I made over 1000 contacts and spent a month working with the Chameleon PRV or Portable Resonant Vertical Antenna kit. The core of the PRV is the Multi Configuration Coil or MCC. This adjustable coil, when paired with an appropriate length whip, will operate on any frequency between 6 and 80 meters. The PRV kit is well suited for outdoor and portable operations such as SOTA, Summits on the Air or POTA, Parks on the Air.

Chameleon PRV (Portable Resonant Vertical Kit):
https://chameleonantenna.com/shop-here/ols/products/cha-mcc

A Chameleon PRV POTA Kit was provided in exchange for this video.

PRV kit breakdown

The core component of the PRV or portable resonant vertical kit is the Multi Configuration Coil. The PRV is a base loaded antenna and the multi configuration coil, when paired with an appropriate sized whip, allows you to achieve a resonant match for any frequency between 6 and 80 meters.

The coil is constructed out of anodized aluminum outer body with a delrin center and stainless steel and silver clad copper wire. At first glance you will say this is Chameleon’s knockoff of the Wolf River coil, but i believe it is more appropriate to compare the PRV kit and multi configuration coil with the Super Antenna MP1. The MCC is a more refined and elevated version of the MP1 coil, with the addition of being manufactured in the USA.

The coil itself is fairly lightweight, weighing in at just under 16 ounces and fully collapsed, it is 12 ½ inches long. At the base of the coil is a 3/8×24 male thread for attaching it to a base. Their is an SO-239 or UHF female connection for the coax, a thumb screw to lock the outer body of the coil to the center. This will keep it from slipping after you have a match. And finally, a 3/8×24 female receptacle for a whip. The choice of whip you use will determine the frequency range of the coil.

Chameleon sells the PRV kit in three different packages, the MCC coil by itself, the SOTA, or summits on the air light kit, and the POTA, parks on the air heavy kit.

Assembling the kit

Assembling your PRV or portable resonant vertical antenna is pretty straight forward. If you have any experience with other base loaded verticals this will seem familiar.

First off is the base or antenna support. The PRV kit comes with a ground spike you can push into the ground to support the antenna. If you are working with soft earth, this stainless steel spike will the coil and up to the 17 foot whip. But, if you are like me, and it’s winter, or if you are operating on hard earth, or a durable surface like asphalt or concrete, the spike won’t work. The POTA heavy kit solves that with the UCM or universal clamp mount can be attached to anything with a lip, like a picnic table or bbq grill. The coil and whip can be deployed from that.

For my testing I preferred to use their new carbon fiber tripod. This is a lightweight portable tripod with extendable and adjustable legs. You can splay the legs out and it will easily support the coil and the PRV standard whip in most weather conditions. It will also support the 17 foot whip as long as it is not windy. If there is anything brisker than a gentle breeze, you run the risk of the tripod tipping over. Sand bags or weights on the legs will help prevent that. The tripod has a 3×8 x 16 course thread and ¼ inch male thread. These are standard tripod threads and the PRV kit comes with a ¼ inch to ⅜ inch fine thread adapter. You will use this adapter with the Chameleon tripod or any other tripod you wish to use.

Tuning

Tuning, or finding a good match, on your PRV can be easy, or it can be a challenge, it all depends on how you approach the process. I’ve had situations where the SWR in my vertical antenna drops down to nothing, and other times when it was a total bear and I can’t get lower than 2:1. I’m going to tell you right now, it’s not you, and often it is the location or ground conditions the antenna is on. That means if you are going to run with base loaded vertical antennas, you just need to accept that sometimes you won’t get perfect SWR, and in reality, anything less than 2:1 really is ok. Fortunately, Chameleon, with the PRV offers a fair amount of guidance in their user guide on how to get a good match on the various bands.

My experiences

So what is my experience with the Chameleon PRV or portable resonant vertical antenna? I’m going to say that I am very impressed. Honestly, this isn’t a one off review of the antenna, but instead my opinions after using for a full month and making over 1000 contacts with it. There are some things that I like, and some that I don’t.

First off, construction is top notch. This antenna is made in the USA and it shows with quality components. The multi configuration coil is well built, it is designed to handle up to 500 watts single sideband and 200 watts digital modes. I find that the construction of the coil and whip would support those claims. The documentation is excellent, it goes into great detail on how to tune and adjust the antenna, which is outstanding. The system is extensible, you can use it with the 58 inch whip, but I believe it really shines when you combine it with either the 9 foot Mil-Whip or 17 foot stainless collapsible whip. The 34 foot wire winder radial is innovative, but I think its also the weakest part of the package.

The problem I have with the wire winder radial is the weight. When you suspend it on a line from the elevated tripod to another support, you will need either a substantial tripod or to guy everything down as the weight of the winder on the line will pull the whole thing down. Since the ground was frozen during my test period, I couldn’t guy things, so I struggled with deploying the elevated radial system.

But the elevated radial system also seemed to offer the best performance overall, so the effort to put it up is worth it. Properly deployed, I found it easy to get a match with the elevated radial as you weren’t subject to the vagaries of ground conditions.

But I really like that the kit is extensible. You can add additional radials for better ground performance. I found that to really be a benefit for the 20 and 40 meter bands. You can use it with the magic carpet. I had a difficult time getting a good match with the faraday cloth and the 58 inch whip, but the ground screen worked great with the longer whips. And speaking of longer whips, I think the PRV is at its best when you use it with the 17 foot stainless or 9 foot mil-whips. I had no problems putting out great signals QRP, with only 5 watts of power using the long whips.

Bonus content and activation videos using the Chameleon MCC coil and the PRV kit are available to my patrons. Please visit my page on Patreon for details: https://www.patreon.com/kb9vbrantennas

Timestamp
00:00:00 Chameleon PRV Portable Resonant Vertical Antenna kit
00:00:57 CHA MCC Multi Configuration Coil
00:02:38 PRV SOTA Light and POTA Heavy Kits
00:03:36 Deploying the PRV POTA Heavy Kit with Extensions
00:05:52 Ground Spike, UCM, Carbon Fiber Tripod
00:07:55 PRV SOTA Light Kit Deployment
00:09:15 Tuning the MCC Multi Configuration Coil
00:11:01 Elevated deployment with the wire winder radial
00:12:35 My experience with the Chameleon CHA PRV POTA Kit

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The post Everything you wanted to know about Chameleon’s PRV Vertical Antenna Kit appeared first on KB9VBR Antennas.

(February 14, 2024) In the social forums, I often see the question posed by a newer POTA enthusiast asking if anyone does any Parks on the Air activations on the 80 meter band. This is a great question, as 80 meters is excellent for getting those local and regional contacts and it often is a band that is needed if you are interested in your N1CC award. But there are certain challenges with that band and they are multiplied when you go portable.

Being at the top of the solar cycle, 80 meters is relegated to being a night time band. During the day the noise floor is just too high for the weaker signal of an activator to compete. This is often compounded by the highly compromised antennas we end up using on the lower bands. There’s a reason why 80 meter aficionados use amplifiers: it’s to overcome the limitations of band noise and antenna losses. To top all that off, many parks close in the evening hours, making it even more challenging to activate a park on that band.

With all the challenges of 80 meters, I found myself in a spot where I had the time and ability to do a late shift at a local park, Rib Mountain State Park (POTA K-1473).

Late shift for Parks on the Air purposes is defined when Zulu day (00:00) rolls over. Here in the midwest in the central time zone, we are 6 hours behind GMT, Zulu, or Universal Coordinated Time, so at 6:00 pm local time (7pm when daylight saving time begins) is the start of the new POTA day. This late evening activation period is affectionately called the Late Shift, as it happens during the evening hours and the contacts count towards the next local time day.

On February 14, Christine was flying back from a business conference and her plane was expected to arrive at 9:00pm. I could have stayed at home and snoozed on the couch before picking her up at the airport, or I could make myself useful and activate a park. Fortunately my favorite local park, Rib Mountain State Park, is only 15 minutes from the airport, so I could be out until 8:30 or so, get on the air, and make some late shift contact. I grabbed a quick dinner and traveled up the hill for a couple hours of late shift.

Setup

Being it was the evening, my plan was 40 and 80 meters, two bands I don’t operate much from the mountain and two that will have good performance after sunset. Being this is winter and the ski hill is operating, I knew that I would have some noise on the 40 meter band from the chair lifts. Checking the schedule, the hill was operating until 9:00pm. My only hope was that they wouldn’t be operating the lift on the far west side of the hill. If it was, my only recourse would be to operate digital on the 40 meter band as the chair lift noise all but blanks everything out.

Sure enough, when I got to the top of the hill, there was plenty of activity near the park entrance and the two large high speed lifts were running, but driving to the other end of the park, everything was dark. The parking area was unlit and the 3rd high speed lift was not in operation. Excellent! That meant 40 meter phone operation was on.

For My setup, I used the 213 inch whip paired with the Wolf River Coils Silver Bullet 1000 coil. I needed the extra length of the SB1000 for 80 meters, so that was the perfect choice. The longer whip meant that the coil would be somewhat efficient as I wouldn’t have to drop the collar all the way to the bottom to get a match. Sure enough, on 40 meters, I only needed about an inch or so of coil and on 80m, the collar was at about the 3/8 point, of just under half way down. I had both my window screen ground network and length of Faraday cloth (magic carpet), so I laid both down under the antenna to increase the surface area of my ground network. This was an excellent choice as the SWR on both 40 and 80 meters was under 1.5:1.

For transceiver, I put the FT-891 on the dash of the car, set the power of 50 watts, and started calling CQ on the 40 meter band.

The Activation

I was on the air 00:49 (6:49pm) and made my first contact 2 minutes later. To say that hunters weren’t looking for late shift activators is an understatement. For the next hour I averaged about 2 contacts a minute and racked up 95 contacts for the almost one hour period that I was on the air. Propagation was quite good and I easily worked stations on 40 meters that I often hear on 20 meters during the day, including a few west coast stations: California, Oregon, and Arizona.

Since the purpose of me being on the hill at night was 80 meters, and since I also had a hard deadline to keep, at 7:45pm I changed bands. At this time it has started snowing on the hill. We were expecting some rain/snow mix but the forecast said it would start after 9:00pm. Evidently it got here a little early as my ground screen and cloth was covered by a light dusting of snow. Moving the collar down to 80 meters, I got a good match, and the snow didn’t seem to affect anything. I was ready to rock and roll.

Band conditions on 80 meters was excellent that evening. My noise floor was about S2, which is amazing, and many of the hunters I got on 40 meters followed me down to 80 for another contact on that band. I operated for 40 minutes and got 26 in the log. A little slower pace than 40 meters, but expected with the shorter coverage the 80 meter band offered. By this time is was 8:30pm and my wife was expected to land in 30 minutes.

But as I mentioned, it was snowing, and that same snow delayed her flight out of Minneapolis. I now had about an extra half hour before I needed to be at the airport. There was only one reasonable thing to do, work another band. I needed 30 meters at the park for my N1CC, so I retuned the coil, hooked up the Digirig, and got 8 30 meter FT8 contacts in the log. Signals were really good on 30 m that evening and the passband was full of activity. I secured at 8:54pm. According to Flight Aware, she would arrive at 9:20, so I had just enough time to pack up, head down the hill, and get to the airport.

Conclusion

Late shift on Rib Mountain was a lot of fun. Getting down off the hill in the snow was not. By this time it was snowing pretty good, but taking things easy and the confidence of the Outback’s all wheel drive made the day. I arrived at the airport at 9:24pm and only had to wait a minimal amount of time while Chris got her luggage.

There is no camping on Rib Mountain, but the park is open until 11:00pm. Until this point I never really thought much about going up there for a late shift activation, but with the results of this one, I certainly am going to do it again. The vertical with the SB1000 coil was an excellent choice and I feel adding the second screen to the ground network made a big difference for the low bands. I will certainly do that trick again when I use the vertical on 80 and even 40 meters.

I got 129 contacts that day: 95 on 40 meters, 26 on 80 meters, and 8 on 30 meters FT8.

K-1473 Rib Mountain State Park 40 meter Late Shift Phone contacts

K-1473 Rib Mountain State Park 80 meter Late Shift Phone contacts

Map visualization of contacts courtesy of qsomap.com

If you go

Rib Mountain State Park
149801 State Park Rd
Wausau, WI 54401
State Park Pass required
Park open 6:00am to 11:00pm

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