Activating a park in Hawaii with with the Elecraft K1

I will be honest here, I thought this would be easier…

Let me explain. You see first off, I live on the east coast of the mainland USA where getting an activation completed or even dozens of QSOs in an activation, is rather easy even at QRP power levels. I have done activations with 4 watts and once I think it was only 1 watt. But someone joked in the past, “that is because you are where all the HAMs are at!” Nothing could be truer as I found out.

So here is the setup for the opportunity. We decide after some travel plans fall through, to goto Hawaii (the big island) for a week or so. This is two fold, we want to see the active volcano as that is a bucket list item for us and it is warm in February…which is always a plus. Well, I talk to the wife and come to the conclusion that there will be time to do a park or two while we are there as well. So I start figuring out what radio to bring.

Just read the previous blog post to see what I brought and why (spoiler, it is the Elecraft K1). So once I figured out the radio and storage/travel bag, I started looking for parks on the POTA app.

We are staying in the town of Hilo so I naturally started looking near there for possible parks. My criteria was that I wanted a park that wasn’t blocked by mountains or in a canyon, preferably one near the beach (I mean, who doesn’t want to do an activation on the beach???) and has a tree to allow me to get the antenna up as close to vertical as possible. This last part is going to be the biggest challenge I would come to find out. Since I packed only wire antennas in my kit, I would need something I could throw a line over to haul up a wire with.

Well, the first park I chose was not really suitable as it didnt have any trees near the parking lot and also no tables nears the trees that are there. The next problem showed up on day two and lasted till almost time to leave…the rain… seems Hilo is a literal rain forest and I failed to do the proper research to learn this ahead of time. Maybe I was not supposed to know this so I would take my gear, I don’t know either way, but it rained 14” of rainfall in a 36 hour period of time at one point. yes, FOURTEEN inches fell in a 36 hour period… The rain was near continuous for many days. Well, on day four, we had about 3 hours to kill in the afternoon so I looked at a park in Hilo proper, it is down by the beach and runs all the way down the the royal gardens. I drove by it and scouted the area and found some trees that would hold a wire. This is park number K-6407 (Wailoa River State Recreation Area) and basically it fit all the criteria.

This is where it gets messy… I decide to give it a try as it is a good time of day to reach the west coast of the US. Grey line would be coming across the US for the next few hours and I need all the help I can get with my measly 7 watts. The only problem is that the rain is coming down in sheets at this point… where to setup??? I opted for the car.

So I get out in the deluge and throw a line over a nearby tree and haul up the antenna which turned out to be more of a sloper this time than a vertical. This antenna is a 41’ radiator and a 13’ counterpoise and is almost resonant on the 40 meter band. I roll the window down a little and run the counter poise and radiator into the car and hook then to the radio.

Once the radio was connected I tried to run the car for the heater and power port only to find it was producing a significant amount of rf hash that the little Elecraft radio couldn’t handle. So I got out the battery and shutoff the car. This actually worked really well, I could hear much better and the car was actually quite warm so I and Teresa were happy. Yep, she sat with me in the car and read a book which I worked you guys on HF.

The next problem I ran into was the contest… I had no idea there was a contest running this weekend and had planned around that literally zero… Well, now what? I went to where I couldn’t hear anyone and started calling CQ and called for ten straight minutes with no answers.

You can see in the log that I got on the air and spent ten minutes finding a clear frequency and called CQ for probably 20 minutes before giving up and moving to 17 meters. Now remember that the whole time this is happening that it is pouring rain. So I am starting to lose hope…

17 meters proved to be MUCH more productive. I found a clear spot tuned up and went to work. Here it still took several minutes of calling for people to hear me. I am going to guess they swung their beams around to me as some of them came booming in to my little wire in the middle of the ocean! I was starting to get somehwere when it seemed my band opening on 17 just stopped so I tried the 30 meter band in hopes of getting something there but no one replied. Next I figured I would give 20 meters another try. I went fairly high in the CW area to get away from the contesters and it seemed to work. I did get a couple of contacts, but it was at this point that I had to pack it up so we could go to the airport to pick up our daughter who was flying in… with 7 QSOs in the log. I really wanted to get this activation and as fate would have it, I started right after the new UTC day began so I actually had time. This was the most difficult hour and half of my POTA life thus far. I had netted 7 contacts in over 90 minutes of air time…I had not anticipated this. Normally, due to the spot page, I get an activation in short order. I have a new appreciation for Hawaii call signs now that I could not have before.

The next thing that happened was fate working in my “POTA” favor. You see the airline let Sierra wait in Maui for an extra two hours due to issues with the gates in the airport. So since the airport in Hilo is 10 minutes from this park I was activating, we just drove back over to the park and I found a better tree to get the wire almost completely vertical this time.

Launching into the “second session” I got on 30 meters hoping to get something there but nobody answered me after quite a while. So I just moved back to 20 meters and again went high in the CW portion. I have never went to 14080 mhz before so I wasn’t sure how this would work. It worked fairly well to be honest, as I got my activation completed during this time part of the time!!!

Since I had my 10 QSOs finally, I wanted to try and work someone on every band I could use on the radio which meant moving down to 40 meters for a while. I finally worked NA7C in Utah on 40 meters with just 7 watts!!!!! I also learned from the RBN that my K1 needs to be aligned. It was consistently off frequency by at least 200 hertz.

So for this trip I took the Gemini travel key as I really like the form factor of this key for these kinds of operations. It is the perfect size and design for ops where there is no surface to set the key on. Also take notice how my trousers are still very wet from stringing the antenna up in the tree. Lol. I wondered how much signal I was losing to the rain… The logbook is a mess because of the terrible band conditions and me making tons of notes about the activation.

Take a look at my original spot note. Lol I had a big idea there!!!

I was also hopeful when I saw the RBN pick me up. So I knew my signal was propagating out to the mainland. You can understand then why I was getting worried when I got no calls for all that time I was calling CQ on 20 meters…

Here you can see my RBN spot on 17 meters as well. It was weak, but it spotted from two different regions. Check that out. But it was during this time that people actually start hearing me and answering!

I was really impressed by some of the signals too. These people have wonderful radio stations and they are my heros to be honest. Below is a spot from the second session of when I had a couple more hours due to the fight delays and was able to finish the activation.

The QSO map looks a lot like I thought it would other than I didn’t expect the mid west and eastern contacts at all. I also figured on a few Japan contacts to be honest, I really thought I would get a couple with how active the Japanese people are in POTA. I only heard a few “J” calls the whole time and none of them could hear me. So when I was spotted by 5W1SA in Samoa then again by VE6WZ in Canada I was just sure I would get some Japan calls, but nothing. Figures. Maybe I did the grey line wrong…who knows.

So when I wrapped up the activation, the antenna was drowned and when I got back to the room I spread all of it out to dry. Note it took more than one day to dry since it rains here almost nonstop and the humidity wont let the stuff dry very fast. It probably won’t be done drying ít till I get home.

Well, that is the story of my activation from the isle of Hawaii while I was on vacation. Thank you for reading along and now go have some fun! What is your most insane story about an activation? Leave me a comment below and let’s have some fun.

The simplest radio and antenna setup I know of…

Ok, first the setup. I get the opportunity to do some ham radio on the big island of Hawaii. It is with about a two week notice and we are flying. Of course, I have this primal fear of my check baggage not making it to the destination with me or ever for that matter. So I have to carry my radio in my carry-on bag… with me. This bag has to house the radio, power source, antenna and any accessories I need as well, such as CW key, headphones, etc. The other bag will have my camera gear so it is pretty much full already. I will balance the load to get everything in those two bag though.

This is the little radio I finally decided on, the Elecraft K1.

So now you understand what I can take is a small QRP radio with a simple wire antenna and some sort of battery. It will be a cw rig, which typically perform better at QRP power levels anyway. At least this is what I have seen when attempting to work POTA with SSB at 10 watts… The radio I initially chose was the Penntek TR-35. It is really small and has all the bells and whistles I like to have on a POTA outing (which is what I plan to do while there) and I just plain like this little radio. I started immediately working on a resonant antenna for it so I could fore go the tuner and quickly realized that wire antennas are not really reliable for resonance without a lot of extra effort on site. Moving the wire around will change SWR. At least it did while I was experimenting with radiators the other day. I spent several hours with my nanoVNA and an EFHW and found I could easily get the SWR maladjusted by simply moving the counterpoise so I have some more homework to do on that before I am up to speed on that kind of antenna.

This is the situation so far, so now what do I do. Well, the solution is to use a different antenna and that means either bringing a tuner or some other kind of antenna that is more bulky. Well, due to space constraints, I chose to use a different radio.

Backing up and punting, so to speak, I chose the Elecraft K1 and a random wire antenna. The K1 that I have, has an internal antenna tuner that the TR-35 lacks so I don’t have to contend with getting the antenna just right once on location. This is a huge bonus since now I dont have to deal with possibly having something happen to the antenna and not being able to get an activation. I can tune just about anything with the K1.

So what does the kit look like now? I have the following:

  1. Elecraft K1 (4 band radio with ATU)

  2. Gemini travel key

  3. 41’ random wire with various radials

  4. (8)AA battery pack for remote power. Emergency backup.

  5. Small earbud headphones

  6. Messenger bag style carry bag to house the goodies. (Peak Design Everyday Messenger)

  7. Notebook and pens for logging

  8. Throw line and weight to get antenna in the trees

  9. Misc. little widgets like the BNC to screw lug adapter and a power cord for the cigarette lighter socket in the car.

  10. 8Ah LiFePo4 battery with charger.

There is probably a few more little items I have not mentioned here but you get the idea. This will allow me to setup a QRP CW station and work some epic DX stations that I normally dont hear at my home QTH. At least that is what I am hoping for…maybe I will actually be able to work some of those Japan calls I keep seeing in the evenings! Now I have worked QRP for a long time and I am fully aware that I may not even hear the next island, it is the nature of the beast. But I can usually squeak out at least the ten needed for an activation. So I am hopeful that it will work out. The only caveat is that I will have 2000 miles worth of ocean in basically every direction so the take off angle of my antenna is really important. I am hoping there will be a tall tree so I can get it as vertically oriented as possible. This will give me my best shot at getting an activation.

Oh, to be honest, I am pretty sure that this is not the simplest radio I have ever had, but for a portable system that will cover multiple frequencies effectively, the Elecraft K1 works really well. I really think this rig is a great combination of features and it is sad that Elecraft no longer makes this radio. If you love QRP then I can recommend this little radio…as long as you can live with just 4 bands and CW…which I can.

So there you have it, the radio going to Hawaii… wish me luck!

A super cold (for me) POTA CW ham radio activation

Well today was super cold to me after spending a month in central Florida. It was 29 degrees and the wind was howling at park K-2169 (Cloudland Canyon) back in NW Georgia!!! I didn’t let that stop the ham radio bug in me from getting out in the cold and activating a POTA site!

I thought to grab a selfie to remind me of how dumb I was to get out in this cold weather so maybe I would think better of it in the future…probably not, but it was worth a try. You can see how I have the door open on the truck, I was using it for a wind break to keep the crazy gusting winds from freezing me solid with wind chill. That is why I logged in the back seat instead of on top of the bed cover which is my preferred location if I am using the truck for ops.

The weapon of choice today? The Elecraft K1 (4 band version with 40, 30, 20, &17) My particular machine also has the internal antenna tuner as well. I guess you could say it has everything other than the internal battery. This is my second copy of this tiny machine, but I have had a long love affair with these little radios. I sold the first one and literally missed it the day i shipped it off. It only took me a few years to find another one like the first one and get my little grubby paws on it…this time for keeps. Of all my QRP rigs, I place this one VERY near the top.

In the photo below we see the Elecraft K1 as seen from the top, I have placed the BNC to screw lug device on the antenna output of the radio and connected the antenna and counter poise directly to the radio with no feedline at all. I did this on purpose to test the system like this for a upcoming project I want to use this radio for in this configuration. This allows me to see how effective it is with a very minimalist rigging. I am wanting the whole thing to be as minimal as possible and still reach the west coast if possible. You see, I have a week in Hawaii and by the time you read this, I should have been there and returned with at least one activation from the Big Island of Hawaii under my belt… only time with tell.

The below photo shows how I took the tension off of the radio with the wire antenna once I strung it up into the tree next to the truck. This is a modified version of a knot we used in the Boyscouts called a taught line hitch. It works REALLY well on tent ropes for tensioning them to the stakes, it also works really well for tying a small cord to the antenna wire to make it to where you can tie it off to something near the radio as well. If you look above at the photo of the front of the radio, you can see the other end of the cord tied to the top cover ring on my bed cover. This end of the cord is tied to the truck with a bowline knot so it can be undone easily when I finish the activation.

Below is the only photo I have ever been able to get of the wire itself and it actually show up in the photo well enough to be meaningful. I threw a line up into the tree and pulled this wire up about 25 feet off the ground with the throw line and it worked really well. I know this is really low for a wire this long, but I was frozen and in a hurry and didnt want to rethrow the line to try and get it higher in the tree. So I used what I had.

OK, so here is the part where I talk about the antenna that I used. This antenna is simply a random wire right at 41 feet long and the counter poise is 13’ long. These are technically not supposed to be resonant on any of the 4 bands I have in this radio, but as it turned out today, the antenna was almost perfect on the 40 meter band with it arranged near the truck body. (it was reacting capacitively with the truck as I could change the SWR by literally moving the counter poise closer or further from the truck. It would also change the resonance of the antenna too, so I used the internal tuner to be safe) I used this to my advantage and worked quite a few 40 meter contacts today. I also cut counter poise wires for the other three bands and plan to set them up and see what the nanoVNA says about them when I have time. Something else I have learned to do over time is to put the wire length flags on the wires. This is simply little pieces of paper with a large number written in sharpie on them and then taped on with a long piece of packing tape to basically laminate them into place. This makes it really easy to know which wires you have without having to guess. All of this wire is high flex, silicone insulated wire and is basically tangle free for the most part, where has this wire been all my life??? Turns out it was on Amazon all along…

Another item I have fallen in love with is these little Velcro cable straps, I don’t know why I didn’t get these sooner, but these things are a wonder of modern technology for wire management and keeping your gear organized. If you have never used them, I highly recommend grabbing a pack of them off of amazon, it will change your life!

So, since I had a way to wander off of 20 meters, wandered I did! I didnt get on 20 meters at all today. Today I stayed on the other three ham radio bands that I could get on and got 16 contacts in about 45 minutes even though it was super cold and I had the power, on the first two QSOs, turned down to 1 watt! Yes, ONE watt! Now, they are only a few hundred miles away to be fair, but still, it is a single solitary watt going the distance here! AA5JF was a little over 200 miles from me and he heard me really well if his signal report is accurate on that little single watt of RF power. The other person (W4EDN) was 265 miles away and I still got a good report. This just goes to show that you don’t need really big guns to have some fun with radio, it is something that even people who can only get small QRP kit rigs and build them can make some contacts. Now, would have I made more with more power? Of course I would, more people could have heard me and I am not contesting that. My point here is people seem to get it in their head that you need 100 watts to be able to have a QSO on HF, when it just ain’t true. Now, I cant speak of phone contacts here as I don’t do very much HF amateur radio on phone modes, I am almost exclusively a CW op…hence the love affair with the K1. So take all that with a grain of Morse code… Once I remembered I was running 1 watt, I noted it at the top of the log and turned up the power to 7 watts (I thoguht I would see how the signal reports changed with 7 times the output power and the log speaks for itself. The first report on each line is what I sent them and the second report is how they heard me. Once I moved to 17 meters I turned the little K1 to 5 watts and left it there for the rest of the activation.

It was easier for me to get some Park to Park QSOs today with the “hunt and pounce” method…but it was more like the “hunt and wait till they can hear me” method actually, all the joking aside, it worked and I got three parks in the log today because of it. I didn’t keep the activation going any longer as I had some chores to do as well as my feet and fingers were getting numb. Numb fingers and toes makes it hard to log and send decent code so I went QRT with 16 QSOs in the logbook for today. All in all, it was a successful trip with me testing all three of the other bands I don’t normally use and the random wire turned out to even be resonant on the 40 meter CW band somehow. What luck! Maybe future me will have written about how my trip to Hawaii was successful and you will see that blogpost in a couple of weeks once I have had time to write it. So till next time, go get your radio out and take it to a part or something.