ARRL Amateur Radio Field Day 2022 After Action Report from a CW op.

Well that fateful day has come and went, fun was had, radios were used and new skills were learned.

I want to thank Ms. Dana K4GCA, for hosting us on her property so graciously, this made the whole event feel so much better. You see, this is our first field day without her late husband Brian (K4GC) who passed away unexpectedly last year. We miss Brian dearly and it made this field day even more special to be allowed to operate the site from his back yard.

This was the first year I have been to a field day event in many years. A lot of new faces have came onto the scene since the last time I did field day with the K4SOD amateur radio club. It was good to see old faces as well as the new ones and to put faces to call signs is always a good thing.

Roger KG4WBI brought several radios and antennas and proceeded to build a huge antenna array on a push-up pole to connect his Ten Tec Argonaut to via hamstick dipoles. I had to leave before the system was built completely and go to church for the evening but when I came back I went back over to the site to operate some CW on the air..

Once things got underway, they setup the SSB station in the back workshop and got to work. Ricky W4EMA getting on the air here on Roger’s KG4WBI Alinco DX77T HF rig while Steve KI4WJG waits his turn at the controls. Thanks to KK4IJR Kevin for many of the photos in this article, but somehow we didnt get a single image of him!!! LOL

It is strange how CW will draw a crowd I did not think most people enjoyed it but it was a huge conversation topic the whole time I was trying to work contacts. The guys were truly interested and it surprised me. I was looking around trying to find contacts with the Argonaut but since it only has 5W of output power it was very difficult to get through the band QRM and make a contact. I spent the better part of almost an hour trying to make five contacts, it was very different from the parks on the air style of operating.

I finally gave in and we used Josh’s KN4RTY Yeasu 891 to up the power output and to get through and make some contacts. At this point my confidence was boosted somewhat and I was able to get back on the Argonaut and it’s five watts of output power and make a few more contacts with it before I called it quits at 2:48 in the morning local time(5:48 UTC).

Getting to use the Argonaut was a special treat as those radios have been out of production for many years maybe even decades at this point. Roger had went to the trouble of having this radio professionally tuned, aligned and cleaned so that it would be in pristine operating condition for the night. Ten Tec transceivers are amazing radios especially for the CW operators. They seem to specialize in that type of radio communications with their transceivers. If you really enjoy using CW in my opinion, you really should look at Ten Tec and Elecraft radios, these radios excel at that mode. Now don’t get me wrong, all amateur radios, pretty much, work really well with CW. It is just a subset of all the amateur radio operating modes so don’t think you have to have a certain brand of radio to use CW, I just prefer Ten Tec radios.

I decided to take two different CW keys with me to the field a side. One was my straight key I made some 20 years ago but since we were using it on the Argonaut 2 I had to change the cable to an RCA cable to be able to connect it to the radio. The other key was my serial number 1 “prototype” WK4DS paddle and I love this key greatly so I put it in a waterproof hard shell storage box with some closed cell phone to protect it during travel. These two CW keys are my primary keys that I use when I work outdoors or sometimes indoor operations. I have others as well, but these are my favorites.

My logbook is a mess! I would get the call first then get their exchange info before even calling them, this way i could listen to the exchange and just confirm what I had written down already. This made code copy at such high speeds much easier for me. You see, I am kinda slow at copy right now… lol…

It was a really good time and I really enjoyed meeting with people that I had not seen in a long time it makes me realize how great this community really is. If you have not gotten out and interacted with the local hams in your area I highly recommend it. Until next time get your radio out and go make a contact with it will see you later 73 WK4DS

A quick trip to Prentice Cooper WMA for a POTA Activation...sorta

This day was like any other day, I had not really planned on activating a park, but the radio was in the truck and I was there and I had about 2 hours… sooooo.

It all started on Father’s Day weekend and I was going up to scout a location for the next morning to shoot a sunrise photo or two with my daughter for father day. I was already in Chattanooga nd had a few hours to either go shoot street photos in the noon day sun or I could check out a place called Snooper’s rock… I chose the later.

After a nice 30 minute drive, I arrived at the WMA (Wildlife Management Area) to scope out the location and found that the spot for the AM photo op was easy to access and it left me with plenty of time to actually get on the air. SO then I start looking for a suitable location to string up a wire for an antenna this is where I started running into problems, the trees around the parking lot were dense and had a lot of underbrush preventing me from throwing a line pretty much at all. So I start driving down the side roads till I find one that has a pull off and the woods are fairly open allowing me to get the throw line up into a tree without too much trouble.

The antenna was running 64 degrees north east… is this area of the compass all that I am allowed to use??? LOL I go to a different park in a DIFFERENT STATE and the antenna direction is almost identical to Cloudland!!! Anyway, it was run over a limb and went back down towards the ground at the far end where I tied it to a tree. I figured that my low antenna would be offset by the fact that I was on top of a mountain and finished setting up the radio station.

This time, instead of getting out the ICOM 705 I decided to use my old time QRP rig that I have had for many years…. the vaunted Elecraft K1/4 with internal antenna tuner. I love this old radio for no particular reason other than it is cool. I just like using it for some reason.

I didnt want to spend a lot of time messing with the settings so I ran it as I have always ran it, with a straight key. If you will notice the straight key is home brew, I made this key out of scrap materials in my machine shop so I could have a simple key for when I did field activations. This key is very usable and is easy to use on the air. It is also a great conversation starter as well ha ha. Another thing to note about this set up is that I do not need an external antenna tuner to run this rig. Since it has an internal antenna tuner in the radio I simply connect the antenna connector straight to the radio and get on the air.

With the radio set up I quickly got on the air and did a little hunting first. I fairly quickly got a couple of park to park contacts one being a special event station and then I moved to 17 m where I made three or 4 QSO contacts then the band kind of fizzled out and I moved to 20 m where all the ham radio operators seemed to be. In pretty short order I had a completed activation and was able to get off the air so that I could go meet the wife for lunch.

All in all it was a really great quick sample and sweet activation of a new park for me in Tennessee 73s and I hope to see you on the air soon de WK4DS

After Action Report for K-6243 Activation - Learned something new today.

Today was going to be a short activation, in and out and on to my street photography I was planning to do… Well, we all know how the best laid plans go, don’t we? Yeah, I didn’t go shoot street photos at all. lol.

Today was a typical day, I worked till noon, then sneaked away to go do some radio and photography. I grabbed the bag and realized my log book was full so I needed to grab a notebook at the store on the way to the park, that was the first thing that slowed me down. then there was a HUGE traffic jam on the interstate that forced me to take surface streets for half of the drive which basically doubled the drive time. So now I am an hour behind when I planned to start…

The next thing to happen was that the map software took me up to the W road. Which is quite harrowing if you have never driven up it before, there are YouTube videos about it if you want to know more. So I finally get to the parking area, which only has 4 spaces mind you, and there is ONE left! I took that as a sign that things were going to improve and set out searching for a location. I hiked down to the falls and took a couple of photos then started looking for a place to set up the antenna. So this is a wilderness area and not a park, this means that the usual manicured fields with picnic tables were conspicuously missing from this park entirely. Ummmm…. I didn’t bring a chair either. So I end up finding a small log on the side of the trail and a side trail that was off the beaten path somewhat. Another problem I didn’t anticipate was the dense underbrush that was at this location. This one thing alone almost made me just give up and go take photos instead, but I found a small clearing with a tree I could get to near the trail with a high limb so I gave it a shot, got a line up and pulled up the 30’ wire for a radiator since I planned on working 17 and 20 meters only this trip.

Well, I hooked up the radio and laid it on the backpack and got settled in for the pile up I was about to have. I called CQ at 5 watts CW for at least 15 minutes solid without a single hit… at all. Then just as I was about to give up thinking the bands were closed, I get a call from KA3ICJ in North Dakota of all places!!! Still thinking it was the antenna as the signal report was 339 for my signal and he was much louder than that, so I shut down the rig and replace the 30’ wire with the 65’ wire and then use the 30’ for the counter poise. I gave in and turned the radio up to 10 watts too as I wanted to get this activation in so I could go shoot photos too. I noticed a large difference in the band noise this time, tuned up and started calling CQ again. Things were different this time. I started getting called from basically everywhere it seemed, New Jersey to New Mexico then Oklahoma to New Hampshire were all in the log now and in less than 20 minutes of using the longer antenna, I had the activation! With the 10th contact being TI5JON from Costa Rica!!! (He was actually closer than K7LVJ as it turns out who was 3361 kilometers away… lol)

Not long after I got a Canadian VA2YZX who was coming in quite strong. What is neat is that I can look at the logbook and see the band fading in and out from the signal reports. Just take a look at the page and see what I mean. When I hit an hour from when I made the first QSO to the last one, I went QRT and packed up the gear, by this time though, it was time to go meet Teresa (KG4WHE) for Pad Thai…

What are the things I learned from this day?

1. Things take longer than you think. I left way later than I thought I needed to, not accounting for factors like traffic and stopping for supplies added to my time delay.

2. Scouting is a good idea before committing to an activation with wanton disregard. Had I done this, I would have known a wire antenna is almost impossible to hang at this location.

3. Bigger antennas work better, sounds silly but it worked in this instance.

4. Don’t give up just because your first idea doesn’t work.

5. Don’t get yourself down if you don’t accomplish everything you wanted to do in a day, it will be alright.

6. HAVE FUN

As a side note, when I changed from the 30’ to the 65’ wire the tree I was using was too close to make the wire a sloper so I just ran it over the limb (about 25’ up) and back down to about 8’ above grade to a sapling which I tied the rope to. The Antenna was lined up with 32 degrees NE today. See the map below where I overlaid the compass roughly to see what the antenna was doing. This made the wire into an inverted V style random wire of sorts. It seemed to propagate in basically all directions really well for some reason. I need to look into this more. It worked really well.

Thats it for now, 73 and get out there!

de WK4DS

What is my POTA Amateur Radio activation kit as of July 2022?

So my kit has always evolved, but I am trying to fine tune it to either make it lighter or easier/faster to setup or breakdown. Those are my main concerns as I am also only a daylight operator at this time so there is nothing about lights or such in my kit currently.

I think the first part to discuss should always be the RADIO! So my current setup consists on an ICOM IC-705 with matching antenna tuner. This rig will do all sorts of stuff that I have not tapped into before, it is even capable of VHF and UHF! It literally is an all purpose radio. I have only used it with SSB and CW so far though and really like the memory keyer functions a lot. They are super easy to program and easy to use. I am planning on setting up a simple RTTY system as it will natively decoder built in and a simple winkeyer will encode CW to RTTY and let me use that mode without a computer. All the better… LOL

Next item to discuss is the antenna tuner. I just bit the bullet and bought the ICOM AH-705 remote tuner too while I was at Gigaparts… Can we say buying frenzy? 😂 Well, I am glad I did, it has performed flawlessly the entire time without issue and the cool thing about it and the radio is that they both have their own battery systems in them. This means you don’t even have to bring a remote power source if you don’t want to and still operate up to 5 watts. I have done this twice now, once because I was in a hurry and didn’t want to spend time building out the external power system and the second time was when the external battery went dead from me not charging it. The tuner is simple to use as it is designed to connect either a BNC coax or use the included adapter and connect the wire antenna directly to the tuner, which is what I have been doing up to this point. It also ships with the cabling to connect it to the 705 but the power cable is not included, they do give you the connector so you can build a cable yourself, which is exactly what I did, complete with powerpoles and a fuse holder… lol.

The next item in the system in the battery. The current cell is an 8AH LiFePO4 (Lithium Iron Phosphate) and is the size of the batteries that are in UPS power supplies and kids power wheel toys and such. I started out using the sealed lead acid battery, and quickly realized that the newer battery was half the weight but with the same energy…maybe more… So I upgraded soon after putting the kit together. Best idea ever! I made up a pigtail with two power poles on it and it stays on the battery all the time. Another thing that is great about QRP is the wire sizes are so much smaller too. I am using 16ga wire for the power cords because that is plenty for my 10 watts of transmitter power and my tuner.

Next is the Antenna, I use a EFHW (End Fed Half Wave) wire antenna system that I bought called Radio Wavz RW705, it is a wire antenna kit with a whole bunch of widgets to help get the antenna setup. I also bought a small spool of 2mm arborist throw line and made a throw weight for it out of some stainless steel I had in the machineshop. I end up using the throw line as the distal end support line most of the time. This kit is great as it has a 33’, 66’ and two ten foot counter poise wires so if space is tight you can run the 33’ radiator and it works pretty well. I like running the longer wire with the 33’ wire for the counter poise though as it just seems to pull in the weaker signals better.

Right now, I have 3 QRP portable style radios, the IC705 and Elecraft K1/4 with internal ATU and a Factory built WA3RNC TR-35 that I have yet to use… Soon, very soon though. I really like the form factor of the TR-35 as it is really compact. I will probably be rotating those three radios through my pack as time goes on so they will all get some use. To be honest though, the IC705 will spoil you with all the features and the wonderful receiver in it. The touch screen is cool too but I dont have to have it, it does make things easier and some things harder… Anyway, on to the next items.

I dont log in the field with software at this time, I am not that dexterious to be hjonest, so I use good old pen and paper. Batteries dont go dead in a notebook… I carry three pens normally, two at a minimium. I have had one choke on an outing already so that solidified that part. I also have redundant antenna adapters for the tuner in case I drop one in a storm drain or some such. I also have a flash light a roll of red electrical tape, this serves two jobs, one I put it on the low part of the antenna when I am at a picnic table so people can see the wire if the happen to wander into the area and it is also electrical tape! I have a powerwerx voltmeter and the PD4 powerpole distribution block

I carry the handmic to the 705 and the N6ARA tiny paddle, I bought a eBay dual lever key and it has failed twice on me so far, I am currently looking for a spare key so if I break the N6ARA key I can still operate. It will probably be some sort of small straight key to be honest. I like CW more as it seems to work better in QRP scenarios. I will try to get voice contacts from time to time, but they are hard to do with 10 watts.

All of this is carried in a surplus camera backpack style bag from Thinktank Photo. They are my favorite company for travel camera bags as they seem to just last forever and are designed really well, even for ham radio!

Thanks and 73! de WK4DS

Back to K-2169! I get the luck of the draw and the bands cooperate!

Well, it has been a week since I activated a park so I had a few hours this afternoon and a charged battery, lets POTA!!! So I grab my bag and head over to Cloudland Canyon State Park and my usual spot has people in it and they looked like they were going to stay a while so I went to my second location of choice and it was all clear! Got the antenna up on the first throw this time! The sloper was facing 55 degrees NE to the high end without a single branch near it! I strung out the 20 meter wire for a counterpoise and hooked them to the tuner, antenna done! Cranked up the radio right at 20:00 UTC and I started calling CQ on 12 meters for nearly 15 minutes with zero replies! So I moved down to 15 then to 17 where I pounced on XE1XR in Mexico to start things off right. Not hearing much else, I go to 20 meters and literally find every HAM that has ever turned on a radio! Yeah, 20 was open… so I found me a spot and started calling CQ. I didn’t have good internet today for some reason so I sent my friend KV9L a text and got him to spot me, but then the reverse beacon took over after that I think because in 19 minutes I had garnered 15 QSOs and making this trip a valid activation! Well I didn’t stop there as I still had plenty of time to play radio so i kept calling and you guys kept answering. I logged KG5CIK at 20:51 UTC and moved to 30 meters for a minute to see what I could do there. I ended up with 6 QSOs on 30 meters then hit 17 again but no one was there and then finally back to 20 to finish out the day. Got a couple of park to park QSOs this time as well as K9IS whom I log almost every trip out and CU3AA in the Azores! I am always amazed at what just a few watts of rf can do! That was a good trip for me today, ended up with 37 QSOs in just at 2 hours time. That has to be some sort of record for me, I am sure of it. lol…

Compass I use is from my iPhone and it works pretty well as it also has a bunch of other data from the location as well. This is the direction the high end of my sloper was facing with it hanging at close to a 30, maybe 35 degree angle. Compare that to the QSO map for propagation reference info. I like this simple kind of research, alot of it is not documented, but I think it is enough to give me an idea of what I can do with the antenna when I string it up.

I overlayed the compass onto the qso map to see what it was doing and the results are kinda cool to see visually.

Using this tiny little travel key takes some practice as it is not super easy for me to master, it works really well but it is very small and I am used to large heavy bench keys that sit by themselves and do not require two hands to operate, this is what I am talking about. The key itself performs VERY well. I really like the little guy.

If you will notice, my logbook contains only CW contacts today, this is because of two things, for one, I love using CW. For some reason I have always enjoyed using this mode on the air, even though I am not very good at it… and number two, nobody could hear my calls on SSB today. I think it takes a little more than 10 watts to bust through a pileup… lol. I do get some SSB from time to time and plan to try some RTTY and FT8 as well in the future…once I learn how.

Thanks for your time and 73

de WK4DS

Got something magical in the mail today from my POTA radio time!

When you embark down the road of ham radio you learn a lot of history as part of the journey.. A little piece of that history is QSL cards. QSL cards are super interesting to me as I am pretty sure it is one of the only times that a person involved in an activity will go to the trouble of documenting and sharing that documentation with the other involved party to confirm it happened. A QSL card is usually nothing more then a post card with the contact data on it, sometimes mailed like a post card sometimes in an envelope. Then there are “nicer” cards that will have photos on them, but the ones I REALLY like have personal hand written notes on them. Those are the best to me. If you are active in radio very much on HF at all, you will end up with at least a few of these in your mailbox. The usual courtesy for me is to reply to all cards I get in the mail, I once actively sent cards to all my contacts that I made, but I no longer do that due to the costs involved, but I will always reply to one sent to me…always.

I find it charming to keep this tradition alive, but it can get complicated too, before you throw your card in the mail, be sure to check to see how the other op handles their QSL cards, there are several ways to do it , just so your aware. Most of these are done to help either save time or money and sometimes the DX station will have rules as well as sending a “green-stamp” to offset return postage or an SASE to help them with the expense of sending those exotic cards over seas.

Since I have been out of radio for sometime, I am honestly needing new cards. I think I will go with photo cards this time and not add any special logos so they will translate to all types of radio like voice modes and even digital.

Customizing your QSL cards doesn’t have to be a once and done thing either, I have routinely made custom QSL cards in the past by just doing some photo editing and then printing photos and writing the QSL info on the back. I would always mail these in envelopes as I didn’t want the post office sorting machines abrading the photos. But this is just one way to make the card, you can literally write a letter if you wanted to… The rules are not set in stone here.

I always enjoyed getting these kind of “shack” info letters, it was always interesting for me to see what the other op was using when we made contact. Sometimes it would be a 10,000$ power house machine and sometimes it would be a homebuilt rockbound radio that cost 25$.

Yes, we had a QSO and he was transmitting with 250 milliwatts! The note about the contact is below.

So I hope if your new to amateur radio that you will consider sending some cards out and going the extra mile and personalizing them as well. Have some fun with it! That is what it is all about anyway!

Tough conditions, dead batteries and a lot of amateur radio fun.

This is a tale of a guy who thinks he is going to get a “quick” POTA activation and then go grab some photos as well… It didn’t go like that…at all.

You see I thought I had this whole Parks On The Air thing dialed in and have even built a little “kit” to activate parks with that I can just grab and go. I am repurposing an old camera bag (a story for another day) and it organizes the QRP rig perfectly for activations. Soooooo, this is how it goes on that fateful day. I have a few hours in the afternoon on June 8th 2022 and tell the wife I am gonna “run” over to Cloudland Canyon state park and get a quick activation and then be back in time for supper with the kids later. I grab said POTA bag, hop in the truck and head over to my spot to activate K-2169.

Well, I should have heeded the warning when I got there I guess as my favorite location on top of the hill was occupied with a group of teens on a day trip from a local school. I circle through the parking lot really slowly surveying the area and decided to park for a bit and see if I could figure something else out when I catch a break! They start packing up to leave!!! So I wait patiently for them to vacate the location I want to use and once clear, I move the truck and grab my gear.

Setup was frustrating this time as I had to throw my line 7 times to get a good location like I wanted (turned out later that really didnt seem to matter, haha). I FINALLY get the line up in the tree and then hook up the radio and we are off to the races! Well, I was off to the races, seems nobody could hear me. It took several minutes of calling CQ to get my first contact. Normally once I get one, then I will end up with at least an activation (10 contacts) within about the next ten minutes. Not this time, it took a full ten minutes to get the next QSO in the log! So then I figure I would go hunting some other parks and I did get one then another! NO! It was a SOTA op that is didnt hear well… lol. Well after that I got my hopes up again as I got a run of 5 in about 25 minutes. As I would be just about to give up and try something else, I would get another one and it would keep me in place a little longer. So I am an hour in and only have 8 contacts at this point, I need 10 for a technical activation, so I REALLY want to get two more before having to shut down the operation. It was at this point that I realized why I was getting the 339 reports…THE REMOTE BATTERY WAS DEAD!!! I’m thinking at this point. Really doofus, your brought a dead battery to an activation??? Well, yeah, I did… So I am now running on the battery that comes with the 705 which will only produce 5 watts output. I can hear stations but they cant hear me… I head over to 30 meters and bag N3VO for the 9th QSO in the log, it is basically time to break down the rig, but I need one more contact to have an activation, so I go back to 20 meters and switch to SSB, after trying to get through 4 pile ups without no success, I score a park to park on my last QSO of the day and get my 10th contact securing an official activation. This one was close, but I made it, I quickly broke the rig down and headed home…

So if you think you cant make it work, there is almost always a way to do it, even if you have a dead battery and the bands are terrible for QRP and you have to switch modes, you just might get it done.

73

WK4DS

First Post about my radio activities and discovering POTA

Ok, brief history lesson. I got my first license way back in 2002 as KG4WBH and quickly found out that I had a love for the CW operating mode. I never turned my cards in but I have WAS in a shoebox under my bed…lol. I have thought about putting them in a frame, but I keep procrastinating.

Fast forward to today, I have been inactive for a bunch of years and then ran into a new friend in my photography hobby who is also licensed (KV9L) and he told me about this new thing call POTA… To be honest, I have never really been the contesting type as I never really enjoyed fighting a pileup just to have the DX station get tired and go QRT before I could get through, you see I have also never owned an amplifier either so I have had 200 watts max (TS950 SD) to work with. I also learned at some point, who Ten Tec was and fell in love with their radios. Currently use an Omni 6+ as my base station and am looking for a nice backup machine as well… I have had a couple of Jupiters over the years and love them too, great little machines.

Anyway back to today, I am going to start writing about my activations and such on here and sharing them to social media from here. I have been tracking some technical information as well as sharing my contact maps and a few photos of the locations when I do an activation. There is only about 8 or 9 so far so I have done and wanted to build an archive of them that was on my site and not on a social media site. I am an avid night shift hunter as well so you might just hear the old Omni replying back from Georgia if your out in the evening…

My POTA activation station is a little different. It consists of a ICOM 705 with matching antenna tuner and a battery power pack with a wire antenna. I normally use an ICOM 705 or an Elecraft K1, I am mainly using the 705 though as it works really well and is simple to use. The K1 is also a great little radio though and will be making appearances soon on my activations to come.

Well that’s it for this one, thanks for tagging along today, hope to hear you on the radio!

73

WK4DS