on and that I was misreading things in several places. The three resistors that have the arrows now have the decimal drawn in them. When I first printed the schematic so I could take it to the shop to build it, the decimal points didn’t show up and this meant I thought these resistors were 10 times larger values that what was supposed to be in these locations. This made for some really strange wave forms and the output only going up to .2mA on the meter with VERY strong signals on the radio… I knew something had to be wrong so I started looking at the circuit and figured I had some trouble from my substitution of the two transistors so I looked there first. That was when I noticed the voltage divider for the base of the 2N2222 (this is what I used instead of the 2N4401) was way off for a simple emitter follower amplifier. Then I really looked at the print and realized the number spacing was different on some of the resistors. Like the 15K and the “16K” which after looking more closely was actually a 1.5K… Then I went around the print and found two more like this realizing that I had this thing setup to fail right out of the chute. Back to the shop, modify the resisitor values in these locations and try it again.

That fixed the low output part, in fact, now I had a lot of output, ALOT! So I once again looked at the amplifier stage and decided to lower the gain on this amplifier from 12 down to 2.18 and see what happens. This worked, but I did overshoot the target a little so I went back and changed it to a gain of 4.3 by using a 560 ohm resistor on the emitter of the 2N2222. This seems about perfect for this little setup now with really strong signals giving full scale deflection but most running in the middle of the scale.

Also of note is that this is a vintage Westinghouse panel meter that reads up to 1mA… So this meter doesn’t load the circuit hardly at all. That was the main reason I chose it. Enough with the new S meter project though, let’s go to a park and put it on the air!

Today I went to Cloudland Canyon (K-2169) and setup by the canyon at my favorite table when the weather is nice. Then I strung up my Reliance Antenna 40m EFHW and connected it to my radio with a piece of ABR Industries coax. Before hoping on the air though, I put another of my recent projects to use, the QRP Guys SWR/Wattmeter kit. I built out the small kit for it with a water tight storage box, a small BNC coax jumper and the instructions should I need them for some reason. It runs on a simple coin cell and works like a charm. It is a great kit if you are looking for something that will handle up to 10 watts like I was.

This thing is a breeze to put together, even the little toroid transformer was pretty easy to build actually. So don’t let “winding a toroid” hold you back, it isn’t that tough to do and the reward is totally worth it.

I checked the antenna and it had less than 1.5:1 SWR on 40, 20 AND 17 meters! I was stoked to see 17 meters was also good to go. This must be something to do with the 20 meter bandwidth, I should have taken the nanoVNA with me to the table (it was in the truck) but I didn’t want to spend a bunch of time on it. I wanted to get on the air and make some contacts!

I have really come to love these cable built by ABR Industries out of Texas. They make all sorts of cabling, but for me, these with the common mode choke built into the cable is a god send. It allows me to simply put up the antenna without worry of RF getting back into the radio and causing me problems from my… less than perfect… antenna installations. When activating POTA parks there is not always a perfect place to install an antenna so you end up with all sorts of stuff on the air and it is possible to have poorly matched impedances on your antennas. The ferrite beads help keep this problem to a minimum.

This little antenna is actually quite long. Approximately 65’ (give or take as I don’t remember right off) and I strung it up into the tree in the photo below. I am pointing out the location of the end where it went to the tree from where I threw my line. It also started at the “radio end” about 15’ off the ground as I strung it over a tree limb at the table to get it off the ground. This puts the whole antenna elevated above the grade somewhat and I want to say it helps as you can see by the logbook below.

60 contacts in one outing, QRP, with decent band conditions will fill your heart with joy. This was a fun afternoon and I plan to do it again soon.

72

WK4DS

Quickie CW Activation

Let’s goto Cloudland for a break from troubleshooting a radio. I have been working on this Ten Tec 6 meter FM machine for a week or two at this point and finally redrew the oscillator circuit so I could more easily understand the point of all those varactor diodes…

After studying this for a while I decided to get on the air with a different radio and have some fun with CW. I didn’t have a lot of time so I decided to goto the Sittons Gulch parking area of Cloudland Canyon State Park (US-2169) and setup inside the truck. The parking area was packed on a Friday morning and I almost didn’t get to setup here!!! So much so that the only available space was next to the entrance on the shoulder of the road. You can see how close I was to the gate in the photo below.

Here is a special trick I figured out too. The one radial I cut for 20 meters and then subsequently was broken and twisted back together…(making it short for a resonant antenna on something just higher than 20 meters…). This poor radial sees so much use, I really need to make a new radial wire that is this length but without the broken spot. Another thing is that it also works with my 17 meter antenna too. So one radial works on two antennae!!! Sweet!!!

Today saw me using the Penntek TR-35 QRP CW transceiver and none of the extra widgets I have been using. Headphones are needed since it has no speaker of any kind. Another quirk with this radio is that it is wired from the factory for a mono headphone connection (this is user adjustable by dismantling the radio and changing the connector wiring physically) so I need an adapter to be able to hear the audio in both ears. For DC voltage requirements, I simply plugged into the truck power cable I recently installed and I was off to the races!

If you look at the log sheet, you will notice I started 11 minutes before I made my first contact. This is because I setup on 17 meters to start with and called CQ for ten minutes with zero answers. I finally learned my lesson and moved down to 20 meters where all the hams were located. Things immediately improved and I made quite a few contacts once I made the move.

I hope you have enjoyed this little excursion to my local park and seeing what I do when time is tight and also space is limited. Until next time, get out and get on the air.

72

WK4DS - David

Activating a park in Louisiana was different…

I went to New Orleans for a conference and we stayed one extra day to do some sightseeing. We did a tour in the morning and ate lunch and figured I had time to ride over to a nearby state park and get an activation in before supper. I chose Bayou Segnette State Park (K-2356) as it was only about a 30 minute drive from the B&B we were staying at.

We get there to find a beautiful state park and almost every pavilion was occupied by these huge family reunions! That is fine though as the park is really roomy and there were plenty of picnic tables elsewhere. We looked for a picnic table in the shade of a tree that was keep kind of close to the parking lot so I didnt have to transport my gear very far.

We also decided to come during an apparent heat wave too! The temps easily reaching 99 degrees (37.2C) every day so it was like standing in front of a blow dryer while outside. It was just plain hot… This was the reason I was looking for some shade to setup in, at least we didnt have the sun beating down on me while I worked some contacts.

So I found a table by this abandoned playground. Lol! It really wasn’t abandoned but no kid wanted to touch that stuff with the air temp that high!!! The shade made all the difference though as it was kinda pleasant once you sat there a minute, got a little sweaty and then a breeze would blow.

I had my TR-35 kit in the truck from an activation last week so I got out the throw line and threw it up into this cypress tree. In the photo below you can see the table and I am pointing to the spot where the throw line went over the tree. The antenna didn’t reach into the tree itself so it was a great placement in my book. The wire being fully exposed and not crossing tree branches makes a big difference to me if for no other reason.

This made my wire a sloper running uphill to the southeast. I ran the counterpoise out at about a 90 degree angle to the 41’ wire and connected them to the tuner.

I tuned it up on 17 meters and dial around the band for a minute to find HA3NU booming in and working a fairly deep pile up. I thought about trying to work him for a minute but finally decided to find an open frequency and call CQ instead as I wasn’t sure how much time I would have. Turns out I had about an hour… good call.

I called CQ for about 1 minute and was blown away when I worked SM2SUM in Sweden right out of the gate. Today is going to be a good day…I thought. The very next station was KP4M in Puerto Rico!!! It just keeps getting better!!! I worked a few more on 17 meters and then made the jump to 20 meters (where the scores can really change…)

I worked another 26 people on 20 meters in about a half hour or so, bagging KP4M again on 20! Shoot, I even worked Paul KJ7DT today up in Idaho! The bands were pretty good if you ask me.

I wished I had time and a radio that would cover more bands to be able to get a few more out of it, TenTec Argonaut 5 I’m looking at you buddy... Maybe next time… It was a great day though and I added Louisiana to my states that I have activated!! I hope this motivates you to get out and do some POTA too. Thanks and 72!

July 1 2023 Morning Activation AAR

It was perfect weather and my operating position could not have been better today…

Today started out like any other day… (I have always wanted to start a story like that…lol) I loaded up the radio gear for the day, the Penntek TR-35, a TenTec 277 antenna tuner and a 41’ random wire antenna that I built for my trip to Hawaii last Febuary. (There is a write up about that from back in March if I am right)

I set up the radio today at the canyon rim since I wanted to use a wire antenna and this requires throwing a line up in the trees. I have my favorite picnic table that is right in the middle of the trees and is kinda out of the way of the hikers in the area as well. I throw the line up into the tree and it didnt get very high…uggg… Pull it out and rethrow it, again, and again… FINALLY get it about where I wanted it and ran with it. Not optimal as the antenna was running over some branches at the top but it was arial so I let it ride. I also just tied the throw weight to the line and left it suspended to maintain the tension on the antenna and not have to tie it off. I set the box that I carried my extra widgets in, under the throw line and weight to keep people from accidentally walking into it as it was hard to see and people did occasionally come by. I am pointing to the weight in the photo below…see what I mean?

I bought this Ten Tec Model 277 tuner on Flea-bay for really reasonable money and it is in excellent condition too. I like it as it is made by Ten Tec and it has connections for a coax, balanced line and a random wire antenna on it, this versatility is not on all tuners out there and makes this one really desirable for me. It is a simple design with a tapped coil inductor and two air variable capacitors. The SWR meter was just icing on the cake, I dont use it to tune most of the time, but rather the nanoVNA as it shows the “tune” of the system graphically and makes it easier for me to get done much faster. But what is good about the swr meter is that is the antenna changes or I bump a knob on the tuner or anything like that, it will show me instantly that the system is compromised and needs attention. That is a nice perk to be honest.

I also built out this simple kit for my nanoVNA to keep all the widgets I have accumulated for it, all in one place so I have what ever I need when I use it. This makes operating with the VNA a breeze. The yellow case was something I picked up at a hamfest from Gigaparts for cheap and it works perfectly for this job.

Here is a look at the antenna “kit” that I have put together. i learned a while back that it is simpler to find the things you want if you label them clearly. Hence the flagged counter poise and radiator. Also shown are the throw weight I made in the machine shop and the arborist 2mm throw line I also picked up at Gigaparts in Huntsville AL.

Here is the star of the show for the day, the Penntek TR-35 amateur radio. This radio is CW only and has a strong output setup that is pretty much impossible to damage with several temperature and current over protection circuits built into it. I have made a metric ton of contacts on this radio and today was no exception. Although the log sheet is light on quantity, the ones I did get are awesome! I even got an email from WA6YPE showing me his QRP rig that he called me with using a mag loop antenna in UTAH!!! I was also QRP at 5 watts going to him too. When the bands are “on” it doesnt take a lot of transmitter power to go a long way.

I also made another small goal for this day, I was able to make at least one contact on each band the radio is built to use. It is a personal little goal when I have a tunable antenna like this wire with me. If I am using the hamsticks, I can also do it then but it is more work on my part and a lot of the time I dont want to put out the radials for the other bands and will just use 20 and 40 only since they share radials… lol.

Also of note is that I worked DX for the 2nd day in a row that was not Canada (which I still consider DX for me). Today I was dialing aroudn on 17 meters and found XE1CT calling CQ and he was booming into my radio, so I thought he might just be able to hear me too. I threw my call sign to him and he came right back! Even though it is just Mexico which is actually no further than states like Arizona or Idaho, it still makes me happy to work them. There is just something about making contact with a foreign country that is special for me since I normally only activate with QRP power only.

If you think activating a park is hard, dont let it stop you, it is really fun. I have literally only had one outing where I didnt get the activation and that was my fault since I setup on a little used band, with a QRP radio, on a day when the bands were terrible and did so 45 minutes before the end of the UTC day too. Chalk it up to “giving it a shot” and it was still fun. Most of the time if you will just hop on 20 meters right quick, you can get the activation required 10 QSOs out of the way and then if you want to try to get contacts on other bands or modes or what have you, then at least you know you have the activation in the bag first. Simple tactic but it works perfectly for me.

Some days I am bolder and will set up shop on 17 meters and dig out the activation there before.I go elsewhere, but if I am pushed for time or something like bad band conditions, 20 meters is my goto solution. It pretty much always gets my activation. Just a tidbit if your thinking about activating a park sometime and have not done it yet…

Quickie Activation with some cool DX!

When I started this activation, I had no idea how the bands would act, there has been a lot of QSB lately so it is kinda a crap shoot. I only had about an hour so I figured I would try to get a few contacts… little did I know I was about to have a lot of fun!

God showed his power to me today when I got on 17 meters and started calling CQ. I had gotten my first contact pretty fast and it was another activator, so I got a Park to Park right out of the chute. Then I started hearing this station just up the band from me… I dialed up and found it was a fellow down in Turks and Caicos! I waited till he called CQ and threw my call back to him…and he HEARD IT!!! DX in the log and I am just getting started!!! Woohoo! Then the VERY NEXT QSO was Sweden calling me!!! For me, this is cool dx, as I dont get to work other countries very often, especially with a QRP radio…

If you look close (right beside the key), you can see where I pieced together the call sign for the VP5 call sign. He was going faster than I normally can copy so I grab letters one or two at a time till I build the whole call. Then I listen for the exchange and at that point I am ready to try to call them. I think they were probably running about 25 WPM of maybe just a little faster, and I normally operate at around 18 to 20 WPM…

On this day I used my Penntek TR-35 radio on the bed cover of the truck. This is a fun operating position as I get to interact with other people in the park some as well. On this day, there was a family that wanted to know what all the wires were about so I took a short break and explained what I was doing to them. This is why there is a 10 minute period between contacts 3&4 in the logbook.

Another point about this common mode choke on the TR-35, it is the perfect size to hold up the radio when operating like this… lol. It does look “techie” too so it makes the little station look cool in my opinion. Lol.

The radial connection works really well for the multiple setup like I am using here. This is all the radials to cover all four bands the TR-35 has access to, 40, 30, 20 & 17 meters. This way I only need to switch the verticals to change bands. It is actually really fast like this and I am debating whether or not to make the multiple antenna mount now…

As noted in a previous blog post, I added an Anderson Powerpole socket to the little module for other things to be able to share the power as well. I don’t need it with this radio but it is nice to have when I run my IC-705 as the antenna tuner has it’s own power cable.

So to wrap things up, you never know when the band will open and you can make a 4500 mile contact with your QRP rig on a hamstick till you hook it up and try. So get your radio out and go play with it somewhere. Until next time…

72

WK4DS

There is something therapeutic about CW and QRP for me.

I really enjoy activating parks when I need some time to myself. I tend to not ask people to go with me but instead just go alone and I think I know why now.

Today was a perfect example is why I figured I would write about it. Today wasn’t particularly stressful but rather just really busy with lots of little tasks needing to be completed all day long. This slowly took its toll on me and I really needed some down time to get myself back in alignment.

A park activation was just the ticket. I find activating a park to be very soothing whether I have a huge pileup or no one answers me for minutes at a time. I also like to go by myself as well as I have concluded that direct human interaction is stressful for me and I don’t want that when activating a park. The radio contacts for POTA are rhythmic in nature and give me something to focus on that is low stress. Especially with CW since using CW for me still requires me to think about what I am hearing for now.

Take this operating position above for instance, it is simple yet functional and it is fully immersed in nature. I think this is another reason I like activating parks, it gets to a quiet place away from the busy world around us.

Another thing that is magical about it for me is how I can transmit a simple signal with just a few watts of energy and someone listening on the other side of the continent (and sometimes even other continents) can hear that signal and reply to it. Today was a hamstick kind of day as it is quick to deploy as I only had 45 minutes before the UTC day ended and I needed my “ten QSOs” before that happened.

This 2” pvc pipe makes the perfect hamstick storage tube and holds 5 hamsticks with qd mounts installed just fine. It is actually too long but not by much. It fits in my truck bed…exactly… with no wiggle room so I just use it. Today I simply strung the counterpoise for 20&40 meters and just used those bands since I can usually get an activation pretty quickly with those two bands. So to change from 20 meters to 40 meters I simply unplug one antenna and snap on the other. No tuners needed or anything, just a band change and we are off to the races.

Another thing I like here is the simplicity of the TR-35 radio and how it literally has zero menus. It has everything I need and nothing I don’t. Pure CW goodness at it’s finest… well, it could use 15 meters. Lol.

As can be seen above, the bands were fairly alive today and I was easily able to seal the activation before the UTC day flipped over. Signal reports varied as the bands would fade in and out but were favorable for the most part. It was nice to work so many familiar call signs such as KN1R and WD4DAN and even a few Canadians to boot!

Thanks for following along today and I hope to work you on the air soon. Until then 72

WK4DS

A picnic table activation for a change!

Well, I was beginning to wonder when I could do this again…comfortably. 😂 I have been operating from the truck for so long now, that I felt like I was at a new park when I went to my old favorite picnic table.

So for this “special” event, I wanted to take something out of the ordinary for me. So I used the Penntek TR-35 radio (this doesn’t fit that description but the rest does) and fed it through my vintage Ten Tec antenna tuner to a 65’ random wire with a couple of 10’ counterpoise wires.

To make tuning simple and fast, I use my nanoVNA and simply unplug the BNC from the radio and plug it into the VNA, adjust the tuner for a nice reading on the VNA for the band I want to use and then transfer the coax back to the radio. This way I am not transmitting carriers over the air while I tune and I can visually see what is happening while I tune. It just makes it so easy for me.

Something that I also built for this is the powerpack/speaker unit. This device houses a Bioenno 3aH battery and I installed a couple of speakers as well as a volt meter (that is activated via a push button to prevent battery drain by the meter) and a Anderson powerpole port (added after this activation). I wanted a device that could essentially “complete” the TR-35 sans antenna… It is missing a key of some sort that might just get added a little later. A simple straight key built into it somewhere would be pretty sweet to be honest.

The next thing is how I put up my wire antenna. I first threw a line over this huge tree limb and pulled the wire over it.

Then I threw the line as high into this tree way back here as possible and hauled the wire up about 30’ or so into that tree. It is making a horizontally run wire of sorts and work’s shockingly well. It also keeps the wire out of the way of park goers as well.

All in all, this map shows how well the little TR-35 with a 65’ wire up in the trees worked. I even dialed up some DX on 17m before finishing and worked FY5KE in south America before going QRT and breaking it all back down.

So I look forward to working many more ops at my local park with my little QRP radios in the coming weeks and not being bound to my truck so I dont freeze to death in the process like back in the winter.

72

WK4DS

Today is the day I went roving in POTA parks.

The rover award is when you activate at least 5 parks in one UTC day.

My final location of the day, Booker T Washington State Park K-2933 and it worked wonderfully!

I have been interested in this whole “rover” thing for a while now. So I finally dug into the rules so I would know what is required and laid out a plan. I found 5 parks that I could access easily and set out a route to them and just loaded down the truck with gear in anticipation of needing backup stuff. I didnt need it, but I had it. Like what you see here is three radios. The TR-35 (which is what I used for most of the day), the Icom IC-705, and the Elecraft K1 makes for a strong QRP expedition.

Anyway, so I figure I would start with my local park since I know where the parking lot is and the proximity to the main road is really good. I chose the Sitton Gulch parking lot at the bottom of the mountain because of the main road noted above and the fact that I have had great luck here in the past.

I got the activation, plus a few more contacts than I needed, in about 20 minutes of air time. Not a bad start! Well, I got excited once I cleared the pileup and had the activation in the bag and completely forgot to get a photo of the truck here. I realized it at the next park… If you want to know what that looks like, just read this blog post K-2169 POTA Activation at the very foot of a MOUNTAIN - AAR. It has a few photos of this parking area and I was in that lot.

I wanted to make sure I had enough time to activate each of the five parks AND not leave people calling if at all possible. Since I am using QRP power, this should not be a problem though and I normally dont get more than four or five calling me at once with two being the norm for me. Basically, pile ups are small for me. So I wanted to shave time off of the other parts to leave more time for “ON AIR” activities. Below is a quick photo of the cab of the truck showing how I left the gear when changing parks.

I just left the TR-35 connected and laid it on the dash to where it would not slide off and broke down the antenna by just removing the hamstick and disconnecting the coax. Then I put the yellow mount with the radials still attached in the truck bed ever so carefully and rolled the coax into the back seat and I was off. This made park changes really fast since I was sticking with 20 meters for this trip as I had good confidence that I could get the activations with just that band pretty quickly.

The next stop was the Zahnd WMA, which to be honest, I had never heard of till I started looking at doing a Rover. It is literally next to the road so it was in and out with a cleared little pileup and on I went. Below is what the parking area at the WMA looks like, it is actually really nice for a WMA parking lot. I had the place to myself since nothing is in season right now. Something else of note is that when I was working the early parks, I would cross 10 QSOs and then once I worked all the callers, I would go QRT and move, but once I got K-0716 activated I started getting comfortable with achieving the goal and would call CQ longer. For now though, as you can see below, 10 contacts (and just a few more) and I was off to the next location.

So the next location was about 10 miles down the road. I have activated Otting WMA before so I knew what to expect when I got here. The parking are is also right by the highway (which is why I chose this route to be honest) so access time is minimal.

You will notice I back into the parking location as much as possible to get the antenna out of the way so people and pets do not wander into it while I am transmitting.

Deploying the system involves, backing into a location to get my antenna out of the way and then opening the bed cover, installing the yellow antenna mount, laying the two radials out, then screwing in the radiator. Next I open the rear truck door, grab the coax and plug it into the antenna mount. A couple minutes arranging the cab, while listening to the band for an opening then I spot myself on the website and were off to the races. Below is the info kiosk at Otting, all these WMAs seem to have one now which is nice so I can see if there is a managed hunt or what.

Something else I like about the rover idea is there is a lot of driving in the country here. I passed through the town of Menlo GA between parks 3&4 and stopped to grab a couple of photographs. Some with my camera and some with my phone. Small town America is cool…

So for my next stop, I went to the Chickamauga national military Park, which is K-0716 and set up in the parking lot of what is known as the “tower” by the locals. It is actually known as Wilder tower and is a really common attraction in the park.

I backed into the space, even though they are angled in such a way as to promote pulling into them so this took a minute, but that allowed me to spread my radials in the grass strip between the parking space and the road. I have found that getting the radials out of the way of other people so they don’t trip over them is critical and backing into the parking spaces normally allows this. Another thing of note is do not transmit when there are people that can touch the radials as even at QRP power levels, there is enough RF energy on the radials to shock someone ever so slightly so the smart thing to do is not transmit while people are around your antenna. I had to be very mindful of the other people in the park while I did this particular activation, as I did not set up in my usual spot where there are very few people. In hindsight, I should have just used the usual spot as it is out of the way, and most people do not ever bother going there. Another thing to note is that by this point in the trip, I had gotten good at setting up and breaking down the antenna and radio to move to the next park. I knew exactly what I needed to do to get the radio in a position to where I could just set it out of the way and move to the next location without having to do a bunch of unnecessary, connecting and reconnecting of wires.

Once I got to this park, I realized how much time I still had and I decided to work contacts for a little longer here. I still continued to use 20 meters only because I did not want to get too comfortable with band changes and getting out additional equipment until I got to the fifth park. This park was actually fairly busy with people coming to see the tower, jogging and walking their dogs. Seeing this helped me to decide to keep the extra gear put away as well and figured I would play with the other bands once I got to the last park. I also knew the area at the last park pretty well and knew I would not have to worry about kids and pets getting into my antenna there.

As you can see though, I had a good run of a little pileup and it took me about 35 minutes to clear it. Once it was clear and I took a call from Teresa to sort out some shop problems, I was off to the last park of the day, K-2933. This has been one of my easy parks that if I am in the north east portion of Chattanooga that I can get to and have a nice quiet activation. so I go by there every month or so. I will probably get my repeat offender award for it at some point this summer.

Here is the storage tube I put together out of 2” PVC pipe to keep my growing ham-stick collection from getting damaged when not in use. It was cheap and I didn’t even glue it together, just friction. It fits diagonally in the truck bed with almost not play so it doesn’t roll around at all. Currently I only have 4 ham-sticks in it so I have plenty of room. You can also see the spare radials for the other bands I used here today laying on the ground for band changes. Like a genius, I tuned each band with out the radials for the other bands on the base and to prevent me from having any sort of problems arising from tuned stuff in the area, I just used them like I tuned them. Of course this worked beautifully well, but it did add a little more work. I am going to make the antenna mount to where I can install four ham-sticks at once and since they have such great out of band rejections, the RF for each band should find the right antenna without having to change them out. I just need to put the whole thing together and tune it first.

Mu impromptu sunshade for the Icom IC-705 worked really well.

Another surprise for this trip was that I pressed the Icom IC-705 into service as I have not used it in a while and wanted to play with it some today. I had also brought the Elecraft K1, but just as backup incase the other two radios failed on me…lol. The IC-705 is touch screen technology so it is easy to do all sorts of things like band changes and sending from memory when calling CQ. Plus it has a built in speaker which is nice when there isn’t a lot of noise in the area. Headphones are great when I am alone, but it is hard to explain to a passerby what I am doing if they can not hear the radio too. This is one of the only oughts I have with the Penntek TR-35. It has no internal speaker…

Here is your free tip of the day, most of you probably already know this, but some of you may not. Use colored phasing tape to color code your antenna and matching radials so you know which radials go with each ham-stick or what ever antenna you decide to use. This makes putting the right kit together a simple task instead of frustrating when the SWR is acting strange because you used the wrong radials with the vertical that you have on the mount.

Now as you can see below, I started on 30 meters. I ran into a problem here though, there was some sort of broadband QRM that was spaced in intervals across the whole band space. I finally found that 10.116mhz was fairly quiet and started calling. I got 4 answers before giving up to the QRM and moving to 20 meters where I had a great time free of this pesky QRM that was down on 30 meters. After a solid run of 18 contacts on 20 meters I figured I would give 17 meters a shot before calling it a day. I had somewhere I needed to be later so I had to pack it up by 19:00 UTC. Anyway, I do the band change to 17 meters and start calling. You can see in the log that it took me about 5 minutes to do the band change and get back on the air. This is why I laid all the stuff out like I did. I wanted to make it easy to do till I can get the multi antenna system done. Well I netted another 18 QSOs on 17 before having to go QRT for the day. Total for this park FOURTY in 1 hour and 20 minutes (80 minutes). I could have probably gotten more if I had not messed with the WARC bands and just stuck to 20 meters as it was going crazy. BUT where is the fun in that? I had the activation so why not play on the other bands a little since I have the stuff?

If you see your call in the log and want to swap QSL cards, I only do paper cards and I will respond to all that I get. This was a load of fun and I think next time I will take a helper to help with logging and band changes and stuff, I went solo today and it was … quiet… at times. This makes for a great times if you don’t mind the solitude, but for some it might be a problem. I was busy all day so it didn’t bother me in the slightest. Just be aware of that.

So till next time, get your radio out!!!

72

David WK4DS

A bunch of POTA activating in one day.

The sunspots were being nice to me today with my tiny ham radio and CW key…

The amateur radio of choice for today is the Penntek TR-35

Well I went to a bunch of parks today. It wasn’t planned, I just found myself in the right areas to be able to get to several parks in one day, so Carpe Diem! I found out later that I only needed two more to get a rover award so now it is on! The first level is 5 parks in one day. The goals go up from there to insane numbers of parks. I am convinced that at the peak levels, you have to operate mobile with vehicle mounted antennas. You just dont have time to activate 20, 25 or even 30 parks in a single day otherwise. It takes me ten minutes to get into the park, stopped and just get the antenna deployed then just as much time to break it down. So all that wasted time has to be eliminated. It would have to be a military style operation to be honest, having someone log for you too if you wanted it to go easily, but 5 or ten should be easy enough…right?

Back to what happened today…

I first made a short stop at my local haunt of K-2169 Cloudland canyon state park. Then I spent the mid day with the family and doing some chores. I wanted to get in an activation before I went to father/daughter brunch and was able to do that with ease. Unfortunately, I had to leave the activation before I wanted to, as there was a decent pile up going and I really don’t like to leave anyone hanging…but the kiddo was waiting for me so off I went.

This parking lot is literally at the bottom of the mountain.

I ended up at the foot of the mountain this time as it saved me a solid 20 minutes of driving by not going to the top of the mountain. This allowed me to stay on the air a little longer and added about 15 QSOs to the log because of it. Signals were strong even with the mountain right beside me. I was honestly impressed with how strong a lot of the ops were on my ham-stick. I used 20 meters as I wanted to be sure to secure the activation in the time frame I had, which was only about 30 minutes from the time I powered the radio on. This is why I didn’t goto the top of the mountain, the drive up there would have eaten all the operating time. As you can see though, the inbound signals were strong and I got a lot of good reports back as well. This location isn’t all that bad to be honest as long as there is room to deploy the counterpoise wires.

Later in the day, after brunch with Sierra (KK4RJW), I was near Harrison bay state park so I figured I would try to get another activation before the day drew to a close. (I was also working on a youtube video for my photography channel and wanted somewhere fairly quiet to record it and this sounded like a good spot). During the weekdays these parks are normally ghost towns and I usually have free reign of the place. This is why I like them for recording video content.

The park is home to a really nice marina and boat ramp and I chose to setup in the far corner of the parking lot where the boat trailers are parked. There was plenty of room here for my radials so no one even gave me a second look. I opted for the 17 meter band as I wanted to see what I could do with it and I wasn’t under the time constraints like I was earlier in the day.

I noticed a lot of these trees were blooming at this time too. I think these are called red bud trees, but to be honest, I am not sure. They sure were pretty though. So I thought I would grab a quick photo and add it to the blog for color.

Since I was wanting to record the footage for my video, I stopped calling CQ after I got 15 QSOs in the log. I always like to go over by a couple so that if I find out I copied a bad callsign, I still have enough for an activation. This one went a little slower since I did the whole thing on 17 meters and didn’t bother to change bands during the activation. You see, right now, to change bands involves me going to the rear of the truck and changing whip antennas as well as the counterpoise wires as these are all tuned independently. I will eventually build the mount that holds 2 or three of these at once (maybe all four) and I will retune the radials to work with all of it set up at once. I checked the ham-sticks and they have unreal selectivity with there being only one resonant null on the nanoVNA across the whole spectrum up to 30mhz. There aren’t even any harmonic bands, just the one they are tuned for.

Well on the way back from Harrison bay, I drove right past Booker T Washington state park…so I said to myself “Self, we should activate this one too” and with that I swung the truck around and went back to get 10 more contacts with the TR-35 and my newly minted ham-stick collection. Turns out this was a good call as you guys came in the clutch! Wow! FOURTY QSOs in short order!

I got there and setup near the playground on top of the hill. These are old campsite spaces that the park no longer uses for camping. The parking spaces are still paved and the grill is still at most of them so people still use the sites to do cookouts now. This in turn makes them perfect POTA parking spots as I spoke with the park ranger and he said it was perfectly fine to setup in these spaces and play radio anytime the park is open. As you can see below, it makes for a great location and there is plenty of room for the radials if I back into the space.

The radials dwarf the ham-stick antenna but the sure do work well.

This time I chose the 30 meter band to start with and then changed over to the 20 meter band to finish up as I was getting a lot of calls from this location. Doing the band change is not really that bad but it is slow enough to make you not want to do it a lot. I think the multi mount for the antennas will make this a great all day rig where I will setup for several hours and want all four bands.

Signals at Booker T Washington park were strong today!

I have figured out how to get the radio to rest on the dashboard of the truck so that I can free up more space on the armrest for the logbook. If fits here perfectly and allows me to connect the headphones and key with just the right amount of room on the wires. It also gets the VFO knob out of the way so I don’t bump it and push myself off of frequency (which I have done in the past). It is still in a location that I can access easily though for speed changes, memory access and such.

Below is my “POTA tote” that I was gifted at Christmas last December. It holds all my POTA stuff and a bunch of extra things too. The tote almost has two complete rigs in it at this point there is so much redundant gear in it. But it is convenient and I can just grab it and goto a park as the ham-sticks live in the truck full time now in a pvc storage tube I made for them (see photo below). I keep them, the trailer hitch mount and the radials all in the back of the truck together so they are ready to deploy when I arrive on location. Easy.

After a good little run of QSOs on 30 then another one on 20 meters, I cleared the pile up and called QRT to go find the wife and have some supper. Little did I know at the time, but I was over half way to a Rover accomplishment. I now know that I only needed two more parks to get the first level award in that and I already know which two I am going to use… LOL So next time I will get my 5 in one day.

Thanks for following along on my little CW adventure in ham radio. 72 WK4DS

POTA that turns out really good for QRP radio!

Well, today was an unusual day, so lets set the stage… First we go to church and when we get home, there really isn’t much to do so I decide to run over to my local park and get an activation in during the afternoon. This turns out to be the beginning of an adventure for the next few hours that almost DIDN’T happen!

My N6ARA Tiny Paddle got some use today.

You see it all started at home when I was testing a power cord for my TR-35 radio. I wanted to add a cord to the POTA tote that I was assembling and I found one that looked like a good candidate. So I get the radio out and plug it into my shack power supply to see if the QRP rig would power up properly and it did. It worked perfectly. So then I put the cord in the kit as a permeant addition to the POTA tote. Once this test was complete I got my N6ARA paddle out of the other bag and added it to the kit and then I was off to the park.

There was at least twenty groups on the course this big! So many people were there playing disc golf!

When I arrived at the park, I was in for a surprise! The parking lot was almost full of cars! This parking lot is normally reserved for me and me alone! LOL! I am used to seeing maybe 6 cars on one end of the lot where the beginning of the disc golf course is located but that is all! There were disc golfers everywhere for some sort of tournament. I was worried I would not be able to setup, but as lady luck was on my side, I found a good spot and got the antenna in place.

This is where things take a turn for the worse. I get the antenna setup and hop in the truck to layout the radio gear and find I forgot the actual radio. I had all the support equipment but no radio. It seems when I tested the power cord that I failed to put the actual radio in the POTA tote… I felt totally defeated to be honest and almost just broke it down and was about to give up. So I thought I would call the wife to see if she would help out and she agreed to meet me half way in Trenton and bring it to me. So I laid the antenna assembly on the ground and ran down to Trenton to grab the radio, hoping all along that no one would bother the antenna laying in the grass beside the parking lot.

This saved the activation to be quite honest about it. It added about 15 minutes or so to the time table to drive down to Trenton and back and fortunately, no one bothered the antenna (seems my worries about disc golfers being curious were unfounded) and I was able to get on the air after all.

This is when I found the next problem… There was some sort of contest this weekend on CW that I was unaware of and the band was super crowded. I was starting to think I couldn’t find an open frequency when I landed on 14.068 mhz and no one was there! At least no one was near enough to me for me to hear them… So I waited a few minutes and listen and nothing. I call QRL a couple of times and then get going. This is noted by the “on air” start time and the actual time I started making contacts. I normally don’t wait a full ten minutes, but this time is was probably 6 or 7 minutes and then it took a few calls to get QSOs coming in… I do other admin stuff while I am listening as well, such as getting my POTA spot on the website and positioning my gear in the truck for max comfort and such.

Another reason I didn’t just move to a WARC band was that I only have a hamstick for 20 meters at this time. I plan to pick up a couple more at the Dalton Hamfest in a couple of weeks from the time of writing this blog… I hope they have some! Below you can see the “POTA tote” and my rig for the day, the Penntek TR-35. This is truly one of my favorite radios and would have been the radio I carried to Hawaii had I been able to confirm that my tuned EFHW antennas would stay in tune in varied setups due to terrain… I plan to test this once I get back from the trip, but we leave in the morning as of this writing and I didn’t have time to test the idea properly prior to leaving.

The log sheet speaks for itself. There is a number of Canadian hams this time as well as the one to Italy as well. I couldn’t believe how many calls I got in such a short time. This was an amazing activation for me and to think, I almost gave up when I failed to bring the radio… Then as fast as it started, it abruptly stopped. When the last entry was written down I called CQ probably 5 more times with no replies so I called QRT and packed up. What an afternoon!!! This just goes to show that 5 watts has the magic if you get on the right band at the right time!

So if your thinking that you wont have a good time with your radio and there is no sense in even setting up, just remember this blog post and how I even forgot the darned radio!!! So get out there and warm up that atmosphere!!!

72 de WK4DS

POTA in the rain, it is still fun if you go prepared for it.

If you knew that I had already written this post once already…my rapid fire mouse press killed the first one. So here goes again…

Looking at this now, I look like an old wet hen in this photo…lol.

This day started off with a lot of rain and a ton of fog at the top of the mountain. I got to the location and found it to be thoroughly inundated with water and it actively raining making it even soggier…if that is even a word. Once I found the parking space I like… right smack dab in the middle of the parking lot, I proceeded to setup my antenna.

The antenna is the 20 meter hamstick but since it was raining so much I added my drip proofing kit to it with the empty peanut pack. This peanut pack is metal foil so it is probably interacting with the antenna somehow, but I don’t know if it is as I have not checked yet…

Even with the rain, setup is fast and the system just plain works. Even with it slightly detuned, I still was able to work a little over 40 stations in about an hour. This antenna (a hamstick) with tuned radials just works really well, even with QRP power levels. It takes about 3 or 4 minutes to screw the sections together and spread out the radials and then it is back into the dry truck for the rest of the operations.

Here we have one of the counter weights that holds my radials taught without having to use ground stakes or ropes or anything. Also of note is that it is raining so much that the grass is literally flooded around the truck with a couple of inches of standing water in the grass. I was hoping this would help my antenna, and it may have, but it being detuned hurt me more I am sure…

Just lay the radial in the water, it will be fine…

As you can see here I tested the system once I got into the truck to see what the center of the SWR null was and is it at 13.9mhz, which is about 150khz below where I set it when I first tuned the antenna. Once it stops raining, I plan to have a session where I hook up the antenna and check it again, and probably retune it with new radials and possible tune it to 14.1mhz to get the antenna closer when deployed wet.

The radio of choice for today’s adventure is the Penntek TR-35. I chose it because of the compact size and the fact that it is just plain fun to use. The compact size allows me to set everything up on the console of my front seat in the truck and I still have room to log. That is a big perk of this radio, it is so small that it literally just sits in the corner of the space out of the way and it has a dedicated knob for everything I like to change while operating. What a dream little radio… I cant wait to get a shot at operating the TR-45L at some point, that is gonna be sweet.

My mobile POTA setup currently, as of 2022.

Another big deal about this radio is this feature pictured below, this is the menu for the memory keyer. Yes, it has two memories and that is the perfect amount to have for an activation. More would be better, but two gets me a CQ memory and a closing memory. By having these memories I can do some house keeping between contacts at times like add times or park numbers and such to the logbook. This is super helpful when there is a pile up as I like to document time, band, call, and signal report. This is just my preference though and is not needed for POTA, but it does help when someone sends me a QSL card as I can confirm the contact properly.

The take away from this activation is that you need to check your resonant antennas if you plan to operate in inclement weather as they can change and your radio could see high SWR and not get out very well or worse, it could be damaged from excessive SWR… So I like to check the SWR occasionally now to make sure things have not changed and if they have, that they are still within operational parameters so I can activate with out fear of damaging my radio. All in all it was a great day as I netted 42 contacts in about an hour and this is a great trip for me. I operate alone almost exclusively so I have to do everything myself, this is why I paper log while activating and then I enter the log into the HAMRS app once I get home. I have a wireless Bluetooth keyboard that I use with my iPhone and it goes really fast that way. Thanks for taking the time to read my blog and please hit the like button if you liked it.

Get out there and get on the air!

David

WK4DS

72

K-2169 POTA Activation at the very foot of a MOUNTAIN - AAR

So the last two days have been really strange. I tried to activate K-2169 last night to see if I could pull off a late shift activation and it was a miserable failure, zero contacts in 30 minutes straight of sending CQ, literally no replies at all.

The night before when I literally got zero contacts.

I actually swapped out the radio for a spare (the IC-705), it showed activity in the waterfall but no one was able to hear me. I was on top of the mountain at this point too. So I packed up and came back home having had zero luck. You win some, you lose some…

The next day was different though. I only had about an hour to setup, activate and breakdown as we had “family activities” to do later. So I figured this was the chance to test another location I had been looking at for awhile now. The Sitton’s Gulch Trail Head is at the bottom of the canyon and the parking lot is literally buttressed against the bottom of the mountain proper.

To compound the problems, I didn’t want to put my radials out in the way of others if they wanted to park next to me as this lot tends to fill up pretty quick in nice weather. So I ran them both off to the drivers side of the truck to keep them out of the way.

Welcome to the literal foot of Lookout mountain.

One of the counter poise radials is actually draped over the corner of the truck but it didn’t seem to cause a problem with propagation from what I can tell. The mountain is on the south side of the parking lot proper so I figured I wouldn’t hear anything to the south at all, but I was surprised to see the map showing some stations on the dark side of the operation position, these guys must have incredible stations to hear my QRP signal into a compromised antenna with a literal mountain blocking our signals! My hat goes off to these guys!

The bulk of the contacts are from a predictable direction though, since Lookout mtn is part of the Appalachian mountain chain, most of the contacts are to the north east which is the direction that is clear of the mountain. It has a decent clearing to the west as well from this location as Sand mtn is about 2 miles away and it is fairly short too, only about 700 feet tall, so I was able to get out to Kansas and Minnesota pretty easy too. As you can see in the photos, I am in the forest surrounded by trees too, so I am happy with my little activation considering all the limitations imposed on it today.

The radio for today’s adventure is the Penntek TR-35 and the more I use it, the better I like it. The RIT is for CW sidetone adjustment. This was a trick I found in a forum post and thought it was really clever. If the other station is low on tone, turn the RIT down till they sound like you want, if they are high turn it up till they sound good to you, it works REALLY well and I wished I could remember the HAM that gave me this idea as I would credit them with it…if they do I will edit the post and add it here. I am running 5 watts on 20 meters today because I am using the “Truck-tenna” for the sake of time.

When I got on the air to start with, I was the only POTA station on 20 meters, and there was only one other when I went QRT an half hour later. The band was open too as the RBN (Reverse Beacon Network) was spotting me regularly.

Those are not outhouses in the photo. This area is home to a local cave system called Case Cave and those are changing rooms for the cavers when they come out of the cave. It is a really huge cave system and if you want to explore it, you need to contact the park and line up a time when someone with the key, will meet you and open it for you, it is locked to protect the uninitiated from getting themselves killed…

I am pretty sure I have not shown the counter poise weights on the wires really well yet. This is a simple system that works super well for keeping the radials extended and not having to drive in stakes to do it, I simply straighten the wire at the end when it is taught and walk away, it is that simple, the wire keeper is simply a piece of plastic with three holes drilled in it to thread the speaker wire through, it doesn’t slip at all. The weights run about 2 pounds or so and that seems to be plenty to keep a 16’ radial in place so far. I have not tried heavy winds yet, so the jury is out on that one.

Not sure what is going on here, this is the hiking trail and just below the camera is a huge gate across the road… lol. I thought it was funny with the irony of it being in a spot where you literally cant park. Maybe it is from a time when you could drive up the trail to the cave? I don’t know…

If you enjoy the blog I would appreciate a like and a comment if you have one. Thank you for your time and get out there and warm up the ionosphere!

72

David

WK4DS

Monte Sano State Park POTA Activation AAR with a 20m Hamstick

Well, I finally activated a park in a new state… Alabama. You might think this is normal, till you google my address and see that I live on the Alabama state line in Georgia! I am literally two minutes by car from the state line and it took me several months to activate a park in Alabama… Anyway, I decided to activate the [sarcasm]remote and rarely visited[/sarcasm] Monte Sano State Park K-1048!!! Woohoo! Well. it is neither rare nor remote actually being literally minutes outside of Huntsville AL. It was new for me so I packed up the TR-35 and the new 20m Hamstick setup and struck out for Huntsville.

As fate would have it, I had business meetings that were on a time table so I didnt have a long time to stay, I thought once again that if I get my ten contacts I will be happy, well…I got more.

This is the QSO map from this trip. The VERY FIRST contact was with France!!! I thought, this is going to be a good day. Any day that my 5 watts reaches across the Atlantic Ocean, is a good day for me. It is obvious that the band and take off angle of my antenna dictate a certain “minimum” distance that people can hear me. A quick look at the map shows this, but just outside of this region and all bets are off! They piled in and in just over an hour I had 43 contacts in the log, with one being a dupe… It never ceases to amaze me at how well these little radios can perform with some thought and patience, but today the whole patience thing was out the window!!! I just kept getting calls! It was a QRP dream activation, I just wished I had been able to stay longer to see how many more I could have worked… Seems here lately, I am only able to stay and hour or two at best, I hope to remedy this soon, but for now, I will take that!!!

I also worked CU3AA in the Azores and VE2WLD (who also performed double duty as a Park to Park as well) for three DX stations on this trip alone! That is awesome and makes the whole activation just that much more special to me. If you have not ever tried POTA, I would recommend it at least once, it might not be for you, but if you enjoy setting up for field day, then you will probably like this. It is similar, but much more relaxed and lower key… At least that is how I see it. I find myself getting on the air more as a hunter and as an activation now that I have activated. It is just plain fun to go to a park and operated with a battery for a while and answer the passerby question from time to time. Once again, you can see the band opening and closing like waves on the ocean (maybe more like the tide coming in as it is slower than waves breaking on the beach) in the signal reports in the log. I even had a couple of people tell me they had problems with QSB (fading of the signal) towards the end of the activation.

Also of note is that this park has a day use fee (see below), be prepared for it when you get there, they have an attendant at the entrance to collect this fee before you enter the park. Parks seem to have a lot of lattitube in how they collect these fees, I have seen honor system pay boxes as well as no fees at all (Booker T Washington in Chattanooga TN has no fee) and then places like Monte Sano where they collect the fee at the entrance to the park. Cloudland has the honor system boxes as well as a attendant that works at the entrance part time, so you might find a person at the entrance and you might not, it is kind of a crap shoot with this one. You just never know… What I do know is the fee structure is normally really reasonable and to be honest…cheap for what you get. I bought my Georgia park pass back after my first activation and now that I am 47 activations in, that cost average is almost down to 1$ per visit. Once I break 50 it will be less than 1$ per trip. That is a smokin deal if you will be doing POTA ops regulaly at your local state parks (and they offer an annual pass like this one in Georgia). I plan to get over 100 activations at Cloudland before I have to renew my pass next May so then the daily cost should hit 50 cents per visit. Where else can you get a deal that good?

This is the only thing I brought back from that trip aside from my logbook, I don’t know how I forgot to get photos of the setup for you guys…I straight dropped the ball on that one. I guess it means I get to go back at some point so I can properly photograph it. LOL

The Penntek TR-35 is really starting to grow on me. This little radio just plain works. It doesn’t have things like a waterfall display or QSO recording like my IC-705 but what is does have is pretty much CW perfection. I have every control I normally use when doing an activation, at my fingertips and not buried in a sub menu or an alternate function for commonly used features…like CW speed control is a dedicated knob, this is super handy as POTA hunters vary in speed a good bit so being able to slow down on the fly for a slower op and then speed back up for a faster one is really handy. It is being tested out for a potential trip to Central America in a few months so I hope to keep up on using it and to prove it out as a capable machine while I am south of the border.

All in all it was a great trip and I finally got to activate Alabama too! If you have not used CW and want to, there are lots of ways to learn this historical mode fairly easily. It isn’t for everyone, just like SSTV isn’t for everyone, so if you don’t like CW it is all good, that is why we have different modes, at least in my mind it is, lol. If you have not done it yet, please like this blog and subscribe for future posts, Till next time, get your radio out and make some contacts!

Some days are better than expected in spite of band conditions.

Well today the work was grueling and about 3PM, the wife gave me clearance to go do an activation over at K-2169 Cloudland Canyon State Park. So come 4PM I grabbed the log book out of the house and jumped into the truck for a quick activation.

Upon arrival, I was all by myself in the upper parking lot. Wonderful as I can choose any spot I want to keep the sun out of my eyes and back the truck up next to the grass for my counter poise wires. So I deploy the “truck-tenna” as quickly as I can and get in the cab to plug in the TR-35. I got the cab nice and warm with the heater while setting up the antenna and then shut down the truck to keep the noise to a minimum while I activate. I really like my “trick” of having a quiet and warm winter time location for POTA. So for the winter this is how I will roll… lol literally.

The solar data says it wont be a great day for POTA…

So once I got setup, I dialed around on 20 meters a little to scope out the band conditions a little before I started, but it was opened up pretty strong when I dialed through the band. So I went up to the QRP area and found a nice quiet spot, listened for a few minutes while I wrote up my logbook with the usual data for my activation and then made a fatal mistake…I sent a CQ from the keyer memory while I started to log into the POTA website so I could spot myself, but before I could get it open on my iPhone I got an answer! So things are hopping now! LOL I log him then immediately get another call, and this went on for a couple of minutes. So I finally get a chance to spot myself so I can be found on the bands…. waa waa waaaaaa… (The joke is on me here, as I think I could have easily gotten the activation by just calling cq today as good as things were going) But once the spot went up, Dear Lord the gates were opened up! I had a mini-pile up the rest of the time I was able to operate, I literally cleared the pile 1 hour later and went QRT so I could go home.

You can tell if I am in a hurry or not by how I write the time next to the QSO, if I have time, I will write the proper time signature, if not then it is just enough data to log it for me.

Some things I took away from this activation are that a 20m hamstick is not able to hear inside about 500 miles, give or take… Just take a look at the map and it is painfully obvious. But yeah, it works WONDERFULLY outside of that zone! My best QSO tonight was to Oregon with WA7RAR using 5 watts at 2064 miles, not quite the 1000 miles per watt that people want, but it was still a good QSO for me! I still have not bought the other hamsticks yet, I am going to be ordering them soon though so we can play with different bands too.

I did have a few minutes where a spammer tried to shut me down, I didn’t even catch it until I copied the call twice and realized they were just pulling my chain sending random letters with just dits… Then they moved on and I went back to filling up the logbook. Also of note is that I learned TODAY that I could add the “stroke” and special designator in HAMRS and it would take it without killing the call sign! I entered my first mobile contact in my log today. I have logged a couple in the past but didn’t know I could enter the mobile designator in HAMRS… Sorry about that to the few ops that I have not given that info to on my logs.

So for future reference, don’t let the solar data tell you that you cant make a contact when things look bad online. Just give it a shot and throw out a CQ and see what happens. So until next time, just get on the air and have some fun!

72

WK4DS

David

A good day in the field for QRP CW...

This after action report is brought to you by yours truly as I have no sponsors at this time. HiHi Anyway, I went to the local state park for an evening activation and didn’t know what I was in for.

I setup the TR-35 with the “Trucktenna” (I think I will just start calling it that. LoL) and got on the air, but today I thought I would back the power down a little to about 4.5 watts to see if anyone would notice. That is a 10% reduction from my usual output power. Well the QSO speaks for itself.

Seems if the band is open, it really doesnt matter how little power you have, you will have a great time. I am about to build one of the little qrp power meter kits from here:

QRP Watt Meter

This way I can accurately set the output power prior to starting a activation and I will know how much it is for sure.

I made 80 QSOs and off I had more time, I think I could have made 100! The TR-35 is turning out to be a great little radio that I enjoy using. Even though it doesn’t do all the stuff that the other radios can do, it just works REALLY well. I can highly recommend it.

I also made up a power cord for my radios when inside the truck since they are all QRP and don’t pull much more than 1 amp max. The power port in my truck is rated for way more than that, so it is good to go. It would be interesting to know just how long those two huge lead acid batteries under the hood would last worth the TR-35…lol