The last few days our local news was full of stories about the cold weather that gripped Orlando. I signed up for a shift to operate special station K3Y/4 for the Straight Key Century Club (SKCC) as part of the celebration of the 4th year anniversary of our group. That meant going outside and setting up antennas and sitting out in the sleet and cold rain that was falling. YIKES!
Tough sending even with fingerless gloves
Good thing I have lived in cold weather before. I had to dig a bit, but found my long johns, thermal tee shirt and other cold weather gear. My favorite bear coat, Purdue stocking cap and fingerless gloves finished off my official Polar Bear outfit. I did my duty but nary an answer to my endless CQ’s on 20m, then 40m and eventually 30m! Two hours of calling and zip to show for it. I’ll be back… ya’ cannot discourage a POLAR BEAR QRP Op that easily!
Having fun playing radio in the backyard at my in-laws! Extra fun since I cannot keep an antenna up full time so being able to get on the air when I can is a treat.
Entered my first SKCC SKS Sprint and the rain drove me to cover but managed to make a decent first showing for a QRP guy with rusty CW.
I put together a W3EDP antenna of 84 feet and a parallel 17 foot countepoise that sloped up to about 35 foot high branch. I used #24 teflon wire and some 1/4 in plastic tubing cut into 7 in pieces which I taped to the wires as spacer. Lightweight and nearly invisible in the air makes it a good candidate for QRP portable ops. It’s long, but seems to hear well and worked even after I bent it into an L when I had to get under cover from the rain! Hope to do more testing with this one.
Earning my Polar Bear wings by being out in the COLD. This Florida Bear ain’t used to below 40 degree wx. Brrrr and Grrrrrr!
Nite Ops from the backyard
Nite Ops from the Deck
Several Polar Bears gathered at Lake Sylvan Park, Sanford, Florida and heated up the airwaves with their beary strong QRP signals! Grrrrrrr! Who says global warming is upon us?
Central Florida QRP Group members, Jim Diggs K4AHO, Don McBride WA3ZBJ, and Kelly McClelland K4AHO are also known as PB#185, PB #183 and PB #173 and were looking for BSO’s with fellow Polar Bear QRP Club members. We are still working on some of the other guys including Wally Crew KG4LAL, Matt W1MDG, and Larry to get PB numbers and get involved with the pack on the ice floes of Central Florida.
The Novembear Polar Bear Moonlight Madness Event turned out to be a fun time. Our group had our traditional very early breakfast and headed out to Sylvan Lake Park in Sanford, FL. Our normal pavillion was already taken so we moved to the B (for BEAR) area and setup shop. It was a bit more difficult to setup antennas but we managed to get 3 verticals, a 40m inverted V and a mini-bac delta loop into the air. We also managed to stomp on each other with cross mod from time to time.
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
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
The antenna restricted condo dweller (me) continues to look for a viable alternative to get on the air without having to go outside (think rain) and setup and tear down a portable antenna. I built a new frame for the magnetic loop and tried a few different styles of feed and resonating.
Ended the day with a 1.12 swr on 30m with this setup. I tried (fingers crossed) a dual section polyvaricon cap that I had on hand. It is mounted on a lexan square just below the gap on the mag loop at the top. After some time spent with an exciter loop, I decided to try the gamma match approach and regrouped. Using two stainless steel hose clamps to clamp the 12 guage solid copper wire I used for the gamma match. (actually the same wire I used for the exciter and 1/5 of the 10 ft. length of the tubing used) I cleaned up the copper tubing with a bit of fine grit sandpaper and tightened the braid to the main loop. Then I connected and soldered the center connector to the 24 in 12 guage wire for the gamma match. I drug the end of the gamma match and watched my antenna analyzer for a dip. Once I found the sweet spot, I cleaned up the copper tubing with sandpaper and clamped the wire while adjusting for best match. I then adjusted the distance of the gamma match wire from the loop and fine tuned for the lowest swr on the analyzer. After a good match, I put my Wilderness SST on the antenna and though the band was not loaded and had lots of QSB, I tried to answer a CQ from WB3YIP and getting no answer called CQ myself just to see if anyone would pounce on me! No contact yet, but at least the capacitor did not blow up yet! Sort of fun seeing what it will handle. More later as I get further along in the project. Thanks to CW-Code Warriors Yahoo Group for the help and encouragement they have offered.
Here is the 2nd iteration of the mag loop in my living room
The gamma match in test state
The polyvaricon capacitor-- will it last or burn up from high voltage?
I finally got around to putting a mag loop together tonite. Using 10 ft of 5/8′ copper tubing I made a circle and using some lath strips I had laying around I made a lightweight frame. (too light) I had a nice pair of air variable caps mounted in parallel and made an exciter loop for testing out of #12 solid copper wire. Using a BNC to binding post adapter I hooked it up to my MFJ 207 antenna analyzer. It is showing 2:1 SWR on 7.040 and I think with a bit more capacitance I can bring it down. It is too late to do much more tweaking tonight, but I’ll update you on progress and other experiments. Here’s a quick look at it as it is now in its testing mode.
My first attempt at a mag loop in testing mode now
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.
