Activating a park in bad conditions

POTA activating in bad conditions can be challenging… for some modes. Seems that FT8 doesn’t really care if the bands are crappy and will gleefully allow you to play radio anyway.

This was an experiment to see if the sBitx amateur radio could work in terrible space weather like you see below in the report.

The above and below photo show how fast the band conditions changed on me while activating on this day. The band noise could be seen on the display “walking” across the band segment at times. This band noise would pretty much wipe out what you could hear on the band, but the radio could still decode the FT8 signals so I was able to work almost 20 stations in about an hour even with this sort of noise coming into and out of the band.

I normally dont bother activating in bad band conditions, but this day I really wanted to see just how good FT8 was at extracting signals from the noise. I can honestly say that I was impressed by the performance of this mode. Digital modes have their place and this is very much one of those places. Weak signal in poor band conditions shows just how important it is to use all the modes available to the amateur radio operator. I was once a die hard CW only op and to be honest, it is still one of my favorite modes, but of late I have started getting into SSB more and now I am also dipping my toe into digital modes more and more and I am really liking it. Dont limit yourself out of a stigma like I did, you might just like what you find.

Below is a photo of the display that shows something that i had never seen before and that is the pulsing band noise. That was a new one for me. It too would come in waves and these would last much longer it seemed. The sBitx just kept chugging along though, I would sometimes pick calls and sometimes answer calls and this is what makes FT8 awesome. I couldn’t have possibly made SSB contacts in these conditions…

Here you can see the operating position for the day. Perfect blue skies and nice temps makes for a great day on the air at a park. I had to goto this spot as the lower lot was completely full since the weather was so nice, it was fall and a Saturday. Sometimes going to this spot has it’s perks like lower band noise from the campground inverters and such so I dont really mind it.

I had planned on using a battery and setting up on the picnic table I usually occupy down next to the canyon rim, but there just wasn’t anywhere to park and I didn’t want to wait on someone to leave just so I could park.

This radial is on it’s last leg. I have twisted this broken radial back together for months now and on top of that, the connector on the other end has also broken off. This is almost comical as this is the best performing radial in my set! That is why I am reluctant to repair it at this point…lol. It just works and if it ain’t broke (figuratively) then dont fix it.

I dont know when this bug (I think it is a jumping spider) decided to join in on the fun but here he was playing on the antenna mount. By the time I finished the activation, this little guy was long gone. Kinda fun to notice the little things like this when you are out in the park.

By the end of the activation, I had worked 18 unique contacts and garnered one dupe because I didn’t read my logbook very carefully and called one ham two times…then I decided to attempt to work some CW. This was pretty futile though as I only worked one contact out of about 15 minutes of calling as this is abysmal for me when I work CW. I can usually work about one call per minute even when I am running QRP power levels. So when I only work one…that is bad band conditions. The stations would literally just disappear then reappear and it was impossible to get complete calls so I called it quits after one.

All in all, it was still a great day in the field. Hope to work you soon!

WK4DS

A Frozen activation…

Today (Jan 20, 2024) was a nice day other than the temperature so I figured I would setup a simple POTA site at K-0716 Chickamauga Battlefield on the Tennessee side of the park. This location is called Eagles nest and is a rock quarry probably for road construction in the late 19th century or early 20th century if I had to guess.

To some people 19 degrees doesn’t sound too bad, but for a Georgia boy that is down right cold! I ran the heater as much as possible to “charge up” the cab with as much heat as I possibly could before I started. Haha.

Since I only had about an hour, I figured I would just work 20 meters to have the highest probability of success. As you can see in the photos, this was a fairly simple deployment since it only used the one antenna and a pair of tuned radials. I also ran the coax through the door jamb to keep more heat in the truck. This deployment style netted me an SWR of 1.2:1 which is really good for my uses.

Here is a photo showing the height of the antenna over the ground. I am 6’2” tall. I really think this helps with the take off angle and also allows better impedance matching by allowing the radials to angle down from the mount. At some point I need to do some experimenting with more shorter radials to see how that would work instead. Dave Casler - KE0OG on YouTube has a great video discussing counterpoise wires and it is worth watching if you are interested in this. It is embedded below…

I did a wide angle shot of the operating position today to show how simple it can be if needed. I propped the radio on the storage case and simply used the armrest for my notebook. I operated both CW as well as FT8 today and it worked fine. If you look close, that water bottle in the console is frozen solid. Lol. I did shut down the truck to get rid of some RFI it is making locally as well so heating it up first was a good idea. The band was in great shape today without any fading that I could hear or see. The below photo is of the sBitx V3 software showing the FT8 portion of the band and how it is very busy with activity.

I am still using paper logging while operating in the field even for FT8 so that I don’t lose any of the contacts I make. The sBitx has automatic logging but it does contain some bugs at the time of this writing and will miss one on occasion so to prevent this, I paper log all the contacts during the activation. This is something that I obsess over for some reason, but I do like the peace of mind knowing that I have a hard copy of the activation should something electronic fail.

All in all, I had a really nice time activating on this frigid day and hope that if I get the opportunity, to work you someday as well. Until then, have some fun out there!

I used Modern Digital Modes and I have mixed feelings.

Well, it finally happened. KV9L helped me setup my computer at home to work some digital modes with my IC-705. It turns out that all I needed to connect my IC-705 to my desktop PC was a simple USB cable! It also took a significant amount of “know how” from my buddy Aaron to get them talking to each other as well. The two modes that I have played with so far as FT4 and FT8. These seem to be the current hotness in digital modes with FT8 clearly winning in popularity as the “watering hole” for it on 20 meters has dozens of stations on the air pretty much 24/7. The FT4 area can go long periods of time with no one there at all. Just to see if I like this idea, I have just wired the 705 up temporary on the shack bench with wires running this way and that… Once I decide if I want to keep this up or not, I will put all those pesky wires away…but till then!

All I needed was a USB cable that was in the storage bin 3 feet away…lol.

I will be honest though, I am kind of stuck in the past. I really like the kinesthetic feel of working with my gear and once setup, these new digital modes are pretty hands off. I was blown away at how far I could hear stations that are not even perceptible to the ear when using the “main two” modes (SSB & CW).

I was hearing stations from all over the world on my simple vertical antenna. Here comes some of the problems though. They either wouldn’t answer or couldn’t hear me when I would click on them. That isn’t to say that I didn’t make any contacts but it is not as easy as I was thinking it would be. Often I would choose a station to answer just to have them continue to call CQ.

Another thing I learned was that there is a good bit of waiting… Actually, there is a lot of waiting… it takes 15 seconds on FT8 to send one message, in one direction, and another 15 to send the reply. A typical QSO is 4 messages(as best as I can figure) from each person so a full two minutes to finish one QSO. This doesn’t sound like a long time till you are sitting there watching the QSO happen in real time. It goes a little as follows: they call CQ, you call them for a QSO, they don’t hear you the first time as you started transmitting in the middle of a cycle, so they call CQ again, then your message is repeated, they accept your call and send signal report, you send signal report back, they acknowledge and 73, you close with 73…all automatically. Each one of these is a full 15 seconds of waiting since the computer is handling everything for you. If the band is crowded and noisy or you are like me, running QRP power, the exchange can take multiple attempts to complete each stage (all of this is also automated), running the total time up even further.

Here is an example of a QSO I had with KP4PUA in Puerto Rico and notice we had to send signal reports twice to complete the QSO, This took a full 2 minutes to exchange this simple contact.

Another thing that happens is they give up after three of four attempts at the QSO.  Burning a full 5 minutes or more just ATTEMPTING to complete a QSO. So I tried several times and made maybe a dozen QSO contacts over the past couple of days. This ends up being very frustrating and to be honest…boring… for a CW op who is used to things happening differently. I found myself picking a callsign for my computer to attempt to call and then leaving it to make the QSO and going for snacks, water, or even a bathroom call and just checking for the complete QSO window when I returned. It is a fully automated process and requires nothing from you other than to click the ok button and choose another callsign.

A typical window layout for FT8 (pictured) or FT4. Click on the screenshot to goto the WSJT-x webstie to learn more about it.

I can see the value in It though, as it takes very little energy and lots of stations can fill the same bandspace as a single SSB QSO. I mean a lot, like dozens or maybe more as shown in the waterfall above. All of those little yellow squares are exchanges happening and they are taking about 100hz of bandspace and they can also duplex and share the bandspace at the same time…from what I can tell. So it has merit, just not for an old CW op like myself.

Now to be honest, FT4 is more my speed as it took half the time to send each message. Waiting 7 1/2 seconds seems like a trivial amount of time difference, but it does seem to pass be faster than the 15 seconds of FT8 for some reason… Like disproportionately faster. Even though there is only 7 1/2 seconds difference, it just seems like it is 4 times faster for some reason, it must be a mental block or something, but that is how I see it. I have been letting it run on FT4 while I typed up this blog post and actually made a few QSOs while I have been here. Not many as FT4 is not as popular as FT8 for some reason and there are not as many people using this mode.

So who do I think this mode of operation is for? That is a great question. I would guide the new ham to it, as once setup, it is very simple to operate and you don’t have to worry about “mic fright” as it is literally point and click. Another group that would be well served right away is the younger generation as they are accustomed to this type of interface and for them, it would “just make sense” for them as they are used to using computers all their lives. Another group would be the person that has been injured or incapacitated in some way that prevents them from using the usual modes, as long as they can drive a mouse, they can get on the air. Shoot, if you just like using digital modes, then it is there for you! There are others of course, my point is that I am not bashing digital modes here, I have just found it wasn’t what I expected and that it isn’t really for me…at this time. I hope to be able to add a computer to my activation gear list at some point and that should enable me to add digital modes to my activation tool kit. I carry a microphone now, but rarely use it, and that needs to change… I really enjoy quietly sitting in the park working CW though, so I am torn… lol. Anyway, till then I will keep using my little QRP radios and having a grand ole time. If you have not gotten out and activated a park, I highly recommend it. I am going to write up what I pack for an activation, and that is my style, and share that with you soon.

If you want to learn more about Parks on the Air. Click this link or the photo below.

Me working the OG digital mode…CW on my tiny N6ARA paddles