Watch me, in real time, as I deploy an end fed half wave antenna, set up my station on a picnic table, and do a QRP (5 watt) POTA activation on the 15 meter band.
I head to Council Grounds State Park (POTA K-1447) to test the new Chameleon LEFS 4010 end fed half wave antenna system. The LEFS or Light Weight Antenna System is a versatile EFHW HF antenna with tuner-free operation on 40, 20, 15, and 10 meters and can be used with a tuner on 60, 30, 17, and 12 meters. This lightweight antenna is specially good for low power, or QRP, operation and is small enough to be carried in your pack for portable POTA and SOTA adventures.
Parks on the Air and camping is a great combination and if you love both of those activities, I invite you to attend the 2nd annual Wisconsin POTA campout on October 4-6, 2024 at the Brunet Island State Park (POTA K-1442) in Cornell, WI.
What to Expect
Your hosts, Michael KB9VBR, Travis W9HDG, and Joe KD9CJX have been getting together for an autumn campout for a few years. Parks on the Air has been always been a highlight of these adventures. This year we are opening up our campout to the greater POTA community. This event will be part social activity and part Parks on the Air activation. You can activate as little or as much as you want, in whatever mode you choose. The sky is the limit. Learn new skills, see now other hams operate, and learn how to deal with interference when a bunch of hams get on the air at the same time. That’s always part of the fun. The weekend is guaranteed to be a blast.
A formalized list of events will be put together as we get closer to the date, but you can expect the following:
Friday evening social campfire
POTA 101 class for new activators
Saturday POTA activations, group and individual
Saturday evening pot luck dinner (bring a dish to pass)
and much much more
Camp the entire weekend or just come out for the day/evening. We’d love to have you either way.
The campground is located right on the edge of Cornell and is within close proximity of the Ice Age National Scenic Trail and the Old Abe State Trail, both POTA entities. Cornell, WI is approximately 20 miles northeast of Chippewa Falls, WI and is not far from I-94 and State Hwy 29 in western Wisconsin.
Campground
Brunet Island State Park, on the Chippewa and Fisher rivers, offers more than 1,300 acres of scenic beauty and recreational opportunities. Quiet lagoons and channels are excellent for canoeing and wildlife watching. The rolling landscape in Chippewa County is a product of the most recent Ice Age. The park links to the Old Abe State Trail which runs from Cornell to Chippewa Falls.
Brunet Island State Park has two campground loops. The South Campground has 24 sites with electricity. It has a campsite accessible for people with disabilities and a shower building with flush toilets.
The North Campground has no electric service, but many of the 45 campsites are on the shoreline of the Chippewa River or its bays. Generators are NOT allowed in Brunet Island State Park.
Water will still be on this weekend and the shower house open. The park office is closed after Labor Day, so no other services will be available. Food, supplies, and firewood are available in nearby Cornell.
If you want to know what the campground and the campsite look like, Sconny Wandering has a great walkaround of this amazing campground
North Campground Loop
South Campground Loop
Important Details
Your hosts Michael, Travis, and Joe are in sites 61-63. If you are planning to camp, please reserve a site on that end of the campground loop (or anywhere else in the campground if you desire).
There is no additional charge for the event. You will need a Wisconsin State Park sticker or other admission to enter the campground.
Please note that due to the overwhelming demand for the POTA campout, there are a limited number of campsites still available for this event. All of the site east of the bay on the north loop are all POTA campers. The remaining sites in the campground are on the west side of the bay and are a mix of POTA and non POTA campers. As we get closer to the date, I imagine people will drop out and sites will become available. If you are interested on being on a waitlist, please email me via the contact form and I can notify you if I hear of a participant dropping out or a site opening up.
If you are planning to attend, Please email Michael, KB9VBR, via the contact form or kb9vbr@jpole-antenna.com. Let me know your site number if you are camping, or give me a heads up if you are coming out for the day.
There is a modern shower house with flush toilets in the campground. It should be open yet on the first weekend of October. Vault toilets are available.
This is a family friendly event. Alcohol is permitted in accordance to state park rules. We only request that you conduct yourself in an appropriate manner.
This is not a Parks on the Air sanctioned event, you are responsible for your own actions. Event hosts assume no liability.
A quest for the best hamburgers turns into a DX rich afternoon at a seldom activated park: New Wood State Wildlife Area (POTA K-4318) near Merrill, Wisconsin
Thank you to Patreon member Mike Radzicki for supplying the book: Thousand-Miler: Adventures Hiking the Ice Age Trail https://amzn.to/3s5s1xr
As a bonus, patrons can view the full, unedited phone contacts for this Parks on the Air activation. Visit my page on Patreon for details: https://www.patreon.com/kb9vbrantennas
I do return QSL, if you made a contact with me and would like a QSL, please send me one. Return postage not necessary, but always appreciated. As they say, KB9VBR is ‘good in the book.
Links may be affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. This does not affect the price you pay.
I’ve been using this window screen as a ground network for six months now. Is there something better out there? My viewers say there is, so meet the new magic carpet: Faraday cloth.
Window Screen Antenna Ground Plane: Video: https://youtu.be/UadUg5H8KO8 (This is the video that started the whole ground screen revolution).
About six months ago, Dave KZ9V and I demonstrated how a simple piece of aluminum window screen can be used as an effective ground network for a vertical antenna. The screen offers similar performance as conventional ground mounted wire radials, but it has the advantage of being easier to deploy and taking up less space than wires. Suffice to say, the concept has pretty much taken the amateur radio portable operation world by storm. Countless hams have tested the window screen and it’s working for them.
The downside of window screen is that it can be hard to roll out, it’s a bit stiff, and when rolled up it takes up more physical space in the back of your vehicle. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a material that was flexible, lightweight, and folds up into a tiny package.
But I love it when someone takes an idea and finds a way to make it better. And recently I’ve started seeing many hams that are into portable operations using a new material as their ground network. This material is lightweight, folds into a small package and offers equivalent performance as a window screen. This magical material is known as faraday cloth.
What is faraday cloth? Faraday cloth, also known as faraday fabric or EMP fabric, is a conductive fabric material with strands of copper, silver, and nickel threads woven into it. The purpose of this cloth is to block electrical charges and EMF or electromagnetic frequency radiation. It works on the principle of the Faraday Cage.
Michael Faraday was a 19th century scientist dabbling in electricity and electromagnetism. He discovered that static electricity resided only on the exterior of a charged conductor and had no influence on the interior of the conductor. This shielding effect led to the invention of the Faraday cage, a metal screened structure that blocks electromagnetic radiation and radio frequency radiation.
This cloth uses the same concept, with metal threads, it creates an impervious surface to electromagnetic radiation. EMF sensitive objects wrapped or sealed within the cloth should be protected by RF radiation like an electromagnetic pulse. I’m not going to question the effectiveness of the cloth in that regard as that’s not the topic of this video.
But the one thing the cloth is good at is being used as a conductor. Running a continuity tester across the cloth, you see it is a conductor, and it presents a minimal amount of impedance. That means it could be used in the same manner as a window screen as a ground network for your vertical antennas.
To verify that, I spread out the cloth, set my antenna base on it, and deployed my vertical antenna. I’ll also check the SWR, impedance, and resonance for the 15, 20, and 40 meter bands.
But there is a downside to the cloth. It is significantly more expensive than aluminum window screen. My 36×84 inch roll of screen was under $10 and this 43×108 inch piece of cloth is about $32. Granted you get a little more material, but that’s three times the price. The cloth, being lightweight, tends to blow around in the wind. You may want to add grommets to the corners to stake it down, or have some weights ready to keep it blowing away.
Finally, I did some WSPR tests comparing wire radials, aluminum screen, and faraday cloth. Crunching the numbers, I found the differences between the three to be minimal and all within the margin of error. WSPR tests seem to confirm that you won’t be losing any performance between conventional wire radials and the faraday cloth. I think that’s great news, but how does it perform on the air? For that, I took a road trip to my favorite POTA spot and put the faraday cloth on the air.
As a bonus, patrons can view the full, unedited phone contacts for this Parks on the Air activation. Visit my page on Patreon for details: https://www.patreon.com/kb9vbrantennas
I do return QSL, if you made a contact with me and would like a QSL, please send me one. Return postage not necessary, but always appreciated. As they say, KB9VBR is ‘good in the book.’
Do you have a favorite? I know I do. Stick with me as I count down the top ten most popular ham radio videos of 2023
Looking at the numbers for 2023, I published 102 videos and hosted 15 livestreams last year. At a rate of about two a week, I can’t believe I’ve kept up that aggressive production schedule. All that content adds up to 1.6 million views with over 123 thousand hours of watch time. That’s pretty amazing but I always feel it’s you the viewer I need to thank.
Because I couldn’t do it without you and I’m thankful for your continued support of this channel. I always feel I have the best viewers as their comments are insightful and I’m not plagued with those sad hams that every other channel bemoans. This quality level of viewer gives me the incentive to continue on and I’ll maintain my schedule of producing high quality videos at a rate of about twice a week.
With that being said, let’s look at the top ten videos for the last year. One subject dominated this year. I think we can all guess that it was the window screen ground network or magic carpet videos. Four of those videos made the top ten list and accounted for over 15% of my viewer traffic. Those were some real heavy hitters. But without further adoo, here are the top ten amateur radio videos for 2023.
As I said, the magic carpet videos have been the runaway hit this year. Starting off the list at number 10 is this one where Dave, KZ9V shows how you can use a couple of window screens to turn your 40 meter end fed half wave antenna into an 80 meter quarter wave radiator.
Digital operations were never my strong suit as I always found it putzy in the field. The Digirig digital interface totally changed that and now I love adding FT8 and the other digital modes to my parks on the air activations. This video shows you how easy it can be for you to do the same.
I love my Shark HF sticks as a fast setup antenna. This is especially true in the winter months when I don’t want to spend a lot of time tuning and adjusting my antenna. In this video I show you how you can get two more bands out of your shark sticks for just pennies.
2023 must be the year of the vertical antenna. Wolf River released their Sporty 40, Chameleon announced a loaded vertical, Rez Antenna Systems released the Ranger 80, a super durable high quality alternative to the Wolf River Silver Bullet 1000. I demonstrate the Ranger 80 in this video.
People love gear haul video and I had a particularly good haul at the recent Fox Cities Amateur Radio Clubs hamfest where I found an awesome FT-817 QRP transceiver setup.
I get so many questions on what I use out in the field for transceiver, antenna, battery, and accessories. This video breaks down my current HF transceiver kit.
The window screen ground plane is such a success that some hams asked if Faraday cloth, a metallized fabric used for electro magnetic protection, could be used as a ground network. The short answer is yes, and this video proves it.
Just a week ago I released a video on a 10 meter J-Pole antenna, but it was too new to be counted in this years list. Last year’s 10 meter antenna, a dipole you can make for just a few bucks checked in with over 25,000 views this years
After two years of easing us into this, the date has finally come for amateur radio operators to do exposure calculations for their antenna transmission systems. The FCC rule change isn’t onerous, but it sure raised a lot of questions. This video shows you how to do it.
The original magic carpet video is the runaway best video of this past year with over 117,000 views in its first 30 days and 160,000 total views for the year. It’s an old concept, but it has totally revolutionized portable operations with its fast vertical antenna setup. I’ve gotten some pretty amazing contacts using the window screen as a ground network and I know other hams are using it with great success.
So there you go, the top ten amateur radio videos of 2023. Did your favorite make the list? Let me know what you think in the comments below. You can also find a playlist of the top ten videos in the description below.
Not mentioned in this top ten list are my Parks on the Air activation videos. For those I decided to do a little montage of all the great scenery that appeared in those videos. That video will be released next week.
Here are some plans for the coming year. We’re in the middle of season 11, and I have some really exciting antenna reviews that are coming out in the next few weeks, Dave and I will be mobiling for the Minnesota and Wisconsin QSO parties, so expect those videos in February and March and of course Hamvention is coming up in May and I will be in attendance, so save that date.
Along with that you can expect more Parks on the Air activation videos, product reviews, ham radio how toos, and our monthly livestream. And of course the normal cast of characters will appear: Joe, Dave, and Travis for some wacky adventures.
But I think the biggest addition this year will be more web based content. I’m not one to put all my eggs in one basket so more blog articles and written content will be featured on my website.
Is there a topic you’d love to see, Let me know and I’ll add it to the list.
This was a busy weekend. Two hamfests and two POTA parks in two days. First hitting Ham Radio Outlet’s Superfest on Saturday and then beeline to Belvidere Illinois, near Rockford, for the Chicago FM Club’s Radio Expo. To make driving easy, we took off Friday afternoon and drove towards Milwaukee, spending the night at the Kettle Moraine State Forest (POTA K-4352)
As a bonus, patrons can view the full, unedited phone contacts for this Parks on the Air activation. Visit my page on Patreon for details: https://www.patreon.com/kb9vbrantennas
I do return QSL, if you made a contact with me and would like a QSL, please send me one. Return postage not necessary, but always appreciated. As they say, KB9VBR is ‘good in the book.
Dutch Oven Pizza Cold ferment dough (make a day ahead) 240 g all purpose flour (King Arthur AP) 170 g water 1/2 tsp yeast 3/4 tsp kosher salt 1 tbsp olive oil
Mix dough ingredients with rubber splatula, and then knead by pulling and folding dough four times every 15 minutes over a one hour period. The dough should become quite elastic during this time period. Place in refrigerator and let ferment overnight.
Take out dough 1-2 hours before cooking to warm and rise slightly. Work dough into a 12 inch circle on parchment paper. Add sauce, cheese, pepperoni, mushrooms, etc.
Place in 425 degree dutch oven. Turn oven halfway through cooking process to reduce hot spots on the bottom. Cook for 20-25 minutes until done.
Timestamp 00:00 Introduction 00:51 20 meter activation of Kettle Moraine State Forest 08:18 Dutch Oven Pizza and FT8 09:14 Two Hamfests in two days 10:08 Ham Radio Outlet Superfest 11:10 Meat Sweats 11:42 20 meter activation of Havenwoods State Forest 14:35 K-5579 activation recap 15:39 Camping at Radio Expo 16:16 Radio Expo hamfest 17:57 Thank you to the Ham Radio Outdoors community
We travel to far northwest Wisconsin, spending Labor Day weekend at Amnicon Falls State Park (POTA K-1436). Unfortunately a heat wave gripping the midwest follows us north. Will we escape the heat, or will Lake Superior fail to cool us down.
Amnicon Falls State Park, near Superior Wisconsin features a geologic anomaly called the Douglass Fault. More than 500 million years ago, ancient basalts pushed upwards and broke through the younger sandstone, creating a rift. It is most pronounced at this point along the Amnicon river where you see the black volcanic rock above the falls and brown sandstone below it.
As a bonus, patrons can view the full, unedited phone contacts for this Parks on the Air activation. Visit my page on Patreon for details: https://www.patreon.com/kb9vbrantennas
I do return QSL, if you made a contact with me and would like a QSL, please send me one. Return postage not necessary, but always appreciated. As they say, KB9VBR is ‘good in the book.
Timestamp 00:00 Ammicon Falls State Park 00:50 74 foot random wire end fed antenna 01:10 20 meter phone activation of K-1436 04:28 40 Meter phone activation of K-1436 07:32 William A Irvin 08:53 Now’s not the time for selfies 10:04 20 meter activation of Amnicon Falls 13:18 17 meter phone activation 15:43 Fish and FT8 16:53 Morning and recap
Gabil’s GRA-7350TC is a compact vertical antenna that is designed for portable operations. The antenna itself is relatively lightweight and consists of three componants: a 102 inch telescoping whip, an adjustable section with internal loading coil, and an additional coil for the 80 meter band. You can also add an option compact portable tripod to complete the set. I previously used the Gabil system last fall and was not terribly impressed by it’s performance. Either the antenna was being lackluster or the bands weren’t in my favor.
I decided to give the antenna another shot. I like how the GRC-7350tc is compact and my hope is that it will be a foundational element of my growing QRP kit. As I’ve been used to running the full 1/4 wave whip on 20 meters and above, I think my expectations have been set pretty high in how the Gabil is to perform. But I gave it another shot.
November 24, 2023, the day after Thanksgiving, is known as black Friday to the rest of the world, but being self employed, the boss (me) gave me the afternoon off. I used the time to give the Gabil another test and to activate one of our newer POTA entities: K-9806 Mountain-Bay State Trail.
Mountain Bay State Trail
The Mountain-Bay State Trail runs for 83 miles from the western terminus at Weston, Wisconsin eastward to Green Bay. As it’s name implies, it is to connect Rib Mountain in the center of the state to the Green Bay near Lake Michigan. This corridor is an old Chicago and Northwestern rail line, which makes for a easy and beautiful ride. I like to set up at a trailhead in Hatley, Wisconsin in the Marathon County Public Library’s Hatley branch parking lot. At this point the Mountain-Bay intersects with the Ice Age National Scenic Trail (POTA K-4238) for a twofer.
It is getting chilly so I’ve switched to operating out of the vehicle. My preferred setup is to put the Yaesu FT-881 on the dashboard of the vehicle and sit in the passenger seat so I’m not encumbered by the steering wheel of the car. For an antenna I’ll be running the Gabil GRC-7350TC vertical. The library is closed today so I have a practically empty parking lot to work with. The antenna was set up about 15 feet away from the car on the edge of the parking lot. Instead of using the window screen ground, I used 8 16 foot ground radial wires. The manufacturer recommend 4 10 meter wires, but I’ve had better luck with more, shorter radials, so I put my proven radial bundles to work. First up, the 15 meter band.
Tuning the Gabil is a bit finicky. Moving the coil slider up and down, you can easily miss your mark, so it takes very small movements once you are in the ballpark to find the perfect spot. On the 15 meter band I was able to get the SWR down to about 1.44:1, which was good enough for me. I’m not one to fiddle until it’s perfect, so if it is in the neighborhood of good, I’m fine with that.
Activation
The solar forecast for that day called for active conditions, I believe there was a solar storm predicted for later in the weekend but Friday had good numbers with the SFI over 170 and the A of 8 and the K of 2. As I started out on 15 meters, the conditions were slow with a lot of fading, but things kind of settled out and I consistently received good signal reports. I had a good, long run on 15 meters, about 110 contacts. No DX but plenty of Canadien stations. Since the band was hot, I decided to move up to 10 meters.
With conditions like this, we need to spend more time seeking out contacts on 10 meters. I had a bit of concern with tuning the antenna as an 102 inch whip is close to a 1/4 wave on 10 meters, so I anticipated that I wouldn’t need to use much coil. And sure enough, I was hardly at the -1- setting on the laser engraved scale. I got the SWR to about 1.5:1. Nothing special, but good enough. Calling on 10 meters, I racked up 15 contacts in about a half hour. Not like the run on 15 meters, but still respectable.
Since I was doing well, I decided to give 12 meters a try. Futzing with the coil, I got a match and we soon rolling. I picked up 8 contacts in about 8 minutes, including two stations: VE1BQC and KR5EEE that I worked earlier in the day on 15 meters. I also got an interloper that waltzed through my frequency and let me know ‘contesting’ isn’t allowed on the WARC bands. Fortunately POTA isn’t a contest so I didn’t give him the time of day.
To finish things up, I dropped down to 40 meters. I had activated the Mountain-Bay trail two week prior and had a long 200 contact run on 20 meters, so I felt like this time I could skip that band and concentrate on some of the others. Getting a match on 40 meters was a little more difficult. It could be partly because the coil has a higher Q on that band, or maybe my shorter radials are to blame, but I could only get it to about 2:1. That’s a bit on the edge for my tastes, but 2:1 match is only an 11% power loss and as long as the radio doesn’t complain too much, I’ll go with it.
Let’s just say that the losses weren’t much of an issue as I had no problem, at 3:00 in the afternoon local time (21:00z) in attracting a crowd. I ran for 15 minutes and got 25 stations with mostly good signal reports. I was at about 7207 KHz, so by this time the international broadcasters were starting to filter in. Which was fine as the sun was getting low in the sky. So I packed it up.
Conclusion
All in all, I netted 157 contacts on the Mountain-Bay State Trail that afternoon. Not too bad of a haul on an antenna that I initially panned in my review. Using the Gabil GRC-7350TC again, I have have thoughts on its performance. First off, the antenna works better on the upper bands than the lower ones. I hit the time of day right with my 40 meter activation, later in the afternoon as the sun was starting to set. The broadcasters hadn’t totally overrun the band and being a holiday weekend, there were people looking for me. 15 meters and above, I can really see this antenna excelling.
Second, a good ground network reallly is key for this antenna. You are at a compromise with the lack of radiator, so a substantial radial pattern will really make a difference. A greater number of shorter radials will actually increase your gain on the upper bands than fewer, longer, radials will. This article by Rudy Severns, N6LF, explains why that is the case. I’m going to have to experiment using the window screen with this antenna. The Gabil tripod is non-conductive so jumper wires are necessary to get good continuity with ground mesh. But I will give it a shot and report my results.
I’m not ready to dismiss the Gabil antenna, but won’t quite throw my full-throated support to it. I think it fills a portable operation niche and will take it places where my 1/4 vertical and large metal tripod are too cumbersome to travel.
K-9806 Mountain Bay State Trail 15m contacts with GRC-7350tc antenna
K-9806 Mountain Bay State Trail 10m contacts with GRC-7350tc antenna
K-9806 Mountain Bay State Trail 40m contacts with GRC-7350tc antenna
Mountain Bay State Trail passes through the communities of Wausau, Weston, Hatley, Norrie, Eland, Bowler, Shawano, Bonduel, Pulaski, Anston, Howard, Green Bay. A State Trail Pass needed for bicycle and horseback riding
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