15 meter POTA activation with DX!

Today I went to K-2169 (Cloudland Canyon State Park) and setup my Ten Tec Argonaut 5 and proceeded to work 15 meters with the intent to not get on 20 meters at all. (I did wander down to 17 meters but not till I had secured the activation on 15 meters first.) I just enjoy the pursuit of the higher bands for some reason. I really like to work 15 meters in particular and I have no good reason why either… I pulled the wire up into a tree in an almost vertical orientation but it could still be called a sloper if you held you head right. Probably a 60 degree angle sloper, but it was up in the tree and the 13’ counter poise was 90 degrees to it.

The view from my operating position never gets old. I love activating this park with the view and the tree canopy giving almost perpetual shade it makes for a wonderful location almost all year round.

This is the view directly behind me. There was a fairly lively family reunion or some such happening in this shelter. I had to turn up the volume a couple of times to be able to hear over them. LOL. This is also one of the reasons I like the location I am at, should it start to rain, I can just unhook the antenna wire and battery and basically carry the radio and tuner to the shelter in just seconds.

Once again, the Ten Tec Argonaut 5 was front and center. I have really grow to love this little radio. I can see why they have such a cult following, the receiver is great, the filters are simple to use and effective, the radio has minimal menu options that mainly follow the “set n forget” ideology, What’s not to love for a CW op? I think going forward this will be my main POTA radio for ops where I am near the truck and I will use the Penntek TR-35 for backpack ops due to its small size.

Another thing I did today was bring one of my large keys, this one has been out of the house several times already so it is no stranger to a picnic table. It is my prototype CW key I made many years ago, it works wonderfully too. I actually use it more than the newer model I made later that is still on the bench connected to the Omni 6+…

I am also using the HamGadgets keyer I picked up off of eBay a while back. This little keyer is the reason I now like using the Argonaut 5 on activations. The Argonaut doesn’t have memories in the keyer, so you have to pound out every bit of the code you send with it. This allows me to record some messages like my CQ and such so I can just hit a button and send the whole call for POTA.

Here we have something that a lot of people gloss over. Fuses. Also note that I have the battery connected to the input fuse and I deliberately chose the 10 amp fuse for the Argonaut since it is only 20 watts out. I need to take my inline meter and see what the draw is on dead key and adjust accordingly but for now I know the battery and radio are fuse protected like this. Don’t neglect to add fuses to your portable system, it still matters as much as at home. This is not a name brand fuse bank either which means I wont load it as heavy as they advertise, we all know these are built to the edge of spec anyway.

I wanted to show the case I transport the radio in. This is some sort of surplus military case that we picked up as Huntsville Hamfest last year for really reasonable money. A little cutting here and there and some new closed cell foam and contact adhesive and we have a case to carry the Argonaut 5 and a MFJ antenna tuner with a wire antenna connection input on it as well. You can see the tuner still in the case as I was using my Ten Tec tuner today since it was in the box with the antenna.

Well, I got on the air today on 15 meters and heard a good bit of band activity and so I figured I would check the POTA spots to see who all was on 15…turns out I was the only one on 15 meters on the spot page. I didn’t check it after that for a while but when I did there still wasn’t anyone other than me that was there. I don’t know why other than the QSB (fading) that was happening. You can see the timestamps in my log where I would go 3 or 4 four minutes without so much as a call and then I would get several in a row. You can also see from the signal reports that when they did come in, they came in strong! As I was working through a tiny pile up with NK8O and VE3CT I could hear a weak station near the noise. Once I cleared the other two stations I could hear YS1MS coming out a little louder now! I was stoked to get central America in the log today! Yeah, I know the Oregon call was probably further away, but I got a DX call in the log from El Salvador today!!! WooHoo! When 15 is open is goes WAY out there! KJ7DT came booming in to me right off the bat. Man I love this hobby!

So it seemed that 15 meters started to close or something as I went several minutes without a call so I decided to tune up on 17 meters and see what I could scratch up. Well, 17 did not disappoint. I worked several stations fairly quickly and I could tell that I was on a lower band than before as the station that was coming in loud on 15 that was kind of near me (N2DI) was weaker on 17 meters. I actually worked several hams on both bands today, which is always awesome. But I did notice several hams from out west were on 17 but not 15 meters. You will notice two Idaho stations, two Utah stations and a Arizona station. It was almost like the signal on 15 hopped right over these guys or they don’t have a 15 meter antenna…who knows to be honest. Anyway at about 21:43 UTC I hit a little pileup of 3 or 4 stations and once again started pulling the callsigns out one at a time. I kept hearing this station down near the noise, but it was solid, just the other stations were a lot louder and I could copy them easier so I went ahead and worked them out. Then I started pulling out the call. I got the number right away, it was a 1 and I knew I had heard the CC at the end…what was that first letter again? W? No, that isn’t right. “UR CALL?” J… It was a J callsign!!! I have never worked a Japan call before, I have never honestly heard a Japan ham loud enough to be able to make a QSO with them, I have heard them before but they were down in the noise. This one was weak, but clearly I could hear the call. J…H…1…O…C…C… YES, it was Japan!!! I couldn’t believe it when he gave me a 539 with my compromise antenna and 20 watts of power! I was on cloud nine for a few minutes after this. I even bragged to my buddies about it. It was a great day today. I had hoped to work a few J calls while I was in Hawaii, but never heard one while I was there. That is just how it goes…lol.

I ended up with 29 QSOs in the log today which is a great day as it means I secured the activation as I worked several DX stations to boot. What is your favorite DX station you have worked while operation portable or picnic table mobile or some such?

73 WK4DS

2023 Huntsville Hamfest from the view of a vendor this time!!!

Man time flies! It has already been a year since me and Trey had come over and bought all those military surplus cases and stuff! I cant understand how that has happened…

Anyway, I signed up for a table in the “bone yard” which is indoors at Huntsville, which is nice since it means it is out of the direct sun in August and has air conditioning. Well Trey arrives the day of the event and I already have my stuff int he truck, we just load a couple things he is bringing and we are off.

Side notes: Check out the vintage Ten Tec t-shirt I only get out for this and sometimes Field Day, I am probably the only person alive who still has one. I am also monitoring two ham bands here, our 2 meter simplex frequency and our 1.25 meter simplex frequency, We used both over the course of the day to make contact with friends. Back to the story already in progress…

We get to the convention center right on time and find a huge line of cars waiting to get into the show area. Once we work our way through the line we figure out these people are parking in the underground parking lot and we need to go to the back to unload the truck, well we get out of line, unload the truck and setup in short order. I can tell already it is going to be a good show for me when I can’t even get the truck parked before Trey (who went with the stuff to the table) is already being pummeled by dealers wanting to buy my stuff! This is a good sign!

By the time this photo was taken, the Icom IC 705 and tuner were sold. It literally lasted 5 minutes. this is good as the proceeds from the sale of this radio went to purchase the sBitx radio that I want for POTA instead. I had also already sold one of the two power supplies I took over as well. Common items seem to have went really fast to be honest.

Here, Trey (KG4WBI) Is getting settled in for the long arduous day of minding the table. Also, at this point I still had the Elecraft K1 pictured here as well. More on this radio later.

Once the doors opened, it was a free for all till about lunch time. It was REALLY crowded with so many people that it was hard to imagine the total number of participants. Everybody seemed to have a radio, even the little kids!

Things moved off of the table steadily all morning though and I had high hopes that I would actually achieve my goal of not taking any of it home with me! Each little item, one by one, would get picked up and bought by some enterprising person looking for the find of the day. I was happy to help them too.

After lunch I made my way over to the POTA table and grabbed a photo for the blog, they were pretty busy so I didn’t bother them with my shenanigans but left them to inform the youth about the wonders of ham radio. While out on my stroll I did check on a couple of items I was looking for and stopped to play with the N3ZN keys for a minute as they are SWEEEEET! Then it was back to the grind of tending “shop”…

I continued to see the stuff I didn’t use goto new homes one at a time till I was down to the K1, the Ten Tec 238 tuner and the Comet Antenna Analyzer. Then the strangest thing happened. I had to goto the bathroom. Well, that wasnt really all that odd, but what was happening at the table was. Turns out Josh from Ham Radio Crash Course had sent out scouts looking for a K1 or a K2 and they found mine and told him. He was livestreaming the event too! Well, he finds the table and makes his way over to it to find Trey minding the booth in my absence. You can actually watch his stream and see the whole thing transpire, just fast forward to about the 18 minute mark to see where it all starts.

Ham Radio Crash Course Video

A little back story here. I love the little K1, it was a favorite of mine for many years and I have used it off and on for that time. I just took a long hard look at the gear in the shack and realized the K1 sits on a shelf WAY more than not and I needed it to goto a good home where it would see more air time. So with a little sadness, I packed it up to goto the hamfest to find a new home. I get attached to things like this way to much and this is an exercise in decluttering my life, I wanted to move out a ton of gear and not just throw it away or such but turn it into something I would use instead. The K1 is just a plain fun radio to use, hence the pain in seeing it leave. I believe Josh will do a wonderful job at this and look forward to seeing the little K1 on his youtube channel soon.

It was great interacting with him and getting to chat for a minute, he took it straight way over to the test bench and had them check it for operation and he was happy it worked as advertised, All of this is also in the livestream…lol.

Then I had one more trek around a little to pick up a few items I have been looking for and actually found. I got a coax and some connectors from the Wire Man, I got the drop-in desk charger for my old Icom HT I have been using lately and it even came with a working radio! So now I have two!!! HAHA, why did I come to the hamfest again??? Then I bought a cable from another cable builder, ABR Industries, and I must say they look really good, I wanted a new coax for my POTA work and he builds his with common mode chokes built into the cable, that is really nice and i am looking forward to testing this cable on the nanoVNA to see how it compares to my homebrew chokes I made.

Then the finale of the day came when I went back over to N3ZN’s booth and talked to him about a small POTA key. The next thing I know, I bought one!

This key is tiny, at about 1.5” by 1.5”, it will be an awesome POTA key. I am going to look into how I plan to use it and expect there to be blog posts coming soon about it. I also got to talk to the man himself while he filed out my ticket on it and he is an amazing guy, I count it as a blessing to have met him. Hopefully we will cross paths again soon. If I get the chance I want to share with him my keys I built back in the day, we talked for a while and he is one of the few people that can actually appreciate the work that went into making them.

In closing I wanted to share a photo of my current dream rig, the Elecraft K4 with or without the amplifier, I just want the radio to be honest. At some point I will upgrade from the aging Ten Tec radios in my shack and this is probably what will replace them. I love everything about this radio and quietly take a peek at it when I am at the hamfest, but for now, there is POTA to do and contacts to make with the gear I have!

PS: All I brought home was the antenna analyzer and the Ten Tec tuner, both of which I dont mind holding on to for a while longer…

73

WK4DS-David

Somedays you just make a mistake…

Today is Sunday, 6 AUG 2023 and I had a small window of time to get in an activation in the late afternoon. Teresa also decided to ride with me so she could get out of the house and planned on using her computer to do some projects she had been wanting to do. I forgot she mentioned that she would need AC power and this turned into a problem for me or so I thought. The inverter I have in my truck is apparently not very “clean” from what I saw today on my S meter…once again so I thought.

We get to the park (K-2169) and I grab the photo you see of the storm front coming into view. This is when I realized I would need to hurry if I was going to setup in time. I throw out a counterpoise and stuck the 20 meter hamstick on the back of the truck and ran the coax into the cab. I simply taped up the connector to keep the rain out and got back in the truck just in time before the deluge began.

So then once in the cab with it raining buckets outside, I do some yoga moves to get turned around and uncrate the Ten Tec Argonaut 5 transceiver. Since it is in that huge military case in the back seat, it was not easy to get it out from the front seat with the doors closed and Teresa in the seat beside me. I finally get the radio loosed from the surly bonds of the hard case and setup on the armrest of the truck seat.

I learned something at this point. I had blamed the inverter and Teresa’s computer for the rf hash I was hearing on the radio. Well, turns out when you are setting up in an active thunderstorm that the atmosphere is charging and discharging constantly. The static buildup is audible and visible on the radio as I watched the S meter climb to S9+10dB, hold there for several seconds then a flash of light would happen and the noise floor would drop to S2 and I could hear other stations again. Then the process would start over…

I listened to this a couple of times fascinated by the phenomenon I was witnessing in real time in front of me. Then it occurred to me that the static discharge that was resetting the S meter to normal was LIGHTENING!!! “Good grief, I’m such an idiot” I thought… I hurriedly shut off the radio and disconnected the coax as fast as possible. I threw the cable into the back seat and waited on the rain to let up. I figured since it wasn’t grounded that it wouldn’t attract a lightning strike and I was right as it didn’t hit the antenna. That is my theory at least… Once the rain subsided to just a drizzle, I pulled the truck forward to get the counterpoise out of the grass, got out and quickly broke down the antenna and stowed it in the truck bed. Once back in the truck the rain picked back up and I threw in the towel at this point and just headed home.

Mother Nature has a cruel sense of humor at times though so just as soon as we cleared the park and was on HWY 136 headed back home, the rain literally stops and the clouds start to break up. I was too frustrated at this point so I just went on home instead. I don’t count this as a failed activation officially as I never sent a CQ, but in reality, I should as I had the entire station online and never made a single contact. That would make this the second failed activation in my entire POTA “career” you might say. I should have believed the weather man…errrr… app when it said a front was inbound. Next time I will pay attention.

I never even opened the logbook today…sad. I should have stuck it out 15 more minutes, I could have gotten an activation in by the end of the UTC day at least…

Thanks for following along, but the point of this article is to pay attention to the signs your radio gives you about thunderstorms. If you see the S meter climb and it has a ton of static on the band with a constant signal and then it just drops back to normal all at once and you either see a bright flash or hear thunder a few seconds later, this is probably the clouds and you might want to turn your radio off and disconnect the antenna…just as a precaution.

73

WK4DS - David

A picnic table activation for a change!

Well, I was beginning to wonder when I could do this again…comfortably. 😂 I have been operating from the truck for so long now, that I felt like I was at a new park when I went to my old favorite picnic table.

So for this “special” event, I wanted to take something out of the ordinary for me. So I used the Penntek TR-35 radio (this doesn’t fit that description but the rest does) and fed it through my vintage Ten Tec antenna tuner to a 65’ random wire with a couple of 10’ counterpoise wires.

To make tuning simple and fast, I use my nanoVNA and simply unplug the BNC from the radio and plug it into the VNA, adjust the tuner for a nice reading on the VNA for the band I want to use and then transfer the coax back to the radio. This way I am not transmitting carriers over the air while I tune and I can visually see what is happening while I tune. It just makes it so easy for me.

Something that I also built for this is the powerpack/speaker unit. This device houses a Bioenno 3aH battery and I installed a couple of speakers as well as a volt meter (that is activated via a push button to prevent battery drain by the meter) and a Anderson powerpole port (added after this activation). I wanted a device that could essentially “complete” the TR-35 sans antenna… It is missing a key of some sort that might just get added a little later. A simple straight key built into it somewhere would be pretty sweet to be honest.

The next thing is how I put up my wire antenna. I first threw a line over this huge tree limb and pulled the wire over it.

Then I threw the line as high into this tree way back here as possible and hauled the wire up about 30’ or so into that tree. It is making a horizontally run wire of sorts and work’s shockingly well. It also keeps the wire out of the way of park goers as well.

All in all, this map shows how well the little TR-35 with a 65’ wire up in the trees worked. I even dialed up some DX on 17m before finishing and worked FY5KE in south America before going QRT and breaking it all back down.

So I look forward to working many more ops at my local park with my little QRP radios in the coming weeks and not being bound to my truck so I dont freeze to death in the process like back in the winter.

72

WK4DS

Ten Tec Argonaut 5 goes to the park and then gets a new fan!

I love this radio, it works so well and is really easy to use with minimal menu settings. Then again I love all TenTec radios and have an unhealthy addiction to the brand…lol. Is it really that bad of a problem? I bought this one “for field use”, you know… like Field Day in June or POTA, but I have found things about it that keep me reaching for other radios most of the time. Let’s take a look at some of these short comings for a field radio that I like to use while doing an activation.

So I get this radio out much less for a couple of reasons… The main one is that it doesn’t have a CW keyer memories built in like the ICOM IC-705 and the Penntek TR-35 have in them. This is a big deal if you plan to activate for more than an hour or so as calling cq over and over manually can be strenuous to say the least with time. You see the keyer does something for me other than relieve me from having to pound out the CQ all the time, it BUYS me time. I am able to make log notes and fill in missing parts of the log while it is happily sending the CQ for me. This is a huge help after a quick string of QSOs and I am getting the times written down along with my usual log notes I like to make.

Quick rabbit to chase here… There is a few notable call signs for me on this page. K9IS is my first Hunter to get to 50 QSOs with me and KJ7DT has been showing up in my log more frequently lately too. The other call is the Canadian, just because he is DX…lol. Always cool to have those DX callsigns in the logbook. Now back to your regularly scheduled chat about the radio.

The next reason I don’t normally grab this radio is that it is fairly large compared to the other radios too. When I am operating in the truck, space is a valuable commodity and I am not able to spread all the gear around easily, if you will notice in the above photo I actually have the Argonaut balanced on my camera bag so it wont be in the way of logging… This actually worked out pretty well though and I think I will come up with something for the other radios to sit in the same area in the future, it was really convenient having the whole surface for my book and key.

The next reason is that the fan is crazy loud and runs non-stop even when I have it turned down to 5 watts for my QRP ops.

A little about the activation today is also in order. I went to K-2169 (my local park) and went to my quiet place at the top of the hill. As you can see, I had the place to myself as usual.

So I get parked, then start assembling the antenna and getting the coax into the cab of the truck when I notice that the cable adapter I have on the base of the antenna is loose, I am not sure how long it has been loose, but it was pretty loose today, to the point the BNC connector spun when I went to install it. This is how I found it was loose. Point here is check those screw together connections from time to time. They work loose too. The one on the back of the radio was loose too… which I thought was odd since I have only used it a couple of times so far.

Although today I didn’t need them, the BNC converter is a nice adapter to have in your kit. I could have used regular PL=259 connectors today, but I had forgot that the antenna and the radio both use them so I just used the same cable I use for the other radios and it worked great.

Another thing I have done is converted the power cable to use power-poles so I can plug it into any power source I use, which now also includes the power port in the truck too. I feel this is a worthwhile thing to do if you plan to work field ops a lot, standardization of the power connectors just makes sense.

I bought this case at the Huntsville Hamefest from Gigaparts and it is for some sort of military radio, but with a little cutting here and there and a little foam here and there it now houses the Argonaut 5 and a MFJ manual tuner as well as a wire antenna and some other miscellaneous items

Me and Roger (KG4WBI) have this obsession of printing out and binding all the owners manuals for all our radios. So I keep this one in the case with the radio and it was needed on this outing to see how to set a couple of menu items I had forgotten about.

Now for the Argonaut 5 Radio Fan…

The fan on this radio is just plain loud, that is the only way you can say it. It is also wired to run non-stop for some reason. This is also a pretty large current drain for no real reason at all other than to make absolutely certain the finals don’t get too hot… At some later point, I plan to make a small thermal sensing circuit that will fire a relay to cycle the fan instead of it just running all the time. but first things first, I am changing the fan itself with one of the low noise fans that another op from a TenTec group shared and it worked really well for them. I downloaded a sound meter app for my phone to see if it was measurable and have the two meter readings to see for myself. Ignore the AVG and MAX values, I watched the meter for a few minutes and did a screen capture of what was really going on to get a more representative number. 65 seems pretty low, but when you are listening for signals near the noise floor, every dB matters so the new fan comes in at 45(44.9 is what I captured in the screenshot and this was a pretty good average from what I watched on the meter.) Now also remember this is an iPhone app and not a legit sound meter, but it does give us something to look at for reference. If it is right, which is possible, then this is a 20dB difference. This is huge as decibels are logarithmic in nature and not linear, this is equal to 100 times quieter! That is awesome and totally worth the effort! To the ear, this new fan is dead silent, I didn’t think it was even running when I turned the radio on actually. So I am really pleased with how this mod turned out, the radio has one less detriment to keep me from using it at parks!

Old fan measured right at the back of the radio.

New fan measured in the same place as the old fan, that is a 20dB change!!!!

This was the ham shack with the Argonaut turned off for reference.

Orderd this little guy from amazon and had it in a couple of days.

This fan is literally a plug-n-play replacement for the factory fan in the radio. I literally removed the case screws, the fan screws, one wire tie on the wiring harness and unplugged the fan. It was the easiest mod I have ever done to a radio…ever.

Something of note, this new fan is thicker and the old screws would not work in my application, but I had a couple of screws in the junk drawer that were about 1/4” longer that worked great so I am back in the game!

The fan connector is a standard computer fan plug so it doesn’t need anything special at all. This is refreshing as it seems everybody wants to use proprietary connectors these days for some reason.

All in all, this has turned out to be a great little excursion in more than one way. I got the Argonaut on the air and I also got the fan upgraded afterwards too. I really like the ergonomics of the little machine so I will see how I can fit it into my regular activations and use it more now. Do you have a radio that you love, but just dont use because of some little issue? Let’s hear what it is and see if I am the only guy that does this.

72

David

WK4DS

Huntsville Hamfest 2022 AAR

So it has come and went again, the Huntsville Hamfest was alive and well this year with a strong showing from major companies as well as a sizeable boneyard! Who doesn’t like a good boneyard?!?

We started our morning by grabbing some coffee in Scottsboro on our way from Trenton and heading over to Huntsville. Since we had paid online we did not have to buy our tickets at the gate and we were able to immediately register, get a pin and go on into the Hamfest. I have to admit, I was a little bit taken aback when we got into the show iteself by seeing all of the vendors that were there. There were so many vendors in new equipment, product manufacturers and the boneyard was unbelievable. It was like I had went back in time 20 years to a hamfest. I have always been more interested in the boneyard than I have in new equipment so we focused most of our time wondering the boneyard looking at things from days gone by and occasionally buying stuff.

This was the second trip to the truck of the day… lol

We bought so much stuff that we had to go get a little red wagon cart out of the truck to haul it all back with. I finally bought an amplifier and a power supply to drive it, as well as a few antenna tuners and some other little odds and ends, OH YEAH! and a 20 meter hamstick for my POTA ops to reduce the kit size if possible on some outings. I don’t even remember what Roger bought other than the STACK of those green hard shell cases from GigaParts! Lol, I think he ended up with 4 of them before he was done! HaHa. He has so many portable radios that he wants to kit out and these are almost perfect right out of the chute. a little work and some closed cell foam and mine will house my Argonaut and all the associated stuff to use it for an activation.

We saw so much cool stuff that it is hard to remember it all. Things like vacuum tubes galore, along with all the panel meters ever made at one table, and if you look close enough, you can even find vintage crystals in a cigar box here and there.

It was a kit builder’s paradise! We found so many parts to build amps and tuners with and there was a table with nothing but little project kits (I failed to get a photo of that though…) .

We grabbed some lightening arrestors as you can never have too many of those… then started looking for cool old Ten Tec stuff. I was actually looking for two very specific things made by Ten Tec back in the day. One was a Hercules II amplifier and the other was the Collins mechanical filters for my Omni 7 radio. If you happen to read this and know where I can at least get the 500hz Collins filter I would really appreciate it.

Here are some of the Ten Tec rigs we found, minus the Pegasus and the Scout that I forgot to grab a photos of…

The mighty Orion 2 contesting rig even made an appearance!

Something else we noticed early on was the incredible number of Ameritron AL-811 amplifiers that was there! It seemed like every other table had one on it. That is an exaggeration of course, but it did seem like every time we looked up we saw another one. We saw so many that it actually became a little running joke between me and Roger.

About 2 o’clock in the afternoon we realized we needed sustenance and grabbed some nutritious options from the snack bar onsite. As an aside, I have realized that I am now officially vegetarian too. At some point I figured out that I am allergic to beef (probably the result of a tick bite), so I decided to join my daughter, who is vegetarian due to medical issues arising from PANDAS, in being vegetarian as well. Something you need to understand here, I hate vegetables. Yeah, I said it. I cant stand vegetable soup or okra or butter beans, just cant stand most vegetables, but I am figuring it out…ever so slowly.

I don’t know what the big deal is with the whole division in the dietary community too, I just don’t order meat and mind my own business…simple. But you see these vegetarians throwing fits over restaurants not offering things compatible with their diets and meat-a-tarians making fun of the herbivores. I just dont get it, but who knows (obviously not me). I just know that if I don’t eat beef, I don’t wake up in the middle of the night with hives head to toe and itching all over for an hour.

Anyway, I got the fries and pretzel and they were quite delicious. Yes, the pretzel has butter on it and it was awesome! (I am not vegan…lol)

Once fueled up, it was back into the fray. Here are a few photos of some of the highlights I saw…

These keys were amazing! If you want a wonderful key built by a ham, this would be one that I would suggest, they were simply subline.

I even found the youtubers. Lol.

At the end of the day, we finally called it a done deal and headed home with our new treasures. All in all it was a great show and if you are within reasonable driving distance, I would say to give it a shot next year, it was well worth our trip this year to say the least. Thanks for following along and I hope you enjoyed the tour!

72

David - WK4DS

The WK4DS POTA Hunter Station Amateur Radio (and a little ragchewing too)

What does a simple POTA hunter HF station look like? Just like any other HF station… This is what mine looks like currently. If you haven’t already figured it out, I have a Ten Tec fetish and I don’t care 🤣 The Omni VI+ was a dream rig back when I first got into radio and I could not afford one at that time, but as time went on, I was able to piece together a nice station sans amplifier…for now… and I have really enjoyed using this old girl on the air. I also have the 238 manual tuner in the closet as well waiting on a time when I will need it.

My current station mainly consists of a Ten Tec Omni 6+ with matching power supply and automatic antenna coupler that I run primarily into a vertical antenna I have out in the yard. I still need to finish the installation of my wire antenna in the front yard in the trees so that I will have a second antenna to work with that will complement the station. I also have a splitter worked out to where I can set up and use my QRP radios in the shack easily. This allows me to test the radios and learn how to use them before I go into the field to do an activation. This reduces the stress of figuring out the radio in the field while trying to make contacts.

My current key of choice is the Ten Tec KR 40 keying module, this key is designed to work with their older radios and is able to do all sorts of things other than just keying output. It is an electronic work of art to simply be a key lol. I also have my other regular keys that the radio will operate with since it has a key input and a paddle input on the Omni. Not to be left out I also have a Logickey K3 keyer that I am going to get working as well. This will also make me have memory keying with my Omni since it does not natively have a memory keyer built in.

I am planning on adding a second HF rig to the shack to complement my Omni 6+ so that I can have the Omni calibrated and have a couple of small issues repaired on it and while it is out. Having the second rig makes it to where I will still be able to operate. I am currently searching for one of several radios to fit this position in my shack, such as the Ten Tec Jupiter/Omni 7, the Ten Tec Eagle, the Ten Tec Orion, or even something simple and small like a Kenwood TS 590 or similar. I really want nice filtering as I like to listen to CW on the air regularly and it is very tiring to listen to the bands with a lot of band noise. A radio with good roofing filters or IF filtering makes this a much more pleasurable experience. That is all my ham shack at home has in it to hunt stations with. My current antenna is a 17 m vertical that I can tune all the way down to 40 m and still have a decent signal going out. This is why I want to put a large wire antenna in the front yard. I really want to be able to work the lower bands and the large wire antenna will allow me to do that. Thank you for following along today and if you have not done it yet please subscribe to my blog thank you very much and hope to see you on the air soon. last but not least I have a good old 2 m radio to get on the local repeater and talk Symplex to my local buddies with. Everybody has to have a 2 m rig to get on the repeater ha ha.

73 WK4DS