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

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

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.

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!

You can only take so much Florida sun in one day… gets might hot. So I found a fine alternative and perhaps set a historic way to use the Buddistick. Check out my Hammock Mobile operating site. Buddistick is on the support pole.

After the walk was completed, I  helped my friend, Matt KC8IWD align a newly received NorCal 40 with the Buddistick clamped on the balcony railing of our ministry’s prayer tower. Boyz n toyz…

73,

Kelly K4UPG

Ready, set, GO!!!

Hello CQ!

Watch out for my counterpoise!

Just one more qso before I quit...

Tweaking the new Norcal 40