As I had mentoned previously VA3PCJ and myself were planning to head out to the field and let our radios play in the sunshine… Well my FT817 made the trip but Jose’s IC 703 was not able to make the outing so he sent his big brother the IC 706 instead… We set up at one end of the Mer Blue Swamp walking trail (close to Anderson Road and Ridge Road) just a bit south and east from my home
The antennas of the day were my Par Ends Fed to go with my FT 817 and Jose was using a S9 43 foot vertical attached to the trailer hitch on his Jeep…
(above VA3QV operating the IC706 with VA3PCJ/m in background- courtesy VA3PCJ)
Despite the weird looks we got from the other parking lot users his system really works well… On the QRP side of things I had real trouble getting the Par in the trees today… The higher trees were fur trees and the weighted line I use was not able to make it back down to earth so I finally gave in and used the Par more like a flat top and kept it just below 10 feet and tried some NVIS contacts…
Both stations worked well…but outside of the obivious (100w vs 5w) some other interesting things were noticed…
40m was very long today… the 706 made a contact with KB3MZQ and got a good signal report and all he got from the 817 was my callsign … I checked out the Trans Provincal Net on 7.055ssb and the NCS was Shawn VE3PSV in Cambridge Ontario and I tried to check in using the 706… No luck whatso ever… Did not even say “Station calling try again”… I then for Sh!ts and giggles tried him using the FT817 with the NVIS antenna and got him on the first call and even managed a short QSO… 100w and a big vertical was a bust but 5w and a horozontal low to the ground antenna worked… NEAT… I guess there is something about this NVIS stuff after all…
I had no luck on 20m with the 817 but the 706 made good strong contacts with GB4T the Titanic Special Event Station in Southampton UK, and IZ0IWC Claudio fromNorth of Naples in Italy.
So all in all it was a great afternoon… The temp could of been warmer but it was sunny and dry… We made contacts on HF and learned a little something about NVIS at the same time. The afternoon ended on a positive note with a stop at my local Starbucks where we rehashed out the afternoons exploits over large cups of caffine… An excellent way to end the afternoon…
Thanks to Jose VA3PCJ for the picture and his participation…
73bob
Tags: amateur radio, Amateur Radio Portable Ops, Icom IC 703, ICOM IC 706, VA3PCJ, Yaesu FT 817
