Went out with Fred and Lisa for Field Day with W7LT on Kelly Butte in Portland. We were shown a good place to pitch the tent and set up the radio.
Pete (W7PR) put lines way up in a couple of close trees for my 40m dipole, then lines way.. WAY up in trees for a ladder line fed 80m dipole. The Tennis Ball Cannon is very impressive. An antenna tuner was found to hitch up the K2 to the ladder line, and away we went!
My brother Fred and wife Lisa camped out too.. they each worked a contact, and hopefully we'll have hooked them on the ham deal.
I probably worked about 60 contacts on 80, 40 and 15, using qrp/battery/solar. A good time was had by all, and it didn't even rain. Hopefully I'll get off my butt and get some pictures up for this...First real test of the SSB capability came with the Oregon QSO Party. Dick Frey, K4XU, put me up to camping out in Linn County. A big part of the QSO party is to have a QSO in each of the Oregon Counties... some counties don't have many folks in them, so off I went. Turned out there were a few other operators in Linn, but I had a blast in the RF quiet area I wound up.
Campsite Location was close to the end of Forest Service Road 40, off of hwy 22 eastbound. Road 40 is about 6 miles past Idanha on 22 eastbound, before you get to "Pamelia Road." Radio was Elecraft K2 with SSB kit, max powerI used was about 12W. antenna was 10, 20 &40m/15m dipoles from the same feed point, spread with small bamboo stakes. 40m dipole center about 25 feet off ground, ends maybe 30. 40m worked extremely well for in-state contacts. In the morning 20 was perfect into Nevada and Arizona. Lack of EMI was incredible.. At times (on 40!) the antenna plugged in was not much over the internal noise floor of the radio! The 40m band got staticy and propageted out further (New England QSO party) starting at about 1730 local time. I managed to chat with 41 contacts.. not huge, but certainly a record for me. A few contacts counted for more than one county, being stations on county lines. I didn't even know the SSB kit worked before I went out. Of 36 Oregon Counties I missed 13:
I am hoping to get all counties next year. Better, more antennas up the night before, (I got up there in the dark.) Maybe moving up to 100W with the K2-100 kit. And a better night's sleep the night before.
Update, Sept 2004 Well, I got married and moved. I'm in Wilsonville now.. We're in a duplex here for about a year or so... The good thing about this is that there are some trees in the yard, and... the power lines are where they ought to be... UNDERGROUND. Needless to say, the interference situation is a little better than Fred's attic.
I don't quite have room for a 40m dipole, but I put one up anyways. The ends of the wires have a little tree-leaf contact, but it seems to work. It's unfortunately too low. I have two short trees and one tall one, and access to only one side of the tall one. But it resonates, and I've had a few contacts with it. I no longer need to go camping to use the radio.
I'm considering building a 15m quad. The lack of noise in comparison to the city is fantastic, and I can actually hear people around the world on 15m now.
I still don't have SSB on the radio.. I just don't want to pay for it, or take the time to put it together, and don't know if I'd use it much. I can copy about 10wpm now on a good day.. I've been able to sit here and listen a lot now that there's nothing else to do in the neighborhood and there's no nasty power lines around.
My first contact was with Jeff, WA6WMO in Bend. We used 40m.. I measured only about 1.5W actually going out thru the antenna, and a lot of that could've been coupled into the furnace ducts and stuff in the attic. Waaaaah....
I'll add the SSB capability later, after I've proven to myself that I can communicate with the CW... It was quite some work to pass the test, and I don't want to just forget it. Also, the priority is on the antenna... and I'm about stickershocked out for this year on radio stuff anyways.
I got involved in this through a couple of coincidental occurances. I really wanted a receiver for international listening. So I built a couple of Ten-Tec kit radios (T-kit 1253 and 1254.) for this, and enjoy occasional listening to BBC and others on basically a random wire under the eves.
At about the same time, I did some contract software work controlling RF amplifier testing. And I realized (remembered?) that RF was one of the cool things about electronics. A lot of the people at that company are hams, and one convinced me that the Elecraft K2 was the best thing since sliced bread for receiving in noisy environments. Because the K2 is a transceiver, I decided to work on the licence.
The licensing process was interesting to me... the FCC makes use of amateur service volunteers, making things very efficient and very cheap. it's only $10.00 you know if you passed the test that same day and the license is granted in about a week.
I do some XC skiing when I get the chance.. Figuring I'd feel pretty silly if I broke my leg and froze to death out somewhere with the license in my pocket, I got a Yaesu VX-5R handheld. It's a transceiver on the 6m, 2m and 70cm bands, and receives all kinds of cool stuff from 0 to 1GHz, with a few annoying gaps.
The cool thing about the 2m band and up is that 1/4wave is short... so reasonable antennas can be made out of all kind of things. These are mainly from #6 solid wire and 1X2 sticks. The Yagis are from Cheap Yagi Antennas for VHF/UHF by Kent Britain WA5VJB, The groundplane is right from the ARRL Handbook, although I did get a little creative on account of not having a handy UHF connector. The radiator element is held by drilled, carved broomhandle, crunched into some copper pipe. It very clearly beats the rubber duck antenna in real world performance. I've got a more portable groundplane antenna made from telescoping elements, but it's a real hack job.
I really want to work meteor scatter and EME. But I have no time to deal with this now.