45F a bit of sun and a lot of wind! Today I escaped being selected for jury duty so opted to get the oil changed in my car! I called and my shop was not too busy and said, “come on down!” So I packed my 30m SST, BLT+ tuner and accessories and took off. Instead of sitting in the waiting area and reading out of date magazines and watching silly game shows, I walked out to the parking lot and threw some wire into a couple small trees. I only got the main 46 feet wire up about 15 feet on one end and sloped it through another small tree and out to my camping table. I ran a counterpoise of 23 feet to the same small tree and hooked up my trusty BLT+ tuner.

My Oil Change Parking Lot QTH for 30m

A quick tune found a couple week signals. I tuned the antenna a bit, called CQ with no luck, then heard a decent 579 signal calling CQ. Bill, NG3O in Columbia, MD replied and although I wasn’t strong (539) he thought he could copy me. He sure did a great job and we enjoyed a nice QSO for almost 30 minutes. Sure is pleasant to work a good fist without any QRM. He said I was his first Oil Change Parking Lot QSO.

A few minutes later, I connected with Rudy, W8RJW in Columbia, SC. He was a strong 589 and gave me a 559. We had a nice qso for several minutes too. It was a fun way to pass the time while I waited on my car maintenance to be done.

The band got pretty quiet afterwards and though I heard a few more stations, it was time to pull the plug, take down the wire and go home. I think I have figured out a new way to pass time when the opportunity is present. Hope you will give it a try too!

72,

Kelly K4UPG

Kelly demonstrates the strong arm method (aka sore arm)

Today a post by an unnamed fellow Polar Bear QRP op (and antenna tweaker) inspired me. His post about multiple sockets and yellow string hanging in the tree in his back yard generated a good bit of fun as others reminisced and told their own funny story about the perils of getting wire up into a tree.

So, in a followup to the favorite antenna poll of the last two weeks, I decided to open a poll to determine the QRP portable operator’s  favorite method of getting your portable antenna up in the tree.

Most of us have a sore arm or other memory as we learned our own preferred method… so here’s your chance. Vote for your favorite and leave a comment and share your antenna launching story.  Come on now… let it out!

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Almost time for another Polar Bear Moonlight Madness Event! Grrrrrrrrr! This coming weekend, Saturday 14 Nov 2009, Polar Bears will be clamoring for position in the ice field and slammin pawerful signals into the air. Bring a rig and join us.

K4UPG Bear pounding brass and gittin' ready for the PBMME!

K4UPG Bear #173 is excited because some other bears is gonna be gathering with the Central Florida QRP Group which is scheduled to meet that same day!  So come on out to the Cracker Barrel in Sanford, FL for some sammin pancakes or sumpin else at 0730 EDT breakfast time. If you cannot make the feeding, then meet up with the rest of us bears at Sylvan Lake Park in the A Pavillion area at around 0900 EDT. Ya’ll come, hear??? Grrrrrrrrr!

72,

Kelly K4UPG

Grrrrrrr! Brand new Polar Bear #173 ventured out to Lake Fredrica today to stir up some fellow PB’s on the air. Setting up the mini bac Delta Loop Beartenna went well and I started on 40m. The band was OK, but I couldn’t seem to raise any BSO’s with my fellow Polar Bears. After a few minutes I switched to 20m with my Wilderness Sierra and WOW! The band was full of California ops in some sort of contest. Most of them blew me away with their fast CW and very strong signals but it was good to hear so much cw activity and the band was pretty good.

I setup my trusty Buddistick for 30m and almost got a perfect SWR. My Wilderness SST on 30m was hearing a good bit of activity and I managed brief qso’s with fellow Polar Bear QRP members W05X and N9SKN despite pretty heavy QSB on both signals. I heard W6BBQ and WG0AT but could not get a reply when I called them.

A bit later the band opened to Europe and I also was hearing West Coast (California and Washington) stations. I came back to S57MU and he gave me a 559 into Slovenia! Not bad for 2.1 watts out and it was a good way to end a fun day.

Thanks to the Polar Bear QRP Group for allowing this baby bear to participate. I look forward to future portable events and I’ll keep workin’ on a super-duper Beartenna so I can hear ya’ll even better. Grrrrr!

PBMME Oct 09 portable site at Lake Fredrica Orlando, FL

Tuning for Bears on 30m

My project this week was a Ten Tec 1051 Noise Bridge. I used a Ten Tec enclosure and it all went together quickly and even worked on the first try! It is a sweet tool for tuning an antenna when using a tuner without putting a signal on the air. I think it will help me and my BLT+ find the sweet spot a good bit faster than doing it otherwise. In the future, I plan to upgrade it to a full RX bridge so I can do some measurements too. Here it is…

TT 1051 rear view

TT 1051 Noise Bridge simple front view

I took my radio with me to St Louis and tried my hand at Hotel Portable ops. The conference schedule did not allow me much time, but I did get a break one afternoon and took 30 min to play radio in the courtyard. I threw my Coleman Clothesline reel over a tree limb at about 15 feet and paid out about 30 feet of wire and placed about 16 feet of wire on the ground as a counterpoise. It loaded well on 40m with my BLT+ and I worked three stations in about 20 min. Not bad!

St Louis Hotel Portable Airport Hilton

St Louis Airport Hilton Loading the Window frame!

After returning home, the weather in Orlando was great and I hit the nearby lake park for some antenna testing with a Mini Bac in various configurations. I was really happy with the Delta Loop which loaded well on 20m and 40m. This antenna is a keeper and I’ll be doing more testing and learning about how to deploy it.

Lake Fredrica operating position

Buddistick deployed for comparison

Here is the Delta Loop! Can you see the 26 gauge teflon coated wire? Here is a link to an outlined view of the Delta loop. CLICK HERE.  The Red line is the feed line which is twisted 1 turn per foot and held together with masking tape. Pretty slick. The “insulator” I used is also masking tape, as are the corner point markers and peak of the Delta. As I measured it I stuck a small piece of tape on the wire.

Mini Bac antenna in 14MHz Delta Loop Configuration

At last! We finally had a break in the weather and did not have thunderstorms and rain all weekend! Although it was hot, it was really nice to be out byLake Fredrica and set up antennas again. My trusty slingshot worked well and I managed to get a line over a couple limbs on the tall pine trees for a 40m dipole up at 40 feet. The dipole was fed with 300 ohm twinlead and loaded up well with my BLT+

Can you see that dipole in between the pine trees?

Kept moving to stay in the shade!

20 ft Jackite pole and 44 ft doublet first test setup

Dr Pepper and CW QSO's what a treat!

My wife saved the day by bringing me a cold Diet Dr. Pepper after I’d been baking in the Florida sun for about 4 hours. What a treat that was, eh?

Band was not too great with a lot of QRN and some SSB and RTTY QRM later in the day. My 20 ft Jackite pole and 44 doublet as an inverted vee with the ends 3 ft off the ground was disappointing test. My BLT+ would not tune it on any band I tried.

I posted that result to QRP-L reflector and the MQFD list and got a good number of replies. Seems that anything less than 6 feet above ground makes the 44 ft doublet difficult to tune! So I’ll be trying different configuration the next time out and see how it goes.

Maybe I’ll have my new halfwave end fed tuner completed soon and have some time to test it out and report those results soon too. I love this QRP stuff!

My hat made a good sunshade for the Sierra

Sylvan Lake Park CFL QRP Group getting setup

The Central Florida QRP Group meeting will be at The Cracker Barrel, Saturday, September 12th at 7:30 AM on Hickman Drive, Sanford.   The Cracker Barrel is very close to the I4 and Hwy 46 junction, 1 light to the east (toward Sanford and turn East(left), down about a block on the left).

MAP to Cracker Barrel Click Here

Please bring your “Show and Tell” if you like. At approximately 9:00 AM we will reconvene at The Sylvan Lake Park, Picnic area “A” to setup our QRP rigs and operate a bit.  The Sylvan Lake park is on Lake Markham Road off Hwy 46 approximately 4 miles West of the I4/Hwy 46 Junction.

MAP to Sylvan Lake Park Click Here

If you can’t make the breakfast come join us at the Sylvan Lake Park. We will plan future activities of the CFQG.
We look forward to seeing you there.

72

Jim Diggs
K4AHO

Been out a bit with a nice event held in Naples, Florida by the ministerial association that ordained me. We had a great time meeting old friends and making some new friends. Our hotel was extremely nice and we had a 5th floor room with balcony to play qrp portable from too! The weather was not very good and we did not get a lot of air time, but had fun experimenting with my Buddistick on 40 and 20m.

Not a bad view from our 5th floor perch, eh?

The counterpoise was dropped over the edge to a conveniently placed palm tree that was just right for the 40m length and a bit short for 20m ops. Next time I’ll take my bicycle flag and use it to keep the counterpoise a bit further out from the building and operate more of an “L” configuration to see how that works.

I picked up 200′ of nice 26 gauge Teflon insulated wire at the Ft. Pierce (FL) hamfest and have worked on a couple new portable antenna options. Recently I got a great deal on Ebay and acquired 4 Coleman camping clothesline reels which I put to use making a couple end fed halfwaves and counterpoise.

Matching XFMR and 3 of my antenna reels

I’m still tweaking on my EFHW Tuner modeled after the SLT+ but using RF chokes rather than toroids. So far, I’m not satisfied with it, but perhaps it is my novice building skills that created the problem. hi hi. So I am working on a couple other tuners. I found a very interesting lite weight idea on WA5BDU’s website. So of course, I had to try it.

WA5BDU 40m EFHW matching XFMR

The rain came shortly after I got setup at the nearby lake park, but I was able to get a 1:7 to 1 SWR without any tweaking of counterpoise or antenna length. So with some time to tweak I think I should be able to improve on this tunerless matching transformer. YAHOO… stay tuned.

I have been like a kid on Christmas Eve thinking about this event. Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate and I chose to stay closer to home than originally planned. In this low power (QRP) ham radio event, the Bumblebees were to hike, bike, or travel via water to the spot they would operate. As bee #86, I donned my backpack (overly packed by the way) and headed to the lakeside park in our housing development which is about 3/4 mile from my home. It was about 90+ degrees Farenheit at 11 am when I set out to my site.

The sky looked good, except the clouds were building to the Southwest… So I setup camp and decided to use the shelter rather than be out in the open in case rain came. Good choice!

So I setup my Buddistick for 20m using my MFJ 207 Analyzer. I soon had the SWR down to 1.3/1 and after hoisting the antenna into the air on my semi-official BEE colored painter’s pole it went down to less than 1.2 to 1! Good enough for this ham! Signals were a bit down and there was a good bit of QRN which would get worse. Since it was early, I ate lunch and watched the herons work the shallows of the lake while I waited for the 1 PM starting time.

Bumblebee 86 on the way out~ note the BEE colored hat

Buddistick up and away

She's up and ready to rock n roll

From the bottom looking up!

My Rig setup. Nice view, eh?

Unfortunately, the weather decided to roll in and 15 minutes  after the start I made my first qso. Then the lightning sirens went off and I pulled down the antenna and played it safe. After two hours of watching the rain and lightning show and a few herons on the hunt for food, I got a window of good weather and put the station back on the air.  Two more qso’s in the next 20 minutes and then the rain and lightning moved back in on me.

Here comes the lightning and rain again!

So with only 39 minutes to go, I decided to roll up the coax and trek home. I had lots of fun despite the challenges. I’ll be there next year, the Lord willing!

Definitely would prefer some on air time, but bad weather is threatening to roll into our area, so I am starting another project. This time it is a SLT+ tuner for end fed half wave use. Since I learned to be more careful in the setup phase when I built the NoGAWatt power meters, this project will attempt a bit more pre-planning.

Here’s the rough layout for the 4 States QRP Group new enclosure that I hope to use for this project.

Looks like it just might fit

Stay tuned for the next update… for now, I have to replace a battery on my Taurus in 95 degree heat.