I read with interest your posts about the PENNTEK TR-35 and liked it enough to go ahead and order one for myself. I built it over a couple of weekends of occasional work, and put it on the air. I really like it.
Since I’d like to take it out on some POTA activations, I did some investigation into a case and found the following case on Amazon:
This case fits the TR-35 very nicely. See the attached photos.
There is even room for a couple of cables to be tucked away under the mesh on the lid side. The only modification I made was to add a couple of pieces of packing foam around the top and BNC side to just keep the radio from sliding around a little. But really a person preference of mine.
I thought I’d share this with you so you can share with others that have this radio and are looking for a nice hard case.
Mark
W8EWH
What a great tip, Mark! Looks like it fits the TR-35 perfectly. Thank you for sharing this!
There are days when I leave the QTH and have no idea if I have enough time to fit in a park or summit activation. Because of this, I always keep a radio field kit in the car.
On Monday, January 31, 2022 I had an appointment-packed day ahead of me, but I was hopeful I might be able to squeeze in a quick activation of some sort.
Specifically, I had a new-to-me super easy, drive-up SOTA site in mind: Peach Knob (W4C/CM-097). In fact, it’s a bit odd that I hadn’t activated this site before. It must be the most accessible summit (to me) in the area.
After a 2:00 appointment in downtown Asheville, I drove 15 minutes to the summit of Peach Knob where I discovered 1.) there was almost no space to park and 2.) what little space there was was taken up with crews working on a cluster of communications towers. In situations like this, the last thing I want to do is get in the way; that sort of activator persistence could lead to “no trespassing” signs in the future.
The site also reminded me that what I love about SOTA is the hike to the summit. Sites like this one are wedged between private property and city property–I just feel like I’m in the way, arousing neighborhood suspicions, and just doing the activation for the points. I’m not a points guy (though I’ll do a happy dance when I accumulate 1000 for ‘Mountain Goat’ status sometime within a decade at this rate).
Moving forward, I think I’ll skip drive up sites like this one; at least for HF activations.
At this point, I pretty much abandoned the idea of a field activation as I’d taken up the wee bit of free time in my schedule just checking out Peach Knob.
Because I receive so many tips from readers here on QRPer, I wanted way to share them in a concise newsletter format. To that end, welcome to QRPer Notes, a collection of links to interesting stories and tips making waves in the world of radio!
QSO Today Ham Radio Expo, March 12-13, 2020
Many thanks to Vince (VE6LK) who reminds us:
QSO Today Ham Expo is THIS WEEKEND starting on Friday evening MT and early bird tickets are only $10 until the event opens Friday evening. Drop by through the weekend and find me in the Ham Radio Workbench Lounge in between presentations of course. Your entry fee gets you 30 days of video replay for those presentations you can’t see live.
KU3X Explores IC-705 Current Drain and Battery Packs
Many thanks to Barry (K3UX) who writes:
Thanks partially to your feedback, I purchase the IC-705 and I am one happy camper.
Icom states the current drain on receive for this radio is between 500 and 800 ma. So I tested the radio.
At 13.8 volts of supply voltage, the radio draws 200 ma on receive. What? At 12 volts the radio draws 225 ma on receive and at 11 volts, like off of a 3 cell LiPo battery the radio draws 250 ma.
When I made these tests, I removed the Icom clip on battery. Now going down to 8.4 volts, the radio draws 335 ma on receive.
So here’s the fly in the ointment: At 8.4 volts from the external supply, the radio would not transmit. It would not transmit at any voltage under 10 volts.
Conclusion….. there has to be a boost circuit built into the radio that goes between the battery and the radio. So to boost the battery voltage you will draw more current.
Thank you for sharing this, Barry! Funny enough, I’ve never thought to check current without the battery attached, but that makes sense. This would give us data knowing the radio isn’t using more current to recharge the battery pack at the same time.
Typically, the lower the voltage, the higher the current drain and vice-versa. Also, I believe you’re correct in that there would be some extra consumption with the voltage booster in play.
Thanks for sharing this!
DX Commander channel (temporarily?) removed from YouTube
A number of friends and readers have reached out to note that the DX Commander YouTube channel hosted by Callum (M0MCX) has been completely removed from YouTube.
Callum’s channel is incredibly popular and this removal has everyone scratching their heads, so it’s no surprise there’s wild speculation floating around out there. Don’t fall into that rabbit hole.
I fully suspect that this is simply an error on Google/YouTube’s part and that his original channel will eventually be reinstated.
In the meantime, Callum has started a second/backup channel where he’s posting content. Click here to check it out.
I’ve been spending more time with my Mountain Topper MTR-3B (“Tuppence”) recently and have been thoroughly enjoying this little radio’s companionship.
Since I made a dedicated ultra-compact field kit for the MTR-3B, it has also been even easier to toss it in my backpack and take it on little field adventures. The field kit is truly a grab-and-go and even includes a throw line and weight.
On Friday, January 28, 2022, after a total of six individual park activations during the previous two days (a POTA RaDAR run and my first 2020 Antenna Challenge activation) driving back to the QTH I thought, “surely I can skip doing an activation today.”
That quickly turned into, “Wait a minute…I’ve got enough time to fit in both an activation and a hike!”
So I made a quick detour off of I-40 to visit the Clear Creek access of South Mountains State Park.
South Mountains State Park (K-2753)
I pulled into an empty parking area; not really a surprise on an early Friday afternoon. In addition, I figured many were out grabbing bread and milk since winter weather was in the forecast.
On January 26, 2022, I fit in multiple park activations in one day as a RaDAR (Rapid Deployment Amateur Radio) run. My hope was to activate four or five sites between 14:00 – 21:30 UTC.
Here are the field reports and videos of my first four activations:
The next park in my run (#5) was Tuttle Educational State Forest and it was the final park in this modest RaDAR run!
I packed up the gear at Johns River Game Land in a matter of three minutes, popped it all in the car, then drove 8 minutes to nearby Tuttle Educational State Forest which, at this point, almost feels like a home away from home.
Tuttle Educational State Forest (K-4861)
As I pulled into the Tuttle parking lot, I found my buddy Max (W4GZ) activating the park from his truck. It was no surprise finding Max here since I had just worked him Park-To-Park (P2P) from Johns River next door.
Max delivered some precious cargo: some more of his mom’s homemade QRP pickles!
The Summits on the Air amateur radio award programme was the idea of John Linford, G3WGV. Although he had the idea many years ago, it was not until he ran across the European Adventure Radio website run by Richard G3CWI, that he put the idea down on paper. He emailed it to Richard with the a single question “should we try to get this going?”. The original idea ran to a few paragraphs on a single side of A4 paper but it took well over 1,000 man-hours of work to turn that idea into a viable award programme. Many people helped along the way, including Matthew M5EVT, Alan M1EYO and Roger MW0IDX. Much of the award was discussed and dissected on the internet before it was launched on 2 March 2002. England and Wales launched first, soon to be followed by Scotland.
Although neither John nor Richard envisaged huge numbers of people participating, the award was designed to be scalable from the outset. A key objective was making the award internet-based, for this an online database was needed. Fortunately, Richard knew Gary Bleads, G0HJQ who just happened to be a professional database designer. John and Gary met up and, after much hard work, SOTA had an “industrial strength” database. Gary assures us that it is sized such that it could deal with all the amateur radio contacts made in the whole World if required!
Simply having an award and a support infrastructure does not ensure success however, and a huge effort was put in to publicise the award. Both John and Richard wrote articles, gave numerous talks to radio clubs, at rallies and exhibitions and ran SOTA stands at various events. Over 1,000 leaflets were given out in the first 18 months of the scheme. But even that was not enough. International publicity was gained by constant news releases to overseas organisations and finally, a keen band of activators made it their business to explain SOTA to everyone they contacted on the air.
Today, SOTA has hundreds of participants in Associations across the World, all sharing the same award ethos and infrastructure.
Note that SOTA is an award programme not a club or society; as such you can’t be a “Member” of SOTA but you can certainly be a participant!
SOTA has become a true passion for me and I look forward to each and every activation. I also enjoy chasing SOTA activators while at the QTH.
SOTA combines my love of radio, hiking, and community. It really couldn’t get any better.
My thanks to all of the SOTA volunteers who make this program a reality. Happy 20th Anniversary, SOTA!
On January 26, 2022, I fit in multiple park activations in one day as a RaDAR (Rapid Deployment Amateur Radio) run. My hope was to activate four or five sites between 14:00 – 21:30 UTC.
Here are the field reports and videos of my first three activations:
The next park in my run (#4) was either going to be my last activation, or second to last depending on my available time.
After visiting with my buddy, Hamilton, at his ceramics studio in Morganton (read about that in the previous report) I looked at the time and decided I could fit in a very quick activation of Johns River Game Land (#4) en route to Tuttle Educational State Forest (#5).
I made up my mind en route that I’d use my fastest-to-deploy combo: the Elecraft KX2 and Chameleon CHA MPAS Lite.
I really wanted to be in and out of the site within a 20 minute window. That’s actually very doable as long as I could rack up at least ten contacts in 10-15 minutes. Some days, propagation can make that a tall order, though!
Johns River Game Land (K-6916)
Johns River actually has a number of access points and, frankly, none of them are exactly “bucolic.” Other than the river itself which is beautiful and the main access point for the river which is well-maintained, most of the game land parking areas are filled with litter.
I chose a parking area for this activation which has, in the past, looked like a dumping ground. I was pleased when I pulled into the parking lot this time to find it much cleaner (no old refrigerators or sofas dumped at the far end of the lot) but then again the snow on the ground was likely hiding quite a bit of litter! My philosophy is to always leave a site cleaner than I found it, but Johns River often has so much littler, I could spend a week picking up trash.
After doing a very short intro for my activation video, I set up the Elecraft KX2 and MPAS Lite antenna in a matter of two minutes.
I started calling CQ POTA (with my fingers crossed!) on 40 meters and was very pleased that chasers were out and about!
I worked my ten contact in 9 minutes and then went QRT! Woot! Here’s the log sheet:
In this short activation, there was actually a P2P with Max (WG4Z) who was just up the road at Tuttle Educational State Forest. We were definitely working each other via ground wave.
The contacts were flowing so well, that I wanted to stay on the air a bit longer, but I knew to fit in Tuttle and a hike, I really needed keep moving. As soon as I worked my ten, I hopped off the radio.
While I like putting more contacts in the log–especially when they’re flowing so freely–it was actually kind of fun to validate this activation in somewhat of a “sprint.”
QSO Map
Here’s what 5 watts and the MPAS Lite yielded in nine minutes on the air:
Activation video
Here’s my real-time, real-life video of the entire activation. This must be one of the shortest activation videos I’ve ever made:
Thank you so much for reading this short report and coming along with me on this RaDAR run! I’ll be posting Park #5–Tuttle Educational State Forest–soon where I catch up with Max (WG4Z) and we work park-to-park once again.
As always, I’d like to send a special thanks to those of you who have been supporting the site and channel through Patreon and the Coffee Fund. While certainly not a requirement as my content will always be free, I truly appreciate the support.
These are crazy times we’re living in these days (at time of posting). I wish all of you good health, safety, and peace–especially our good friends in Ukraine.
Let’s all treat each other with kindness and respect this week as we remember that all we’ve got on this old planet is each other.
“Any radio amateur currently transmitting from Ukraine is risking his or her life. If you hear a Ukrainian station, do not broadcast its callsign, location or frequency — whether on the band, in a cluster or on social media. You may be putting lives at risk.”
Steve (MW0SAW) and I were recently exchanging emails and he has kindly allowed me to share a few photos and details of the QRP field kit he has taken on holiday:
I’m currently in Switzerland (ski holiday)–I did bring the Venus SW-3B. I was very surprised to get 2 USA stations last weekend with 4-5 watts in the ARRL CW contest.
Only a couple of Europeans today. But it’s all fun and I did have a lovely morning ski so can’t complain lol.
Wow, Steve! I would love to be in Switzerland right about now. I’ve got a bucket list item to journey there someday (in summer months) and activate at least 10 summits. Having lived in Grenoble, the Alps always feel a bit like home.
I love how compact your setup is and obviously the K6ARK EFHW is doing the trick if you’re making contacts State side with QRP and during a contest competing with the big guns!
Hmmm…I’m now thinking I might grab a second Maxpedition Fatty Pouch. I just checked and Maxpedition still has the “buy one, get one free” deal on their website. The link above goes to Amazon (hence the affiliate link which my site auto-converts) because pricing is typically best there, but I believe you get an even better deal at present going directly to the source; especially if one could use two pouches!
Thanks again, Steve, for sharing your field kit photos and notes!
Josh (KI6NAZ), with Ham Radio Crash Course, has invited me to join him in a livestream tomorrow, February 26, 2022 at 20:00 EST/17:00 PST (01:00 UTC Feb 27, 2022).
We’ll be talking Morse Code, QRP, Field Radio and who knows what else! I’m looking forward to it.
QRP radios, product announcements, reviews, news and more. Low power amateur radio fun!
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