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:
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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:
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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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