Another addition to the Station

On Friday I decided to go back to Princess Auto… On my last trip there I picked up a Heavy Duty Camera Tripod to add to my Portable Station…

The Tripod gave me the option of using my ToyBox portable antenna or finding some trees that would work with my EFHW. The End Fed Half Wave is far the better antenna but the ToyBox has its good points especially as all I have to do is open up the Tripod and add a counterpoise to match whatever band I have decided to operate.

Liz hates it when I go there… Princess Auto has so much stuff I don’t need until I see it there on Sale….

That brings us to my latest purchase…

While walking around in their Surplus Section I found the following:

Its a heavy duty Tripod…. thats what they call it anyway

Attributes and Specifications

SKU	9093949
Package (L x W x H)	22.3 x 9.3 x 9.3 in.
Weight	10.7 lbs
Item Name	Heavy Duty Telescopic Tripod

So seeing that there was no one there to talk me out of it…. It followed me home… the $30.00 price tag will not break the bank…. and over the last couple of days I have tested it….

It easily supports my dual band VHF/UHF Arrow Ground Plane antenna at 20 feet above ground. Even though I would use Guys in the real world it was not needed for the quick test in my backyard…

I should add that for masting I was using 4 sections of Surplus Military masting at a lenght of 4.5 feet per section. Adding to the 18 feet of masting the Tripod also opens up to 3 feet bringing it to a 21 feet lenght in total

It also supported my Shakespear 20 foot wonderpole with no issues. This would be the support for my EFHW or an inverted Vee Portable antenna that I use occasionally…

I can actually see myself trying to buy one more… as of now the Kingston store has 6 left in stock… They started with 7 and I bought mine… I can’t get there again before Tuesday but I think that having two of those Tripods would be a great asset for my Planned Transportable Station… I would love to activate a POTA Park for a weekend and use the tripods to get a few antennas in the air… My Portable station fits in a backpack…

The planned Transportable station will be a bit heavier but…. will have more (and better) toys as well

More on the Dream Station later if I can swing some of the details

73bob

So I like it….

After about a week of using the Comet Toybox antenna along with my Xeigu X5105 QRP radio I can honestly say its working better than I expected.

Most of my testing has been on 20m and 40m SSB so far and I find the QRP station able to contact most of the same stations I work from the home station of course with slightly lower signal levels.

I found my best results (so far) using a single 1/4 wave (for my band of choice) elevated counterpoise (radial)… I now have a single Radial for 20m, 40m, 60m and 80m

Over the weekend contacts from my backyard to close in stations (Kemptville Ontario) to longer distance contacts (PA, MD and VA) proves it does work. I did work stations that I normally work and so their reports honestly reflected the lower antenna and the much lower power levels.

The next level of testing with the Xiegu and then comparing my 3 different QRP antennas to see which one functions the best. That should be coming in a couple of weeks…

More on that later

73bob

Finally… Getting to operate #POTA portable! #hamradio

Well its about time…. Its taken me way too long but…

This Saturday (August 27th) plans have been made for a couple of Parks on the Air Activations…

Thanks to Elections Canada for the above Graphic

George VE3SIQ and myself VA3QV will be (plan to/should be) activating POTA VE0023 and POTA VE4882 along with Canadian Island ON 294 (Upper Brewers Mills Island).

We will be be participating in the W/VE Island QSO Party and as that Island ON 294 is in the Rideau Canal (POTA VE4882) and the island is also part of the Frontenac Biosphere (POTA VE0023) it gives us a chance for a POTA 2fer as well.

I will be operating QRP SSB With my Xiegu X5105 and will have antennas set up for 6 to 40m (6-60m for POTA and/or 6-40 for Island work) depending on the conditions of the day at the time

George (Ve3SIQ) will be operating with a Yaesu FT450 from the same island and his station will have antennas set up for 10 to 40m once again depending on the conditions of the day

IF YOU HAPPEN TO HEAR US PLEASE RE SPOT US ON POTA SPOTS

If things go according to plans we should have both stations on the air by approx 1500 UTC (11am EDST) and as well will be operating until the batteries die or the weather turns bad or the bugs come out and lastly if the bands die out…

QSL info

My logs will be uploaded to POTA and the W/VE Island QSO party as soon as possible after the activations…

In addition I will be uploading to EQSL, Logbook of The World and QRZ.com. Sorry folks but no Direct or Buro QSL’s

Hope to see you on the air and in my log

73bob

Testing the homebrewed #hamradio antenna

If you remember from my last post that I had constructed an antenna to work on the 60 meter (5mhz) band. It consisted of a single 43 foot driven element and a single 43 foot counterpoise/radial fed my a 1:1 balun.

It looks a lot like this

As mentioned before the above graphic is for my SotaBeams Bandspringer Antenna but my homebrewed 60m antenna (in the configuration I use) looks alot like the above.

In reality its a 60m dipole but in reality as I don’t have enough real estate to stretch out almost 90 feet of wire I use it as an End Fed inverted VEE with an elevated 43 foot counterpoise attached to my fence at about 3 feet above the ground. The SWR is good to where I don’t even need the built in tuner on my Yaesu FTR991a and so far the signal reports are fairly strong considering the very poor band conditions (darn solar storms) that we are going though right now. With the help of the built in tuner I can get it to load up on some of the higher bands but I like the long wire better….

So with the addition of the new antenna I can now operate on:

2m, 6m, 10m, 12m, 15m, 17m, 20m, 30m, 40m, 60m, 80m and 160m

Some bands are not as strong as others but I am on the air, doing the best I can from within an antenna restricted environment.

There is talk of getting a group out for some QRP activities so perhaps my Xiegu X5105 might finally get some time outside to play. More on that later this coming week

73bob