Getting To France With Detours: A SOTA/POTA/WWFF Triple Activation

by Thomas (DM1TBE)

As I have written in my activation report for Klínovec, a summit in the Czech Republic, I am trying to activate places outside my home region DM, Germany – Low Mountains in SOTA or DA in POTA. With the May 1st being a public holiday, the long weekend provided a perfect opportunity for an activation a bit further away.

After a while looking around, I chose Brissetish Kopf (FL/VO-126) in France. The summit was close to the German border, hasn’t received much love with only 8 SOTA activations and was also a POTA spot for F-1697 Vosges du Nord Regional Park and WWFF Parc Regional des Vosges du Nord, FFF-0035. That promised enough QSOs for me and provided chances for chasers.

The small cluster to which the arrow points are the Vosges, actually the northern Vosges (Vosges du Nord). The cluster south of it are the higher part of the Vosges. The Vosges are a range of low mountains in Eastern France, which continues as Palatinate Forest on the German side of the border, with the highest summit being 1,424 m / 4,672 ft.

I started my journey quite early, leaving around 8am. During the drive I could not help but had to tease Thomas (K4SWL), who spent quite some time in France and, as far as I know, enjoyed it.

The French region Alsace, through which I had to drive to the Vosges, is quite interesting. The region was disputed over several hundred years between Germany and France and changed back and forth between the two. Many place names are still German, or sometimes a mix of French and German. After the World War II, the region returned to France – hopefully the last change.

I used Google Maps to drive to a parking place close to the summit, but my first attempt ended here:

Not sure why Google meant to show me this – thanks for the 30 minutes detour.

Roughly a half hour later, I arrived at Climbach, the small village next to the summit. Based on findings, the area is populated since the Middle Stone Age, that ranged from 280,000 to 25,000 years ago.

Continue reading Getting To France With Detours: A SOTA/POTA/WWFF Triple Activation

Philip shares battery sizing calculator spreadsheet and POTA radio survey results

Many thanks to Philip (KA4KOE) who shares the following two notes:

Battery sizing calculator

I developed the following spreadsheet as a response to all the folks asking “what size battery should I get“?

That’s one of those questions one can’t answer accurately without more information, so I created a spreadsheet.

Click here to download the spreadsheet (Rev 1 updated Feb 1, 23).

Popular POTA radios

I also recently ran a poll on the Facebook POTA group asking what radio they primarily used for POTA. The sample size was 1,148 votes.

Here are the rankings by percentages:

1. Yaesu FT-891: 25%
2. Xiegu G90: 9%
3. Icom IC-7300 and IC-705: 7%
4. Yaesu FT-857D, FT-991A, FT-817/818: 4%
5. Xiegu 6100, Yaesu FT-897D, Elecraft K/KX series: 3%

I cut off the poll at below 3% as there were 60 entries for various radios.

I’m not really surprised by the top 3 rankings.

Do I allow antenna wires to touch tree branches during field activations?

Many thanks to Keysrawk on my YouTube channel, who asks:

Do you usually try to use an isolator or do you often let your wires touch branches by just pulling them over? When you deploy 20m EFHWs, for example, do you try to avoid having an end touch a branch and only have the throw line going over the branch? I tried to go through your videos and look but you don’t often mention how far you pull the wire up and possibly over. Thanks!

This is a great question!

Before I answer, I’d like to add a little context:

  1. I am a QRP operator. The maximum amount of power I use in the field is 10 watts, but 99.5% of the time, it’s actually 5 watts or even much less.
  2. I am answering this as a field operator, meaning I’ll be referring to temporary antenna deployments.

That said, the quick answer is no, during park and summit activations, I do not worry about my antenna radiator wire touching tree branches.

I do isolate the end of my wire antennas from tree branches and leaves, but I don’t worry about other parts of the radiator touching.

Also, all of my antenna wire has some sort of jacket–I don’t run bare wire in the field.

More often than not, when I deploy a longer wire antenna–say, a 40M EFHW–I simply use a tree branch to support the apex of the antenna if I deploy it in an inverted vee configuration. Continue reading Do I allow antenna wires to touch tree branches during field activations?

POTA Field Report: Testing my CP Gear Tactical Aircrew/Pubs Bag with FT-817ND and Armoloq TPA-817 Pack Frame

Last year, during a Black Friday sale, I took a calculated risk and purchased a bag I hoped would accommodate my Yaesu FT-817ND that has been outfitted with an Armoloq TPA-817 Pack Frame.

CP Gear Tactical Aircrew/Pubs Bag

Rod (VA3ON) first introduced me to CP Gear Tactical–a  military pack manufacturer based in New Brunswick, Canada.

I’d had their their Aircrew/Pubs Bag with Padded Tablet Pocket on my wish list since the Ham Radio Workbench podcast episode where we talked about backpacks and pouches. CP Gear Tactical manufactures a wide variety of gear primarily for the Canadian military market. Everything is made either in Canada or the US (or both).

I contacted CP Gear Tactical shortly after outfitting my FT-817 with the TPA-817 pack frame. I measured the frame carefully and asked if the interior padded pocket (which is actually designed to hold a tablet–might fit my radio.

I never heard back from them. I could have called them, but on Black Friday, when it was on sale for 20% off and free shipping, I decided to throw caution to the wind and simply purchase it. My total price in USD was something like $62 shipped.

As soon as I opened the CP Gear pack, the first thing I did was check to see if the FT-817 with pack frame would fit in the interior pocket.

Much to my surprise, it fit it perfectly!

Indeed, it’s as if the pocket were specifically designed to accommodate the FT-817ND/TPA-817 combo.

Even the middle Velcro strap fits precisely in the middle of the radio between the pack frame side extensions. The strap holds the rig securely; once, I accidentally fumbled while holding the bag and even though it was upside down, the FT-817 remained securely inside. The strap held it in place.

The bag has loads of room inside. In fact, you can very easily transform it into a fully self-contained field radio kit.

I actually give a small tour of this pack in my activation video below, so if you’d like to see some of the exterior pockets, I would encourage you to check it out!

Zebulon B. Vance Birthplace (K-6856)

On Tuesday, April 11, 2023, I once again popped by the Vance Birthplace for a leisurely POTA activation–I thought this activation, in particular, would be a good one to test my new Aircrew/Pubs bag! Continue reading POTA Field Report: Testing my CP Gear Tactical Aircrew/Pubs Bag with FT-817ND and Armoloq TPA-817 Pack Frame

Two SOTA activations in the Swabian Alb – And a broken JPC-7 antenna

by Thomas (DM1TBE)

Intro

I live very close to the Swabian Alb (also known as Swabian Jura or Schwäbische Alb in German). The Swabian Alb is a mountain range in German region Swabia. It ranges from Bavaria in the northeast 200 km / 140 mi to the Swiss border in the southwest.

Thomas Römer, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Swabian Alb is a high plateau, which falls slowly to the southeast but with steep cliff-like edges to the northwest. You can follow the northwest edge of the Swabian Alb by looking at the map of the SOTA summits at sotl.as.

The topology limits the possibilities to cross the Swabian Alb, so the course of the routes are more or less unchanged since thousands of years. I live close to an old Roman road. And where an important road was, there isn’t a castle too far away, since the medieval noblemen were quite keen to get its share from passing people and goods.

During the Cold War, important passes received mechanisms to place explosive charges. In case of an advance of the Soviets and its allies, it was planned to blow these roads up, as there was usually no alternative way around.

First Activation: Plettenberg

The Plettenberg (DM/BW-046) is a summit at the edge of the mentioned Swabian Alb, about halfway between Stuttgart and the Swiss border. It’s 1002 m / 3287 ft tall and has a quarry on top.

The quarry uses a ropeway…..

… to transport the stones to the plant.

The way from the parking place to the activation zone was rather short with 300 m /  1000 ft. Continue reading Two SOTA activations in the Swabian Alb – And a broken JPC-7 antenna

Dale uses WSPR to test counterpoise orientation

The CHA MPAS Lite

Many thanks to Dale (N3HXZ) who shares the following guest post:


Does your antenna counterpoise orientation matter?

by Dale (N3HXZ)

I am an avid SOTA and POTA activator and love field operation. I use a portable vertical whip antenna with a single counterpoise for my antenna system and have always wondered if orienting my counterpoise would provide some signal strength gain in a particular direction.  I decided to run a series of tests using WSPR to gather field data, and use statistics to answer the question:

Does one counterpoise orientation favor another in terms of average signal strength?

WSPR is a great tool for antenna testing. You can study various antenna configurations by making some WSPR transmissions and then checking the data on the WSPRnet database to see how well the signal was received at various stations located all over the world. You have to be careful in interpreting WSPR data though as receiving stations have different antenna and radio configurations, and the band propagation can vary rapidly at times. So how do you take advantage of all the data you receive from stations and draw some meaningful conclusions? I have found that using proven statistical theory in analyzing the transmitted signal strength received from individual stations can provide you results that you can confidently trust.

So what statistical algorithm is helpful?

For antenna signal strength comparison between two configurations, you can use an independent two-sample t-test with a one-tailed t-test evaluation. It sounds like a mouth-full, but it is quite simple. For our purposes, the t-test compares the average signal strength at a given receiving station from two different antenna configurations. The one-tailed test validates or invalidates the hypothesis that one antenna configuration produces an average signal strength greater or less than the other antenna configuration.

The testing requires that you run WSPR long enough to gather multiple reports at a single receiving station for both antenna configurations. Using the signal strength reports, you compute the average signal strength and the standard deviation of the signal strength over the sampled data points. Excel can easily provide that data.  With this information and the number of sample points for each antenna configuration (they can be different), you then run a calculation by hand or in Excel to compute the ‘t’ value.

This ‘t’ value is then compared to a critical value for the number of sampling points from a ‘Students t table”. If the ‘t’ value is less than the critical value you can confidently conclude that the hypothesis is false and therefore conclude that there is no significant difference in the mean value of the signal strengths between the two.  If the ‘t’ value is greater than the critical value you can accept the hypotheses that one antenna configuration produces a greater or less average signal strength than the other configuration. Continue reading Dale uses WSPR to test counterpoise orientation

Testing my new Headrest QRP POTA Field Kit!

I love field radio kits.

If you’ve read my “Anatomy of a Field Kit” series, you’ve likely gathered that field kits are a bit of an obsession. [Yeah, understatement alert!]

My field kits roughly fall into two main categories: modular and fully self-contained. My modular kits are ones where components like the battery, antenna, throw line, key, and radio are in separate pouches and can easily be combined to make a complete station before I leave for an activation.

My fully self-contained kits are ones that quite literally have everything needed to perform a park or summit activation in one pouch or box. A good example that I’ve documented here is my MTR-3B field kit.

For more on this, again, check out my “Anatomy of a Field Kit” series.

Vehicle kit

If you’re a devoted park and/or summit activator, I think it’s important to keep a dedicated kit kit in your car at all times. Why?

  • It’s ready to grab for impromptu activations
  • It’s handy in case of road-side emergencies in remote areas
  • It’s always  accessible to demonstrate amateur radio to those who are curious
  • It’s always always there for those times when you hadn’t planned to play radio, but the opportunity presents itself

I always have a full radio kit in my Subaru and over the years, I’ve changed and adapted it. For the most part, though, it’s been located in the trunk/boot and lives with anything and everything else I keep back there. Sometimes, it’s in the way when we need to fill that trunk space with family items for a trip or when we’re hauling things around town. Other times, it’s floating/sliding around freely in the back.

On long family trips, I’ve been known to store radios under the floor, but it’s a true hassle to remove them because I have to remove anything in the trunk before lifting the floor.

Contraband I hid in the car during our two month Canada trip last year.

I’ve always wanted a way to store my kit in the car in a dedicated space. In the past, I’ve tried to make a kit that could fit under the driver’s seat–thinking that might be ideal–but there’s very little clearance under it and it’s difficult to remove.

Enter the BROG Headrest Pouch Kit

Before I placed my initial order for the Blue Ridge Overland Gear (BROG) Gadget Bag, I checked out other items on their website. One that immediately caught my attention was their Headrest Kit.

It consists of a Velcro panel that fits around a vehicle headrest and a pouch (or pouches) attach to it.

BROG caters to Overlanders and vehicle storage/organization is huge in that community. The headrest kit makes a lot of sense: it’s using space that’s accessible, doesn’t interfere with any passengers, is off the floor, and is otherwise underutilized!

The big questions, of course:

  1. would the pouch offer enough space to store an entire radio kit,
  2. and would the kit weight too much for the Velcro back to hold it in place?

I asked for the Headrest Pouch Kit ($47.99) to be sent with my Gadget Bag order.

BTW: Big thanks to BROG for giving me flexibility with this order. Since I had no experience with their gear, I asked that they send me a list of items and allow me to evaluate them, then pay (full price) for what I decided to keep. 

Would it work?

I knew I’d need to store a very small transceiver in this dedicated pack. A few could potentially fit the bill–namely the:

  • Mountain Topper MTR-3B
  • Venus SW-3B
  • QCX-Mini
  • TEN-TEC R4020

I eliminated the QCX-Mini from this list because it’s mono band (mine is set for 20M) plus, I really love the field kit I already designed for it. Same for the MTR-3B–the kit I built for it is now time-tested and I love it as-is. The R4020, while quite compact, is the largest in this group of wee rigs. Continue reading Testing my new Headrest QRP POTA Field Kit!

Coax cables I used for SOTA/POTA – A horror story

by Thomas (DM1TBE)

I think every portable operator thinks about their coax cables and how to use more light and flexible types. During the last few activations, I have switched from my rigid Aircell 5 to the lightweight and flexible RG316. I have bought a couple of different lengths, mainly from Chinese online sellers at AliExpress.

However, I had some hard to define issues like the vague feeling that I am not getting out as good as I should, or a changing SWR during an activation. So I thought I should check my cables before looking at other parts of my equipment.

My professional and educational background does not have anything to do with electronics, and I don’t have the equipment to measure the cable loss directly. But my goal was to check if the cables were faulty, not to measure the exact attenuation.

I have an SWR and Power meter from DJ9PK as per image below. It can measure PEP and has, according to the seller, an accuracy of +/-4 percent.   You can find more details about it here in German or here in English (Google / auto translated).

My KX3 with a CW paddle served as signal source. As large differences are easier to spot than smaller, I switched to the 10-meter band as the HF band with the highest attenuation.

I then measured a short cable with a very low loss, a 1 m / 3.3 ft RG213, which should have an attenuation of less than 0.1dB (excluding plugs).

I simply checked how much power came out at the other end of the cable. That value I have used as reference. This cable (and all others) was plugged directly between the KX3 and the power meter, no ATU involved anywhere. The power meter was set to measure PEP. Continue reading Coax cables I used for SOTA/POTA – A horror story

QRPer Notes: Retekess V115 as a Speaker, Real Time Prop Map, and the Long Island CW Club Podcast

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!


Retekess V115… a versatile addition to a ham radio kit

Many thanks to Jamie (AA4K) who shares a video he made showing the Retekess V115 as an external speaker:

Click here to view on YouTube.


Real-Time Propagation Map

Many thanks to Andrea who notes:

[This propagation map is] based on WSPR, PSKreporter, DXcluster and other data:

https://hf.dxview.org/

Not a prediction, but based on real signals.


New Long Island CW Podcast

Our Premier Episode!

Is it hard for you to keep track of all the LICW Classes and News? Then dive into the “This Week in LICW” podcast, weekly with Duff WA7BFN and learn more about what’s happening in the club! Duff will talk about what’s new, noteworthy and all the things that are happening in the club, so you won’t miss out! So, If you want to be sure you understand everything that’s happening in the Long Island CW Club, don’t miss an episode!

Audio Player

Click here to listen via BuzzSprout.

Click here to join the LICWC.

Field Report: BROG Gadget Bag Tour, New Anker Speaker, & Pairing the KX3 w/the MC-750 for Serious QRP POTA Fun!

On Tuesday, March 28, 2023, I packed my Elecraft KX3 and took it to the Zebulon Vance Historic Birthplace (K-6856) for a nice, relaxing, early afternoon POTA activation!

It had been a few months since I’d taken the KX3 to the field and it really does deserve some outdoor time because…well…I still think it’s one of the best HF field radios on the market.

I’m spoiled, though, because I also own a KX2 and it does 80% of what the KX3 does, is much smaller, and sports a very long-lasting internal battery. Because of this, my KX2 gets way more field time and the KX3–hooked up to a KXPA100–is my main radio in the shack.

When I make an activation video in the field, I like using a speaker rather than recording from the line out of the radio. Besides the extra post-processing, sometimes the line-out audio from left and right channels are out of phase from each other and end up cancelling each other out in YouTube videos if listening in mono. I recently learned how to fix this, but I find the whole process just adds *that* much more time to post-processing and I’m always pressed for time.

The Elecraft KX3 has a built-in speaker, but it’s pretty anemic. I almost always pair the KX3 with an external speaker to amplify the otherwise excellent KX3 audio for my activation videos.

On this particular day, I had a new speaker to try as well: an Anker Soundcore Mini. I purchased this speaker on the same day I posted Mike’s speaker search and review of the Soundcore Mini. Although I have a Sony SRS-XB12 portable speaker and love it, they’re no longer produced and the battery life isn’t quite as good as the Soundcore Mini (Anker states up to 15 hours per full charge).

This activation would give me an opportunity to really test the Anker Soundcore Mini in the field. In the end, it did a brilliant job.

I should note that I also brought my Blue Ridge Overland Gadget Bag (see above) to the field that day, so I include a little tour and overview of this pack in my activation video.

I did recently post a review of the BROG Gadget Bag here on QRPer as well.

Zebulon B. Vance Birthplace (K-6856)

As I mention in my activation videos, Vance is a small park and, unless you plan to operate from your car, there’s really only one good site to set up: in the picnic shelter. Thing is, if a school, club, or civic group is scheduled to meet that day, the picnic shelter will almost certainly be reserved for them.

Each time I activate Vance, I ask the park staff in advance if the picnic shelter is reserved and if it’s okay if I perform the activation. Fortunately, the shelter is reserved only about 20% of the time. On days when it’s reserved, I simply activate elsewhere.

On the 28th, I had the site to myself and the staff encouraged me to activate as long as I wanted to. Continue reading Field Report: BROG Gadget Bag Tour, New Anker Speaker, & Pairing the KX3 w/the MC-750 for Serious QRP POTA Fun!

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