prerunner1982
05-09-2017, 09:45 AM
This last weekend I went camping with some Jeep friends in Sulphur, OK... just a relaxing weekend away and to play a little radio. They are all also hams and brought their HF radios and portable antennas with them.
On the way down there Friday afternoon I heard someone start talking on the frequency we had set aside for the trip. Based on what he was saying I knew he was part of the group but I couldn't hear who he was talking to. It ends up it was another member of the group at least 30 miles away. I know antenna placement affects range but this is the first time I have ever experienced such a dramatic example of that. The other two have 5/8 wave 2m antennas on the roof and my current XJ just has a fender mount as I knew my radio install would only be temporary. My black 2 door that I am building does have a roof mounted antenna though. Around town the fender mount showed only slight difference from the roof mount, but vehicle to vehicle over a distance it was blatantly obvious.
Friday we set up camp and antennas and by the time we had dinner we were all pretty tired. I did fire up the radio for a bit though and made contact with South Cook Islands in the South Pacific, a new DX for me. One contact for me but it was a good one.
When I had set the camp date I hadn't looked to see what contest were going on, but there were multiple QSO parties involving about 15 states so there was going to be enough radio to play with for the weekend, we hoped.
The weather appeared that it was going to cooperate with us as well with very few clouds and temps in the upper 70s/low 80s and lows in the 50s.
Saturday morning, woke up at 4am......44°. Finally crawled out of bed about 0530, made a fire, and eventually cooked up some breakfast burritos.
We pretty much played radio all day with 3 of us making contact with South Cook Islands, second time for me with a different operator using a different call sign. A couple of us also made contact with Italy. One guy did it all with 5 watts. I did find out that my radio was not putting out full power (100 watts), it's more around 50 and I have not yet figured out why.
Sunday morning was a much nicer 52° and I was able to get a nice comfortable 6hrs of sleep. Started breaking down camp while it was still cool out. Kept the radio on and would make contacts between packing, the last thing to get taken down and packed was the antenna. Two of us were able to make contact with Australia, which is now my longest contact at about 8600 miles. Again one guy did it on 5 watts.
Had a good time and we all learned a few things to make out setups better.
My antenna is a fan dipole with 20m and 40m (20m will do 6m and 40m will do 15m) atop an 18' collapsible mast. It can also we strung up into a tree with a rope. Once I finally got it dialed in it worked well.
In total I made 56 contacts with the other guys getting 20-40 each.
We had quite a few people stopping and asking us what we were up to....
On the way down there Friday afternoon I heard someone start talking on the frequency we had set aside for the trip. Based on what he was saying I knew he was part of the group but I couldn't hear who he was talking to. It ends up it was another member of the group at least 30 miles away. I know antenna placement affects range but this is the first time I have ever experienced such a dramatic example of that. The other two have 5/8 wave 2m antennas on the roof and my current XJ just has a fender mount as I knew my radio install would only be temporary. My black 2 door that I am building does have a roof mounted antenna though. Around town the fender mount showed only slight difference from the roof mount, but vehicle to vehicle over a distance it was blatantly obvious.
Friday we set up camp and antennas and by the time we had dinner we were all pretty tired. I did fire up the radio for a bit though and made contact with South Cook Islands in the South Pacific, a new DX for me. One contact for me but it was a good one.
When I had set the camp date I hadn't looked to see what contest were going on, but there were multiple QSO parties involving about 15 states so there was going to be enough radio to play with for the weekend, we hoped.
The weather appeared that it was going to cooperate with us as well with very few clouds and temps in the upper 70s/low 80s and lows in the 50s.
Saturday morning, woke up at 4am......44°. Finally crawled out of bed about 0530, made a fire, and eventually cooked up some breakfast burritos.
We pretty much played radio all day with 3 of us making contact with South Cook Islands, second time for me with a different operator using a different call sign. A couple of us also made contact with Italy. One guy did it all with 5 watts. I did find out that my radio was not putting out full power (100 watts), it's more around 50 and I have not yet figured out why.
Sunday morning was a much nicer 52° and I was able to get a nice comfortable 6hrs of sleep. Started breaking down camp while it was still cool out. Kept the radio on and would make contacts between packing, the last thing to get taken down and packed was the antenna. Two of us were able to make contact with Australia, which is now my longest contact at about 8600 miles. Again one guy did it on 5 watts.
Had a good time and we all learned a few things to make out setups better.
My antenna is a fan dipole with 20m and 40m (20m will do 6m and 40m will do 15m) atop an 18' collapsible mast. It can also we strung up into a tree with a rope. Once I finally got it dialed in it worked well.
In total I made 56 contacts with the other guys getting 20-40 each.
We had quite a few people stopping and asking us what we were up to....