I am almost embarassed to write this post. My goodness, you would think that this was my first ever attempt at a portable operation.
I got to Cotton Street Park an hour early 12:00 PM - 16:00 UTC. Plenty of time, right? As it turned out nothing could be farther from tbe truth. First off, let me introduce you to the spud eating tree.
I need to buy a yellow shirt with a black zig-zag stripe on it.
You've heard of Charlie Brown's kite eating tree, right? That tree right there, the one behind my car ate two of my antenna launcher bullets, or spuds if you will. Getting them up high and over a branch was no problem. Getting them to come down was another. No amount of jiggling and finagling the fishing line worked. In both cases, the fishing line ended up breaking with the spud still up in the tree. I only brought two with me, so it was on to another solution.
Next I tried putting up the Jackite in my PVC holder. I've done that literally dozens of times without a problem. Not today, my friends! I put it up twice ..... twice it fell down. The difference today was that I learned something. Wanting to keep the bottom of the Jackite as clean as possible, I put a cap on the bottom of the PVC so the Jackite would not touch dirt. The problem with that, I eventually figured out, is that the cap is rounded, and is thus, slippery The pipe needs to be uncapped at the bottom so the hard edge of the PVC can actually "bite" into the soil, creating a firm grip. Once I took the cap off the Jackite stayed up and stable with no problem.
In between that discovery and the failed attempts, I tried using my drive on mast holder to hold the Jackite upright. What a piece of garbage! It is so flimsy that the Jackite was actually causing the metal of the drive on part to bend! The next stop for that thing is a dumpster.
I eventually got everything set up and I was about to get on the air when another unwelcome surprise reared its nasty head. I got the chair, table, radio, key and earbuds all plugged in. All I had left to do was connect to the battery. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was going to use the big deep cycle battery to see how long it would last.
The medium sized battery is a 7 Ah. Underneath the plastic tub is another smaller 5 Ah.
From the photo you can see I ended up using one of my smaller batteries because the big battery was reading 0 Volts! It was just at 13.8V the other day and has not been hooked up to anything in the mean time. How a battery can lose all of its charge like that without blowing up or catching on fire is beyond me. This one did and is going to the metal recycling center in town next Saturday.
After all these fits and starts, I finally got on the air at 17:54 UTC and made contact with Dave AB9CA in Indiana. Scouring the 20 Meter band, it became apparent that signals were sparse and the signals that were present were way down in the mud. Even when I heard a station with a relatively strong signal, QSB made them disappear in a matter of seconds. I made four contacts in my first hour. I was shaking my head, because I thought that for all the trouble I went through, THIS is what my day is going to be like? I started the day with a personal goal of 40 QSOs. HAH! Put a pin in that balloon, baby!
However, at 19:00 UTC, it was like someone turned a switch on and propagation returned! The signals weren't terrific, but at least I was hearing and working people. At about 20:00 UTC, I switched over to 40 Meters and worked some stations there. Signals were much louder on 40 Meters and QSB wasn't quite so deep.
I shut down with about 20 minutes to go as I wasn't hearing anyone new and my CQs on 40 Meters dried up. I worked 21 stations in all. 18 Bees and 3 Five Watt stations. And I learned some things.
1: You can never have too much time to set up.
2: If it ain't broke don't fix it - me putting that bottom cap on my PVC mast holder caused much unnecessary aggravation.
3: You can never have enough juice. By the way, that smaller battery started the day at 13.2 Volts and I checked it again at the end and it was down to only 12.8 Volts. This one is a good one.
4: The EFRW antenna with 9:1 UNUN and the 41 foot radiator was the bomb! The KX3's autotuner had no problems providing a match on any band, 40 through 10 Meters. I would not hesitate to deploy it again as it gives me a few more band options than the PAR ENDFEDZ 40-20-10 can.
About 3:30 PM or 19:30 UTC, I heard a "thunk" off in the distance. The spud eating tree must have had too much to eat and puked up one of the spuds, either that, or maybe a squirrel knocked it down. Whatever, I'm minus only one spud. I'll have to go to Home Depot for some PVC and end caps in order to fabricate a few more spares.
Some photos from the day:
PVC with bottom end cap = bad. PVC without bottom end cap = good.
A panoramic shot of my Cotton Street Park location.
Two views of the set up. Nothing complicated here, unless I make it complicated!
Cant' see it well, but the EFRW went from the tree to the Jackite pole. I highlighted the Jackite in blue, the EFRW in red
Hey Moe! Hey Curly! Thanks for the help in setting up!
Where RBN spotters heard me. Colorado and Wisconsin were about as far west as I got for QSOs.
It got up to 90F, even in the shade. This Summer has been a hot one!
The neck fan got delivered yesterday and performed superbly. Between the fan and a thermal bottle of ice water, I was quite comfortable.
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