Many thanks to Brian K3ES who submits this awesome report.
As I write this report, we are currently visiting with my parents at their home near San Francisco, CA. Getting here from our Pennsylvania home and back again is a continuing great adventure for my wife Becky, POTA Pup Molly, and me. You see, this is a grand road trip, complete with sight seeing, activating POTA parks in new-to-me states, and lots of driving. While much of the trip has been planned, there have been frequent changes to the route and schedule, as better opportunities presented themselves. One such opportunity was to deviate from interstate highway travel between Montana and Idaho, and divert to lesser-traveled highways. This detour enabled us to fit in a drive through Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. Sadly, we were only able to take the time to see a small fraction of the natural splendor. We did see enough to create the resolve to return for a proper exploration of the wonders that we had to miss.
We made a handful of stops on our drive through Yellowstone, including a couple of hours at the Old Faithful geyser. One challenge of traveling with Molly, is that dogs are not always welcome in interesting areas. Another challenge is that, having been rescued from an abusive situation, she can respond unpredictably to other dogs. So, Becky and I have often taken turns with one of us exploring the sights, while the other remained in the truck with Molly. At this stop, Becky was the designated sight-seer for an impending eruption of Old Faithful (she takes better pictures), and I stayed in the truck with Molly.
ACTIVATING YELLOWSTONE
After getting settled in one of the few shaded parking spaces in the lot, it occurred to me that I would have time to do a quick activation of US-0070 while Becky was away. This particular parking lot was a busy place, so I needed to be quite stealthy in my radio set up. I elected to use my Elecraft AX1 antenna, and attached it to a clamp-on mount secured to the base of the VHF/UHF mobile antenna on the front fender of the truck. I had used this configuration for previous activations during the trip, and had been pleasantly surprised with spectacular performance. I had expected having the AX1 whip parallel to (and only a couple of inches away from) the VHF/UHF whip to cause detuning or worse, but this did not materialize.
With the whip installed, I ran the counterpoise wire over the hood, and tossed the remainder of its 13 ft length onto the pavement directly under the truck. I also connected my feedline to the antenna base, and ran it in through the open driver-side window to my KX2 positioned on the center console. It tuned up beautifully, so I was able to quickly confirm a clear frequency and start calling CQ POTA.
It took just few minutes to get my first contact running CW mode with 5 watts to the AX1 on the 20m band. It took even less time after that first contact for me to realize my mistake in parking in a rare bit of shade. That happened when a 10-foot-high RV pulled into the space next to my truck. It was longer than my truck, higher than my antenna whip, and almost certainly sided with sheet metal. Shortly after that, a car towing a smaller travel trailer pulled into a space on the other side of the truck. My heart sank as I contemplated a failed activation, but I was determined to continue the attempt. It was a pleasant surprise when more contacts started coming in. The pace was slow, but the contacts kept coming. Despite the Faraday cage that had assembled itself around my station, I ended up with 11 contacts in the log after 45 minutes on the air.
So there are detractors who call the AX1 a dummy load, and certainly it is a compromised antenna. A four-foot whip is far from the ideal resonant length for the 20m band. It is definitely not the right antenna for every situation, but when HF propagation conditions permit, the AX1 can give amazing results with a very small and unobtrusive footprint.
GEAR
- Elecraft KX2
- SideKX end-panels and cover for the KX2
- Bioenno 3 Ah LiFePO4 battery
- Elecraft AX1 antenna
- ProAudio Engineering AM1-2 clamp-on antenna mount
- Maxpedition Fatty organizer pouch
- 15 ft RG316 feedline with BNC male connectors at each end
- Homebrew VK3IL-designed, pressure paddles
- Generic earbuds
- Rite in the Rain No. 946 notepads
- Pentel Twist-Erase mechanical pencil in 0.9mm
CONTINUING TRAVELS
The westward leg of our trip took us over 3800 miles through the northern tier states, and we plan to return by way of the southern tier. So far, propagation has favored me with successful park activations in each of the states that we visited. As I have the opportunity to do more writing, I will share more details of our trip and the portable POTA operations along the way. Meanwhile,
Best 73 de Brian – K3ES/6
I enjoyed your report! Yellowstone is one of my favorite places. We have lived in Idaho twice in the past many decades and have visited the park many times. If you are able to go back I recommend spring, as the animals are much more plentiful at the lower elevations because of snow still at the higher elevations (fewer people, too).
The AX1 does an amazing job. I always laugh at the comments such as “It’s no good, you should use a dipole”. Well, I can’t walk around with a dipole, and I can’t go from everything in the bag to on the air in four minutes with a dipole. (Although I do sometime use either a “random” wire or an end fed half wavelength wire for picnic table portable.) Now that I have a KH1 I’m even more impressed with the little whip. I’ve had many pleasant and lengthy rag-chew QSOs while walking around with a four foot antenna.
Enjoy your travels!