If you read the earlier post then you know the boys had their toys out at the Museum in Ottawa on Thursday evening. Part 1 covered the “Transportable Stations” and in this blog post we will look at the “Portable Stations”. My defination of Portable is one that a person could carry for a distance without the assistance of vehicle. And I don’t mean from the parking lot to the picnic table…
In the Portable Catagory there were two entries or demonstration stations… Roger VE3NPO with an homebrewed dual band Arrow antenna with a mount designed to let the antenna attatch to a traffic sign or post and myself VA3QV with my FT 817 portable station.
As you can see from the picture Roger’s antenna is easily mounted to any vertical support of an appropiate size. In this case it mounted quite easy on a Traffic sign support as as anyone who lives in Ottawa will attest to we have quite a few traffic directions signs to choose from here…
Picture courtesy VE3WEH
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Next in the portable catagory was yours truly VA3QV with my tried and true FT817- LDG QRP Autotuner using a combination of Buddistick parts with a Hustler 80m resonator with a small aluminun tripod. In addition I carried my FT60 handheld for VHF/UHF and the FT817 was powered by a 12v- 12ah Sealed Lead Acid Battery. I had a 12v- 2.5ah SLA to power the FT60 if the internal battery got depleted. The complete station fit in my backpack and I walked to the museum from my QTH with it. The distance was just under 1km.
Picture courtesy VE3WEH
This picture was taken by Larry at the end of the evening as he had not arrived yet when I got there to set up. I just wanted you to see the gear all in the backpack.
Picture courtesy VE3VIG
This picture by Maurice Andre shows the setup of the station. The FT60 has the yellow stripe (dot) on the right and the 2.5 ah sla has the yellow stripe on the left. My 12ah sla for the FT817 is in the small tan colored cloth bag just behind the 2.5ah sla. The FT817 is the black blob beside the 12ah sla and to the far right is the backpack that everything including the masting and tripod fit in.
Picture courtesy VE3VIG
This picture just shows the operating postion with the Radio-Tuner center on the picnic table with the battery in the bag on the right and the backpack on the left. I use a small notebook for portable logging…
Picture courtesy VE3WEH
As most of you know I am the Net Manager for the Ontario Phone Net which is a Formal Traffic Net which runs 7 days a week on a Frequency of 3.742 at 1900hrs Eastern. I arrived at the museum at 1830 and was able to get my gear installed and the station on the air in time to participate in the net at 1900hrs. Concidering I was using 5w and a vertical rather than my usual W3EDP antenna the signal reports from various stations were acceptable (they could hear me) and traffic was passed.
In part 3 we will look at the mobiles….
73bob
