Many thanks to Jonathan (KM4CFT), for sharing the following article about his portable field radio kit, which will be featured on our Field Kit Gallery page. If you would like to share your field kit with the QRPer community, read this post.
CFT1 Field Kit
by Jonathan (KM4CFT)
I thought I would supply my own field kit I recently put together for my CFT1.
This will also be the official announcement of my newest product, which is a CW Key leg strap. The leg strap is something I originally got my dad to fabricate for me out of some scrap metal a while back, and now that I have the version 2 iambic paddles, I thought it would be nice to mass-produce them. They are compatible with any magnetically mounted paddle.
This is my CFT1 Go Bag. It contains everything I need to activate my CFT1 except for a mast or throwline.
The kit consists of the following:
Note: All Amazon links are affiliate/partner links that support QRPer.com at no cost to you.
As mentioned in previous field reports, my wife and I spent the week of July 7th, 2024, in Wilmington, North Carolina, while our daughters were at summer programs at NCSU and UNCW.
On Sunday, July 14th, we packed our bags and drove to Raleigh where we visited the NC History Museum and NC Museum of Natural Sciences. We were in the midst of a heat wave, so the time spent indoors at the museums was much appreciated.
A beautiful display of vintage radios in the NC History Museum.
I had my Elecraft KH1 packed and planned to activate the State Capitol (US-6852), conveniently located next to the museum parking lots. The State Capitol grounds truly requires a super low-impact radio like the KH1 due to the strong security presence and limited setup space.
Upon arriving at the State Capitol, we found a large gathering (possibly a protest) and sweltering heat (104°F/40°C)! I decided to postpone the activation and instead opted for an early morning activation, the following day, at William B. Umstead State Park, just a ten-minute drive from our hotel.
I checked the park’s website and discovered that the gates opened at 8:00 AM. This was perfect: I could grab breakfast at 6:00 AM, catch up on emails, head to the park, activate until 9:30 AM or so, return to the hotel, and still have enough time for our 11:00 AM Duke University tour. (The reason we spent extra days in the Raleigh/Durham area was so that our daughters could tour NCSU, Duke, and UNC Chapel Hill.)
William B. Umstead State Park (US-2755)
I arrived at the park just a few minutes after the gates opened.
Although I had never been to William B. Umstead State Park, I had studied a map beforehand and knew there was a picnic area accessible from the entrance I chose (the park has multiple entry points, and I selected the one closest to our hotel).
It’s a beautiful park, and the contrast between the morning commuter traffic and the oasis of trees was striking! I parked at the first picnic area I found, grabbed my radio pack, and chose a picnic site.
This early in the morning, the picnic area was deserted – I only saw runners, walkers, and park staff.
Setting up
For this activation, I brought my Penntek TR-45L and paired it with my KM4CFT 30M end-fed half-wave with a 40M linked extension.
Although I found an ideal setup spot, the surrounding trees proved to be a challenge! The branches were either too low or too high. After some effort, I managed to snag a suitable branch with my throw line, deployed the antenna, and was ready to get on the air!
Gear
Note: All Amazon, CW Morse, ABR, Chelegance, eBay, and Radioddity links are affiliate links that support QRPer.com at no cost to you.
As I write this report, I’m on the road with my family–we’ve been spending the week on the coast of North Carolina and are now (at time of publishing) in Raleigh. I’ll keep this field report short and sweet so I can publish it quickly and also fit in an activation before record temps heat up the region!
Blue Ridge Parkway (US-3378)
On the morning of July 4th, 2024, Jonathan (KM4CFT) and I arranged to meet and activate on the Blue Ridge Parkway (US-3378).
Jonathan was in town visiting family over the holiday weekend, and I had a brief window of time that morning to join him. My schedule had been packed since Field Day, making this my first chance for a POTA activation for a couple of weeks.
We knew it would be an interesting activation right from the start: we both arrived at the Folk Art Center at the same time and were greeted by a large black bear strolling down the road in front of the entrance! A bear walking awayfrom your POTA spot is always a good thing.
After a quick catch-up, I grabbed my arborist throw line and deployed the 30/40 meter linked end-fed half-wave antenna I’d built using the KM4CFT antenna kit.
It would have been rude to use another antenna with KM4CFT standing right there! (Note to N5FY: Yes, I know I’ve been rude to you on many previous activations, haha!)
Gear:
Note: All Amazon, CW Morse, ABR, Chelegance, eBay, and Radioddity links are affiliate links that support QRPer.com at no cost to you.
Jonathan took to the air first. Since neither of us had announced our activation, I opened POTA.app to spot him. Except, I didn’t. In a moment of confusion, I accidentally spotted myself!
It turns out there’s no easy way to delete your own spot once you’ve done that. (If there is, I’d love to know, though I hope to never make that mistake again!)
What followed was rather comical. Jonathan noticed people thought he was me, even though he used his own callsign in each exchange. I guess it’s easy to mishear a callsign when you think you already know it!
I kept spotting myself “QRT,” but many kind operators kept re-spotting me. I even moved to 14,000 kHz (an out-of-band frequency I’d never use) and spotted myself QRT. People were still re-spotting me on Jonathan’s frequency!
It was funny, and the early morning hour on a holiday probably contributed to the confusion.
After Jonathan logged his ten contacts, he handed the radio over to me. I swapped out paddles (his TP-III setup mounted to the FT-818 wasn’t comfortable for me).
I started calling CQ POTA de K4SWL, spotted myself (correctly this time!), and the real activation began.
In the end, I worked 25 stations in 26 minutes. Thanks to all the hunters!
Then it was time to call QRT and continue our day. It was great seeing Jonathan and fitting in a little POTA before the day really started!
QSO Map
Here’s what this five-watt activation looked like when plotted out on a QSO Map:
Activation Video
Here’s my real-time, real-life video of the entire activation. As with all of my videos, I don’t edit out any parts of the on-air activation time. In addition, I have monetization turned off on YouTube, although that doesn’t stop them from inserting ads before and after my videos.
Thank you for joining me during this activation! (And thank you, Jonathan, for joining me!)
I hope you enjoyed the field report and my activation video as much as I enjoyed creating them!
Of course, I’d also 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 not a requirement, as my content will always be free, I really appreciate the support.
As I mentioned before, the Patreon platform connected to Vimeo makes it possible for me to share videos that are not only 100% ad-free but also downloadable for offline viewing. The Vimeo account also serves as a third backup for my video files.
Thanks for spending part of your day with me! Have a brilliant week ahead and be kind to one another out there!
On Tuesday, April 23, 2024, I had a bit of time in the middle of the day to perform a park activation, but I couldn’t go too far afield because I needed to pick up my daughters from school around 3:00 PM.
Where to go?
I didn’t want to activate the same spots I’ve been activating a lot lately; I wanted to find a new spot, but my window of time limited my options.
Here in the Asheville area, we only have a few POTA entities within, say, a 25-30 minute drive of downtown, but a few of the sites we do have are vast. The Blue Ridge Parkway, Pisgah National Forest, and Pisgah Game Land are massive and it would be easy to activate every day of your life and set up at a different site each time if you’re willing to bring your own chair and table/kneeboard..
It was such a beautiful day, I ideally wanted to find a spot with a picnic table under the shade of a tree. I know of a couple sites on the Blue Ridge Parkway, but I’d activated them recently. Also there was the Vance Birthplace, but again, I’d been there a lot lately.
Then it dawned on me that Lake Powhatan, in Pisgah National Forest (US-4510), might be a good option. It’s close to Asheville, a beautiful site, and I was almost certain I remembered seeing picnic tables there when I camped there with friends some two years ago. I made a quick call to the park office and confirmed.
Lake Powhatan requires a day use permit of $5 per person–you pay at the entrance and then have access to the lake and beach area for the full day. I didn’t mind paying this fee at all because I will typically leave that same amount in the donation box of many of the state parks I frequent anyway.
It’s a really short walk from the parking area to the lake and picnic sites.
I grabbed my TR-45L Skinny (in its padded camera pack) and my GoRuck GR1 backpack that had all of my antenna supplies and even my Elecraft KX2 inside.
Had this been a summer day, the lake would have been packed with families!
Why bring two radios? I really wanted to use the TR-45L, but I also thought about testing the waters on the 15, 12, and 10 meter bands. Since the TR-45L only covers 80, 40, 30, 20, and 17 meters, I needed another option.
Lots of picnic table options around the lake.
Turns out, the higher bands weren’t in great shape, so I didn’t need to use the KX2 after all.
I didn’t pair the TR-45L Skinny with an ATU, thus I needed an antenna option that would be resonant or matched on each of the bands I planned to operate. I decided to deploy my KM4CFT EFHW that I’d cut as a 30 meter end-fed half-wave with a 40 meter extension. This antenna would give me all of the bands of the TR-45L (save 80M). As a 30M EFHW, I’d have 30 and 17 meters, then by adding the 40M extension, I’d have both 40 and 20 meters as well.
Setup was quick and easy (even though it took several tries with my throw line to hit the branches I wanted).
Gear:
Note: All Amazon, CW Morse, ABR, Chelegance, eBay, and Radioddity links are affiliate links that support QRPer.com at no cost to you.
I deployed the antenna as a 30 meter EFHW and started calling CQ POTA on the 17 meter band.
I quickly found out that 17 meters was not in great shape. I did work N5PJ after a few minutes (thanks, Perry!) but didn’t hang around 17 meters much longer.
The poor state of 17 meters was likely a good indicator of what the higher bands might be like, so I abandoned the idea of going up to 10 meters. Instead, I QSY’d to the 30 meter band.
30 meters was in better shape. I worked five more stations in short order, then there was a lull in activity for several minutes. My thinking was that the bulk of the POTA activity would be on 20 meters, so I lowered part of my antenna, connected the 40M link, and raised it again.
Turns out, 20 meters was pretty active.
I ended up adding 16 stations to the logs including at least one Park-to-Park with AC9OT (thank you!).
All-in-all, I logged 22 stations on three bands. Propagation was a bit rough for sure, but the activation was a lot of fun!
Here are my logs:
QSO Map
Here’s what this five-watt activation looked like when plotted out on a QSO Map (click image to enlarge):
Activation Video
Here’s my real-time, real-life video of the entire activation. As with all of my videos, I don’t edit out any parts of the on-air activation time. In addition, I have monetization turned off on YouTube, although that doesn’t stop them from inserting ads before and after my videos.
I’m so glad I decided to give Lake Powhatan a try. I’m very tempted to pay $40 for an annual pass.
There are several other picnic sites in/around the lake that I’d like to try and, frankly, next time I think I’ll bring my mountain bike! There are loads of trails on-site that also connect up to the (very popular) Bent Creek network.
Thank you
Thank you for joining me during this peaceful activation!
I hope you enjoyed the field report and my activation video as much as I enjoyed creating them.
Of course, I’d also 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 not a requirement, as my content will always be free, I really appreciate the support.
As I mentioned before, the Patreon platform connected to Vimeo makes it possible for me to share videos that are not only 100% ad-free but also downloadable for offline viewing. The Vimeo account also serves as a third backup for my video files.
Thanks for spending part of your day with me! Have a brilliant week!
Many thanks to Jonathan (KM4CFT) who shares the following article about his portable field radio kit which will be featured on our Field Kit Gallery page. If you would like to share your field kit with the QRPer community, read this post.
IC-705 Field Kit
by Jonathan (KM4CFT)
This is my new field kit for my IC-705. The 705 is my favorite radio in my collection and I prefer to use it for any casual field work where size and weight isn’t a concern. (When I am concerned about size and weight I typically take my KX2.)
It consists of a protected IC-705 and a camera lens case. I cannot take credit for this idea since I copied it from Aaron Bowman, W4ARB. (see his video here)
The kit consists of the following:
Note: All Amazon and eBay links are affiliate/partner links that support QRPer.com at no cost to you.
On Friday, January 5, 2024, I looked at Hazel and could tell that, despite the chilly temps, she wanted to go on a late afternoon hike. I did, too, for that matter and why not combine the hike with a POTA activation?
In addition, we were expecting a winter storm to move in that night, so hitting the trail in advance of the snow and ice seemed to make sense.
Before I could get my boots on, Hazel was waiting by the car door to jump in.
At 1175 miles long, the MST stretches from the Outer Banks of North Carolina to the Great Smoky Mountains (see map above).
I can actually hike to the MST from my QTH, but it takes a good hour and half to do so. It’s much easier to drive to one of the numerous nearby trailheads, and that’s exactly what Hazel and I did. I drove to one of my favorite Blue Ridge Parkway POTA spots where a short manway connects to the MST.
Hazel was so excited to hit the trail. (I was, too.)
At the end of the day (because, it was nearing the end of the day) we couldn’t hike for long if I planned to also complete a POTA activation. Sunset was at 5:29 PM local and I didn’t want to pack up and hike back in the dark.
I started my action camera and captured the last bit of hike before Hazel and I found a great spot to set up. There were enough trees around to deploy a 40 meter EFHW and a relatively flat spot to set up my Helinox chair and KX1 station.
Since much of this section of the MST is on the Blue Ridge Parkway grounds, I checked quickly to make sure my operating site would qualify as a two-fer with K-3378.
I opened the Parceled App on my iPhone to confirm that my site was indeed on Blue Ridge Parkway property..
On Thursday, December 28, 2023, I had the good fortune of meeting up with Jonathan (KM4CFT) at the Zebulon Vance Historic Birthplace (K-6856) to play a little POTA.
These days, Jonathan lives in Colorado, but he’s originally from western North Carolina. We met once before when he was in town visiting his folks. That previous time was very short, though; this time, we wanted to meetup and fit in a POTA activation together.
We arranged to meet around 2:00 in the afternoon at the Vance Birthplace.
We decided to deploy one of Jonathan’s End-Fed Half-Wave antennas. He cut this particular one for 20 meters.
We set up under the picnic shelter with the antenna essentially in a sloper configuration.
Gear:
Note: All Amazon, CW Morse, ABR, Chelegance, eBay, and Radioddity links are affiliate/partnerhip links that support QRPer.com at no cost to you.
I brought along a couple of radios that Jonathan had yet to operate. He chose to use the Penntek TR-45L (great choice!).
One wrinkle: Jonathan operates with his paddle in “reverse” with the left paddle sending dashes and the right sending dits.
Unfortunately, the TR-45L doesn’t have a software function to flip between “normal” and “reverse” settings. No problem, though: Jonathan simply turned his key (a BaMaKey TP-III) upside down! Problem solved!
The only annoying issue was the 45L speaker–something inside the chassis or speaker assembly was rattling/buzzing with louder signals and with the sidetone. After noticing the speaker vibration at an activation in South Carolina a few months ago, I opened up the TR-45L at the QTH and tried to tighten down anything that could resonate inside the chassis. My fix seemed to work until we powered it up for Jonathan to use. I may have to add some padding around the speaker assembly if I can’t locate the culprit inside the radio–it could be pretty much anything.
Jonathan plugged along and paid no attention to the buzz, nor my fiddling with the radio while he operated. (You’re a good sport, OM!).
After he completed his activation, Jonathan handed over the radio to me.
Since I couldn’t sort out the acoustic buzz/vibration without opening the radio on the picnic table, I opted to swap out the TR-45L with my Discovery TX-500.
I hopped on the air and logged quite a few stations on 20 meters. It was serious fun!
Here’s our real-time, real-life video of the entire activation. As with all of my videos, I don’t edit out any parts of the on-air activation time. In addition, I have monetization turned off on YouTube, although that doesn’t stop them from inserting ads before and after my videos.
Jonathan, it was great hanging with you and, again, I’m so impressed with your CW progress. It seems like only yesterday when you started your CW journey!
When folks are passing through western NC it can be difficult for our schedules to align for a POTA meetup, but I’m so happy when they do.
Thank you!
Thank you for joining us on this joint activation!
I hope you enjoyed the field report and ctivation video as much as I enjoyed creating them.
Of course, I’d also 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 really appreciate the support.
As I mentioned before, the Patreon platform connected to Vimeo make it possible for me to share videos that are not only 100% ad-free, but also downloadable for offline viewing. The Vimeo account also serves as a third backup for my video files.
Thanks for spending part of your day with me! Have an amazing weekend!
Many of you know I’m on the crew of the Ham Radio Workbench podcast. In fact, as of this month, I’ve been there a year now (my how time flies). Although it shows a certain lack of judgement on their part, I’m glad they invited me on board!
On October 9, fellow HRWB crew member, Mark (N6MTS), pitched an idea to us via email:
“What do y’all think about doing an HRWB On The Air event?”
We all agreed it sounded like a great idea. Things like this normally take a year’s worth of planning, promoting, and organizing. Not when Mark’s in charge, though.
Next thing we know, Mark had us sorting out the best date/time (December 3, 2023/1800-22:00UTC) for HRWBOTA and even reached out to some amazing volunteers who helped put together a website and spotting page.
Holy cow!
December 3, 2023
I planned to operate the entire four hour event period from Lake James State Park (K-2730) since it would be an easy detour en route to Hickory, NC (where I was staying that night). Of course, each contact would could for both HRWBOTA and POTA.
The previous day, however, I learned that one of my daughters had a meeting in downtown Asheville from 18:00-19:00 UTC. She doesn’t have a driver’s license yet, so I had to take her. Had it not been an important meeting in advance of her finals, she would have skipped.
This really threw a wrench in the works. I knew that by the time her meeting ended and I dropped her off at the QTH, the earliest I could be at Lake James was 20:15-20:30 or so.
How could I increase my on-the-air HRWBOTA time?
KH1 to the rescue!
Since the Elecraft KH1 was packed in my EDC bag, I decided to play a little HRWBOTA in the parking lot behind the meeting building.
I wasn’t sure what to expect to be honest. I wasn’t spotting myself anywhere but the HRWBOTA spotting page, and I was limited to the 15, 17, and 20M bands with the KH1’s 4′ whip antenna.
I spotted myself, hit the air and started calling CQ HRWBOTA!
In the span of about 45 minutes, I managed to log a total of 15 stations! Not bad considering I was standing in an urban parking lot, swimming in QRM, and going QRP!
I didn’t make a video of this part of the HRWBOTA activation–sorry about that if you worked me then. I needed every moment of on-the-air time I could grab. Here’s my log sheet:
Lake James State Park (K-2739)
I legged it to Lake James after my daughter’s meeting–in fact, to save time, I started my activation video while I was still in my car driving on I-40.
I arrived at Lake James, parked, plugged in the car, grabbed my gear and made my way to the picnic area next to the lakeshore. It wasn’t hard to find a site with a tree that might support my KM4CFT 30/40M linked EFHW antenna.
When my friend, Alan (W2AEW), caught wind that I planned to buy some 26AWG wire for this build, he sent me a spool of wire from a large reel he’d recently picked up at a hamfest.
What a nice guy! The blue wire is absolutely ideal for portable antennas.
Being the nice guy he is, Alan actually published a video about building Jonathan’s antenna kit on his YouTube channel. I highly recommend watching it!
Before I received the kit, I already knew what type of antenna I’d build: a 30 meter end-fed half-wave (EFHW) linked with a 40 meter extension. This antenna design has been on my mind for some time and Jonathan’s kit was the perfect excuse to build one.
Why a 30M EFHW with a 40M extension? Because a 40M EFHW gives me excellent SWR matches on 40, 20, 15, and 10 meters without needing an ATU. A 30M EFHW gives me matches 30 and 17 meters.
Thus, with one linked wire antenna, I can cover 40, 30, 20, 17, 15, and 10 meters! That’s a lot of bands!
And since the antenna needs no extra matching, it’ll work with my transceivers that lack an internal ATU.
The Mountain Topper MTR-5B I acquired earlier this year.
In fact, I originally thought about this antenna design to use with my Mountain Topper MTR-5B which covers 40, 30, 20, 17, and 15 meters.
I built this antenna by first trimming it for a 1:1 match on 30 meters including a loop and strain relief to attach the extension.
When I was satisfied with my 30M EFHW, I then made the 40M extension, attached it to the 30M section with 2mm bullet banana connectors, then trimmed the antenna for a 1:1 match on 40M.
I spent the better part of 60 minutes trimming this antenna. I feel like patience really pays off because it’ll set up the antenna for good matches on all of the upper harmonics. Admittedly, I was a bit pressed for time that day, so I only tested this antenna in one configuration (an inverted vee shape) so hadn’t checked the SWR as a sloper or vertical.
My advice is to aim for a 1.3:1 or better match on 30M and 40M–that should be very doable if you wound your transformer correctly.
Long time QRPer.com contributor and supporter, Jonathan (KM4CFT) has designed and started producing ultra-compact end-fed antenna kits (eBay affiliate link).
His end-fed antennas are incredibly small, thus perfect for portable operations. They remind me very much of K6ARK’s end-fed wire antenna kits, but a little easier to build because the board is larger and there are no surface mount components.
Jonathan sent me one of his end-fed kits (assembled) a couple weeks ago, but I’ve yet to trim mine due to my crazy schedule and activities as of late (well, that I need need to order more wire!). I will take this antenna to the field this month, but the video may not show up for a few weeks.
W2AEW Builds the KM4CFT UNUN
This morning, I learned that my good friend Alan (W2AEW) published a video where he builds, tunes and tests Jonathan’s QRP End Fed UNUN kit:
Alan’s video is superb. If you purchase this EFHW kit, I’d encourage you to watch his build. (And subscribe to his channel!)
How to purchase
Jonathan is selling his antenna kits on eBay–click here to check it out. The price is $29.95 plus a modest shipping fee. I think it’s an excellent deal.
Of course, you’ll need some wire for your radiator and/or counterpoise.
I plan to build mine with a 30 meter link to pair with my Mountain Topper MTR-5B.
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This is my CFT1 Go Bag. It contains everything I need to activate my CFT1 except for a mast or throwline.
