W4KAZ

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.

Very part-time and casual Field Day this year, mostly a vacation break at Cape Lookout National Seashore with a couple of tag-along non-ham guests. Set up of the station late Friday afternoon was pretty low key. Not a lot of work involved. Planting two auger bases into the sand and mounting two telescoping masts was very simple. The 40m EFHW went up soon after. A folded counterpoise radial for 80m was laid out along with a separate feed point box for converting the antenna into an 80m quarter wave vertical as needed. The station was fully set up and tested Friday evening.

Station

The FT-891 was used along with an MFJ external tuner, mostly for its ability to double as an antenna switch. Computer logging with N1MM was tested and ready. Very simple. The most complicated part was configuring the sound card settings to use the computer for voice keying. The station was completely battery powered, and the battery was supplemented wit 200w of solar panels. Everything tested and working early Friday evening. Just in time for bacon wrapped shrimp kabobs, supplied by tag-along companions. And the obligatory whiskey and cigar break.

Saturday, time to welcome Murphy to the party

Count on Murphy to make an appearance RIGHT at the start of FD event. Somewhere along the way the logging computer went to sleep causing N1MM to delete the logging files along with all of the settings and drivers for communicating with the radio.[The *.s3db file disappeared, although that was determined a few days later.] The first hour was blown trying to re-connect/configure N1MM with zero success. So it was time to ditch N1MM in favor of using Writelog. The only reason N1MM had been set up was that it could connect to the FT-891, which I cannot get set up in Writelog. Switching out to the Elecraft K2 backup radio was considered, but instead decided to forego computer-to-radio comms and do band changes manually. That was certain to have caused some log errors, but it was simpler than switching radios while angry/disgusted/tired.  My low opinion of N1MM logging program was reinforced.

It turns out there was no burning reason to rush. Saturday conditions were none too interesting, with little activity on 15m and 10m.  The relatively weak antenna for 15/10 did not help that situation. Or maybe everyone has switched to digital modes. It also became apparent from RBN spots that the antenna orientation was heavily favoring Europe instead of the US on 15m and 20m. So a bit of SSB S&P on 20 and 40. Also took the opportunity to fiddle with the antenna by removing the jumper to make it a 20m EFHW. This worked better for 20m in the short time on the air before dinner.

Being mostly casual, the folks that tagged along for vacation time pulled out the night’s meal. That was later accompanied by a bit of whiskey and cigar time. When the tag-alongs decided to turn in for the night it was time to get back to radio for a bit around 0400Z. Being 80m time, a foray out among the bloodthirsty nighttime island fauna was required to make the manual switch from 40m EFHW to 80m vertical.  A nice hour on 80m proved the function on that band.  Pretty good for a last minute kludge idea.  In bed for the night by 0500Z.

Day 2 – Sunday

After a shift on breakfast duty it was back on the air at 1015Z. Worked a few more on 80m before switching the antenna back to 40m EFHW configuration. Then it was a CW run on 20m, to 40m, back to 20m for a good hour. Did a lot of band hopping after the 20m run through 1630Z and called it quits early. As always, tearing down the station and antennas went really quickly. Plenty of time to enjoy the afternoon. The FD log ended with 250 Qso’s – 25 SSB and 200 CW.

CALO wx

The weather over the entire weekend was really nice. Most of the weekend had a cool ocean breeze blowing, instead of the more normal southwest blow. Skies were overcast the first two days, but began clearing Saturday. Sunday evening produced a clear sky and a flowing Milky Way which was followed by a later moonrise just past full moon. It is interesting how brightly lit a desert island becomes under a full moon.

Very casual

The wpx operation was very casual.  I spent a lot of the time just tuning around the bands listening.  The beginning of a CW contest are always too fast paced for my mediocre CW skills, and taking a mental picture of band conditions was more fun.  The bands sounded “brighter” than at any time in the past couple of years.

As a quick-n-dirty mod, I used a second feedpoint to attach the efhw to an 80m folded counterpoise. This is to allow 80m operation by shifting the feedline and using a jumper to bypass the transformer.  \/expanded description below\/  This gave the antenna resonance on 3.625Mhz.  To drop the resonance into the CW segment I wound a 6 turn coil on a 1.25 inch form.  That is inserted at the bypass jumper with faston connectors.  To raise the resonance to somewhere near 3.8Mhz a 3kv capacitance of about 500pf does the trick.  80m was good-to-go. 

Dirty Tricks Department

So as luck would have it, the good band conditions made testing on 80m less useful than I hoped.  20m was open until at least local midnight (0400Z), and probably was open to somewhere all night.  On Friday night few ops moved down as far as 80m with 20m and 40m providing a bottomless pit.  It did allow for gathering some info from the RBN spots, which look like either the band was open in famous fashion, or the EfHW was doing a decent job.  Maybe a bit of both, as the 80m spots looked pretty good, as well as showing up on some skimmers not normally hit with permanent inv-vee.

The antenna was also able to work most of the stations heard on 10m.  That’s a change over the few other recent outings.  15m was a bit of a mixed bag.  20m responses were comparable to other experience with dipoles.  40m seemed unusually good, but it may be more due to the very quiet sounding band conditions.  On Sunday a short 40m run coincided with the band opening to Europe, and it is shown in the RN spots.  The RBN spots started out as US only.  By the end of the 60 minute run there were several EU RBN stations showing 20-30db SNR, and a slow growth in calls from EU stations.  Too bad the contest was at its end.

The 80m Inverted-L Mod

The first attempt to use on 80m, the transformer was shorted out of the circuit and the radial attached to the ground lug.  This did not work as expected, and more testing is needed,  The first thought is the EFHW 120pf capacitor to ground needs to be removed from the circuit for the vertical.  The quick field expedient kludge was to move the coax to a feed point not sharing ground with the EFHW box.  The first test used a single radial cut for 80m. In that configuration the antenna resonated a bit below the 80m CW band segment.  Resonance could be shifted upwards by inserting a series capacitance at the base of the driven element.  SWR was very favorable at each resonance point chosen with about 150 to 200 kc of 2:1 bandwidth.

A second option was tested, using a folded counterpoise instead of the single full length radial.  In this configuration resonance was at about 3.625Mc.  A 6 turn coil inserted in series in the driven element dropped resonance to 3.54Mc, and capacitors can be used similarly to raise resonance to upper SSB band segments.  In this configuration the best SWR was about 1.8:1, and bandwidth more limited.  Easily stretched moderately with an antenna tuner.

The folded counterpoise version was used in the contest with great success.  This is going to require a lot of testing to decide if either version is a better 80m performer.  For my purposes, the FCP version is compact and easy to set up, so it will be the one used.

Potential next project: using relays to allow remote switching, both for the transformer taps when in EFHW mode, and for switching components needed to operate as a standard vertical.  Hmmmmmm

????photos coming 2021-07??????? 

Conclusions

The kludgy fix for adding 80m was an outstanding low effort method for stretching the single driven wire to use on another band.  The cost is the time used adding the FCP radial on deployment and later some manual band switching while operating.  It would not take a lot of effort to add a few relays to allow remote switching – a possible future project.  This EFHW would make an outstanding option for quick deployment by folks stuck in enemy territory where permanent antennas run up against tyrannical HOA rules.  The whole thing can be deployed or removed easily in less than 15 minutes with a bit of planning and practice.

Having a tapped transformer allows a very good match on each of the five main bands of interest in contesting.  I think using the 80m option using a folded counterpoise and 40m EFHW driven element as an inverted-L vertical the seems to be at least comparable to the version with the loading coil and 80m tail extension.  It is easy to deploy and switch, and inserting a small coil at the base was easier than tuning the 80m loaded EFHW.  An 80m FCP is 32 feet long, so it is fairly compact also.