W4KAZ

Last month we finally got a chance to take the radio for a spin to work the NC QSO party from a few parks.  A ‘few’ parks turned into two parks, but I did learn a few things.  The weather in my area turned out to be perfect for a nice ride to a couple of portable operating areas.  Comfortably cool temps and crystal clear skies.

I decided to approach the trip as an Out-and-Back.  Drove out to the first park with intent on making stops to set up the portable antennas at each location.  Had just barely enough time at the first stop to get set up before the 10am local start.  Then things quickly went sideways.

The Station

Used a hitch mounted mast receptacle to hold the antenna mast, a 32 foot telescoping fiberglass pole.  The mast supported a 40m/20m trap dipole, which I probably damaged by breaking a partially corroded wire on one of the traps.  Ends were tied up on some of the nearby coniferous biological antenna supports.  The station itself is an Elecraft K3 powered by a 100ah LifePo4 battery, on trickle charge from a 100w solar panel on the vehicle roof rack.  All set up on back seat of the vehicle.  Parked in the shade because comfort is more important than charging the battery.  Location numero uno was at McKinney Lake State Fish Hatchery Pota k-8010, Richmond county NC.  Unfortunately no photos of either the station or other sites due to ‘plan divergence #2-Lost Phone!’.

Diverging from the plan

Maybe a bit over-ambitious.  The first event occurred when the antenna suddenly lost its nice low SWR on 40m.  It is a 40m/20m trap dipole that has been in use for a couple of years.  Made just a handful on 40m to start then moved to 20m.  The antenna was still OK on 20m.  Curious.  After a bit I dropped the antenna to try to debug the 40m issue and noticed the wire coming out of the trap to one 50m leg appeared corroded.  Wasted too much time fiddling with antenna instead of operating.  Wire corrosion plus over-vigorous installation Mistake #1.

After burning too much time at the first location, moved on to POTA#2.  Ate my lunch there an could not find phone.  Spot#1 was just 6 miles away, so retraced to POTA#1 to see if I had dropped it there.  No Joy.  Mistake#2

Decided to skip spot#3 and drove directly to spot#4, Lee State Game lands, Pota K-06920 in Lee county.  Set up the 40m EFHW, and had decent runs on both 20m and 40m.  Success!  Neither 10m nor 15m were delivering, so skipped any time there.  This had the sun beginning to fall below tree line, so packed up the kit and moved to spot#5.  No photos taken, still had not found phone.

Spot#5 turned out to be occupied, and no other locations in the pota had been scouted.  Mistake #3.  At this point I mostly bailed.  Parked the car at home in driveway for a handful of Q’s on a hasty 20m vertical(non pota).  Then ditched entirely for food.

Damaged goods:

The broken antenna is going to be replaced.  A functional backup will also be added to the travel list.  The real downside did not show up until later, when the logging computer quit taking a charge.  Very likely RF damaged.  Bleh.

Lessons

What was pounded in again is that wasting time during the event is costly.  ALWAYS have a backup.   The “lost phone” was not lost but had slid down between seats inside an invisibility cloak. Found that at home by dialing the number.  Not knowing was rain on the parade.

• Need to examine the locations as planned to have an alternate site ready.
• Need a few dry runs setting up to get a hard figure on how much time is needed. Pota practice sessions!
• Need to research better to determine transit times between sites.
•  Use the firmer times to budget time on each site.
• Be more flexible.
• If something craps out, HAVE A PLAN B
• If the ANTENNA craps out go DIRECTLY to the backup.  Do NOT fart around with the broken antenna, it can be dealt with later.
• Plan on more CW.

Taking the time to activate LEE and RIC was worth the effort.  It should be feasible to easily activate four different counties/Potas as a portable in the 10 hour period.  More than that would require more research or an area with a higher concentration of Pota entities.  Travel time is an issue.  Operating from POTA entities was also worthwhile, and the first time scout of the sites was useful for future POTA activations.

Fun hints on setting up writelog to key the SSB memories on the Elecraft K3.

Check the ini file for the K3 commands section:

[Elecraft_K3_commands]
Macro_10=SWT21;
Macro_11=SWT31;
Macro_12=SWT35;
Macro_13=SWT39;

Then set up each contest for the %gk10,%gk11,%gk12,%gk13 in the SSB function keys(I choose to go with F1-F4)

See the whole K5ZD info…….https://k5zd.com/setting-up-writelog-to-send-k3dvr-messages/ 

Crazy weather.  Check
Unique Location. Check.
Mediocre Antennas.  CHECK!
No 10m.  Check….. 🙁
Typical Field Day.    Check.
see the select photos…..W4KAZ 1B NC 2023 FD photo slide show

Crazy Weather

The days leading up to field day 2023 were filled with rain and prognostications of more to come.  While having doubts there would be any chances at having a good chance of operating with the expected lightning, the reservations for the great location had been laid in and paid for.  Tropical conditions could have made the trip dicey, but that junk kept on its westerly track to western Carrib.   All of the NC wx junk was spawned by a low pressure system sitting in TN and throwing moisture at us from FL and the gulf coast.   The “bands” of storms flowing through NC peaked midweek, right through travel to the Island.    bleh.  Arriving Thursday the wx relented long enough to move vehicle contents indoors.  Bands of rain, batches of sunshine alternated ad. infinitum.  Lots of time for relaxation.  Friday afternoon brought a longer window of almost 3 hours of clear wx for setting up antennas.  Then more lightning and rain.

Unique Location

Cape Lookout national park provided a great spot for running a field day operation.  The park is a barrier island on the NC coast.  Beautiful in its own deserted island sort of way.  The wx improved constantly during the four day stay….with the exception of a squall line that that moved slowly through Saturday evening.  Operation was shut down for that period, but there was only rain.  Great time to catch up on some sleep though. 

Mediocre Antennas

The antenna plan was hampered a bit by having only four of the five masts intended.  Something always gets forgotten.  Two 40m EFHW antennas were deployed.  Both were configured as inverted L’s.  The “main” antenna deployed with the horizontal tip pointed North, the second deployed with its tip facing west.  The “main” antenna was also manually switchable to being used as an 80m vertical with a K2AV style counterpoise.   The only band that felt loud was 80m.  These efhw’s mounted as inv-l’s are a bit compromised on 40m & 20m, both by the configuration and being relatively close to the ground.

W4KAZ 1B NC, Cape Lookout qth for the FD weekend, All set for FD. The antennas: Left most and center mast hold “main” 40m EFHW/80m base on left and end at center mast. The rightmost mast holds west facing 40m EFHW which slopes toward ground, and is tied off behind cabin.

No 10m

10m was yet again a disappointment.  The recent rise in sunspots must be less effective in light of the pole shift and weakening magnetic fields.  Radio propagation is probably just a symptom of what might be a much bigger issue.  Keeping the band map loaded with packet spots from VA and NC skimmers showed very few spots on 10m at any time I was on the air.  15m was only very slightly better.  Perhaps Saturday evening was better.   20m and 40m were the places to be for the most part.  20m was more interesting, and accounted for the bulk of the Qsos logged.  The early morning Sunday accounted for the only qsos there, all logged around 0900-1000z.

FD as IOTA Prep

FD antenna choices were made as a test for the upcoming IOTA.  The alternate choice was to mount the “main” N/S efhw as described before, but to use a 50m/20m trap dipole as the secondary antenna.  This second pair will probably be better for an IOTA situation, with the dipole being a better choice for DX.  Alternates/backup antennas are a linked dipole that could be used on any of the individual bands and a set of wire verticals.  Also a 15m/10m trap dipole…..just in case.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Start with the ugly…..a slow band of squall lines moved in Saturday evening.  Fearing more lightning I dropped all the antennas.  Being exhausted, I hit the sack to the pitter-patter of another batch of rain, which turned out to be the last of the trip.   The bad…..missed out on the evening which probably cost a lot of qsos.  But without the much needed sleep, Sunday would have been a tough slog.  10m and 15m were disappointing. Missed packing one of the bags with some of the kitchen odds-n-ends, so had to improvise.  The good…..Morning coffee….two magnificent sunsets on Friday and Sunday.  Cigars and whiskey.  Moderate temperatures and a nice breeze.  Moderate bug levels.

Details  Details  Details

W4KAZ 1B NC 2023 FD breakdown by hour.

Saturday afternoon was S&P combined with wishful thinking about 10m and 15m.  Didn’t feel loud enough to run on SSB.  Then clouds stacking to the west and a check on the wx radar convinced me to lower antennas prematurely.  The squall line was slow, and arrived with more rain.  Was exhausted anyway so ditched for the evening.  Up at 0800Z and started on 80m to try to capture the available qsos.  Took a breakfast break at the not so spectacular sunrise, then alternated between 20m/40m/15m for the rest of the morning.  Finished up on 20m with the best single hour.  Then a couple of hours of breakdown and packing.  Bada bing bada boom.  Another FD bites the dust.  320-ish qsos, about

Passed up a chance to operate at the Korn Krib Kontest Klub of N4GU for a pre-planned solo camp out.  Hit my favorite campsite again at Carolina Beach State Park.  I allowed for an optional POTA run at Fort Fischer, but lazy won out over ambition on that one.  Also used the chance to try out a new camping scheme with mixed success.

I landed on the campsite Thursday afternoon, but made a side trip to Kure Beach, then settled in for the evening.  Friday morning was used up sleeping late, making gas run, ice run, and brunch run.

The Antenna Adventure

Setting up the station, a K2, went quick enough.  The two antennas went up easily using the same masts I had used to test them with at home.  An EFHW for 40m/20m and a 10m/15m trap dipole.  FAST……as in too fast.   For some strange reason the EFHW is not tuning………hmmmmmmm.  MAYBE omitting the chokes at the feedpoint are the problem. duh-OH!

The antenna still required a bit of tweaking.   “Strange…it worked just fine at home…?”  I did waste about 75 minutes screwing around before figuring out the chokes were not installed.  After that mistake was resolved I tested out the 80m “variation” that uses the EFHW vertical as a qtr wave on 80m.  That is set up as a separate feed point that attaches to the EFHW via a jumper and a swap of coax.  With the EFHW working, the 80m variation was actually as trivial as it should have been.

Since band switching 80/40/20 required several manual adjustments, I made a cheat sheet/check list for the tired-and-groggy hours.

Field Day Summary

The weather overnight had been cool(for late June at NC coast), and I woke up feeling hopeful.  Never caught any decent propagation on either 10m or 15m, having ZERO qsos on 10m and only 26 on 15m.  80m was so slow I chose going to bed rather than stick it out.  With 20m staying open, the stronger stations stayed there longer.  Getting viable runs was difficult, outside of a good stretch on 40m abt 6pm, and a decent run Sunday late in the event.

The Dirty Truth

2022 FD w4kaz 1B nc score

The Setup and Station

I ran the Elecraft K2 this year at 75 watts, expecting to put in more operating time overnight than during daylight and wanting to stretch the battery.  At some point I decided to power the radio from the main battery, and use a smaller backup battery for computer peripherals.  This seemed to cause no problems, and helped keep the voltage up on the radio.  In direct sun the solar panels provided about 9-10 amps continuous to an MPPT charger.  The panels only got direct sun for about 3 hours though and were only providing 4 amps or less for most of the daytime.  The battery finished up at about 75%, so the solar assist helped.

The base station setup for 2022 FD w/W4KAZ

Saturday

WX Saturday was fabulous for late June at Kure Beach, NC.  Cool breeze picked up right about 1800Z. Conditions seemed mixed, and activity seemed down.  Not enough persistence in getting a run going despite seeing decent spot numbers on RBN.  Operating was a lot of S&P and band hopping.  20m was open late and 80m action never seemed to pick up in the early evening.  Eventually pulled plug for the evening before midnight.

I decided to operate mostly CW to keep the noise down in the campground.  Not needed during daylight, but decided to respect quiet hours in park.  That plan was almost blown up by forgetting headphones.  So I used a pair of earbuds that usually ride shotgun with the computer.  I had a second set of buds, but audio was too low a level in those.  Could have made an emergency run to a local wally-mart, but decided to make do.

Sunday

Got on the air again at 1000Z, and had one of my more consistent runs on 40m as the daytime crowd got back on the air.  Took a break after a couple of hours to scarf a hasty breakfast, then some more butt-on-bench.  The shack was a screen tent that was in full sun for the hours of 1530 to about 1700, so the battery fan helped a lot then.  Sunday WX was also good, but slightly warmer than Saturday.  The only decent 20m run spanned about 50 minutes during the last hours of the event.

Photo of screen tent shack and additional shade.

The shack was back into full shade by the end of the event.  After a short break for a late lunch, the station was torn down and packed into a single tote, with some notes taken on items missing/needed.  Everything to be re-used for IOTA again at end of July.  Copies of log files made.  Then a leisurely dis-assembly of antennas and parts of camp.  I kept the screen tent up for packing on Monday morning.

The far side of camp – solar panels, base of 40m EFHW, and gear storage. Note stump, the gremlins got the tree that previously shaded this site over noon hours.

Success!

No major problems, injuries, issues.  Great weather, plenty of sleep, lots of cigar time, and a chance to relax. Always learn something, and this time learned a pack list is never good enough to catch everything.  And even with everything packed, finding it when needed is a problem.  Still hunting a set of earbuds that went MIA.

Notes: Compass, headphones/mic spares, !5v usb batt packs!,  USB adapters.  vehicle storage organizer.  Always double check assembly of complex system when rushing.  KAT100 troubleshooting required.