G-0202 Garston Wood RSPB Reserve – POTA – QRP – Take 2 !

Posted on May 29, 2022 by webmaster@hamradio.knipmeyer.co.uk

Following last weeks attempt, I headed back to Garston Park to attempt activating the park again. Armed with two lots of battery packs, mains charger and the iPad with SDR-Control loaded onto it I was determined to activate the park.

Having quickly setup, I was approached by two friendly chaps asking what I was doing with the equipment I had setup. Their initial assumption was bat watching ! (Makes senses with an antenna I guess !) We had a great conversation about parks on the air and also bat watching. Its something I’ve never heard of and with this park being quite near without a lock on it, something I wouldn’t mind trying – an overnight PoTA and bat watching. I’ve looked up some equipment and the bat watching website, so I’ll be looking into that later on in the year, probably when dusk/evening comes in a bit sooner.

With that I setup the IC705 to the IPad and SDR-Control – have to say that this application is fantastic – other than having to adjust the connectors in the IC-705 if I want to use the radio independent of the app, its as close to getting to 0 touch to getting on the air in FT4/FT8 modes.

Having experimented with FT4 at home and also updated my version of WSJT-X on the QTH windows machine, I was amazed at the rate QSO’s are completed. For me with a QRP radio and wanting to try battery usage where possible (I don’t always operate from the Bongo) this was great. At the QTH FT4 contacts where made in rapid succession, likewise in the field, when an opening came, the FT4 contacts came flying in ! within several minutes had equalled my previous weeks telephony contact ! I then went over to FT8 to try my luck there, sure enough, the QSO started to come in. The one problem with Garston Wood is the really weak mobile phone signal – for PoTA you really want to self-spot to get that first log on the page, then more will follow, sure enough I was determined to ‘self-spot’ and was rewarded with more FT8 QSO’s.

The SDR Control app made logging and contacting as easy as it could be, I was amazed at how well thought out this application is. It can be configured to automatically log, which I tested for the first time today and confirm works wonderfully. Essentially this means you could run FT8 & FT4 completely hands free.

I exported the log from my ipad to my icloud storage, with a bit of simple ‘grep’ and redirection I had the file in the format ready to submission to the POTA Administrator.

cat alanpota.adi | grep 20220529 > 2E0FWE@G-0202-20220529.adi

I tried SSTV with the black cat app, but it wouldn’t integrate with SDR Control, so I tried the old fashioned method of picking up a microphone, but whilst I could pick up SSTV from the IC705 with my own ears, the ipad app was pretty much deaf out in the field. As I am great fan of SSTV this is the one thing the SDR Control App is missing – if a way could be found to integrate either the black-cat app into SDR Control so they can run both the same time, or SDR Control had its own native SSTV app, that would be amazing !

I tried a few more SSB contacts on 20m, but to no avail. With the weak phone coverage self-spotting was tricky and when I could self-spot it would take another ‘strong’ station to come in over the the top of me to make that frequency out of use to me. I tried 2M and although hearing some activity (always glad just to hear something!) couldn’t complete a QSO.

So today turned into all about Data, and how important to activate a park SDR Control is, being my 2nd visit, I was determined to get the 10 contacts to activate, and I wasn’t let down by the application. Being restricted in self-spotting also meant that when I could get onto the POTA website, I was consistent, and I was rewarded with a FT8 contact from K3VAT in the US.

I’ve had a fantastic time of late travelling around to various PoTA locations and this was by far the most challenging one so far, with limited mobile coverage, varying conditions and generally being a bit busy, it was great to get the 10 QSO’s needed to activate the park.

My next ‘planned’ PoTA is quite a few weeks off, and its getting further afield to find ‘unactivaetd’ parks, but I’m really excited about it, until then I’m going to be utilizing my season ticket for Upton Country Park, with lovely weather and long evenings, I can head over after work and set up for a fun evening of ‘parks on the air’ close to home.

Until then 73 and hope to catch you in the log book !

POTA – QRP – G-0202 Garston Wood RSPB Reserve

Posted on May 22, 2022 by webmaster@hamradio.knipmeyer.co.uk

Finding unactivated parks around IO90 is becoming hard, thankfully there are stil a few, one of them is G-0202 Garston Wood. With only a short drive and beautiful weather I headed off to the park.

The drive in the early morning (approx 7:30AM) gave stunning views and morning mist, I was glad to have sat-nav as the lane leading to the park was very narrow and with all the trees having all their leafs was very green ! I found a nice spot to park and setup my mag-loop antenna on the bike stand. The gates to the park were near to hand as well. There was plenty of parking space at this hour, and it didn’t get much busier in the time I was there (2-3 more cars parking max)

Unfourtantly when I arrived I noticed I had left my iPad behind ! Not a disaster, but that meant no digital modes such as FT8 or SSTV, and I was looking forward to SSTV, still undettered I tried for making 10 Telephony QSO’s! I started out ok, making contacts into Spain on 10W. Having learned last time that repeating calling CQ is tiring after a while (thats when I usually switch to FT8 now) I used the 705 in-built voice recorder to play back my CQ POTA call.

This got me another contacting in Poland, and my first ever Park to Park ! I found this really satisfying not only on the DX but reaching another park and getting a good signal report both ways (mutual 59) with SQ5MPG – Maciej in Poland at SP-0643 – Los Nature Reserve. What is more tricky with a park to park is getting the callsign and park locator correct, as this is required for logging later on.

I tried staying on 20m, but it was soon filling up with contest and people with far stronger signals than my own, I’d like to think they just could hear me being only on 10W and that goes with being /QRP that you’ll get more powerful stations boom over you higher up the band. I tried 40m and 17m – with 17m being a non-contest band, but to no luck on either, so headed back to 20m.

I made one more contact, another park to park with EC2AG (Antonio) into EA-0837 (Rio Agüera EU Natura 2000 Protection Area). Again, great DX and made the full Park-to-Park contact. I thought my battery had become disconnected, but it turns out for the first time ever I had drained the LiFo battery completely ! I guess this is what using the voice-record repeat for serveral hours will do, and I was reduced to 5W of power.

I returned home as my battery and power wasnt helping, and with so much contest traffic on, it was getting harder not easier to even make any initial contact. I made notes on my log book of the things I had missed today to remind myself of what to add when I got home, so as you can see this time I have added the USB cable and cigar-lighter mains adapter for the IC705 into the alex-loop hampack accessories bag. Of course I have put the Ipad in there as well 🙂

Whilst I didnt get 10 contacts to activate the park, its will mean I can make a return trip and be better prepared. I had a great time and the two park to parks were extra great, so am looking forward to returning, iPad and mains-power in hand !

Garston Park

POTA – QRP – G-0183 – Chesil Car Park for Dorset and East Devon Coast World Heritage Site Provincial Park (Jurassic coastline)

Posted on May 15, 2022 by webmaster@hamradio.knipmeyer.co.uk

After a while away from PoTA and a previous experimentation locally with the AlexLoop only bag, it was time for my next PoTA activation. Based on my QTH location (IO90BS) I used the POTA site to find near but inactivate sites. This is becoming harder as PoTA becomes more popular (a good thing) but its always great to go out and activate a site, as the ‘hunters’ will be on the look out for a new location.

I carefully planned my trip, starting with the day before. I relinquished my beloved IC-705 purpose built bag (LC-192) for going fully Alex-Loop ham pack native. The main drawback of this bag is the lack of padding and overall robustness compared to the alex-loop bag, but I was determined to minimise what I was taking.

everything for HF ops fitted nicely in the Alexloop bag

Not withstanding the mount itself (I used a bike repair stand) everything fitted nicely in the Alex Loop Hampack bag. This includes in the ‘accessories’ my LiFo battery to keep the IC-705 running for extended time over the internal battery, which as shown in my previous ‘test’ is only good for about 2-3 hours on 5W SSB. The observant will also notice I have my iPad in there, rather than my WinTel based laptop.

I had setup and tested SDR Control back at the QTH, so it should be no surprise that it works well out in the field. What I did notice is that (to its credit) it sets the ‘connectors’ all to WLAN in the app, thus when using the IC-705 microphone (which I currently still prefer), this needs to be set back, else no telephony contacts can be made without the iPad.

Whilst the WX (Weather) wasn’t the best to be operating outside, I got setup in the Bongo quite well, at least I was warm and dry, and the IC-705 was at no risk for rain damage (one of the main issues for SoTA, its just not that rugged compared to the KX series of radios). I set about going across the different FT8 frequency/bands. At least this would be a decent propagation test and also make some contacts. I was able to tune in 40M and get the SWR down to 2:1, which resulted in 2 FT8 contacts on 40M. For a magloop I am happy with those results and on a Data mode where the key-time is longer than that for a typical HF QSO. 17M gave excellent SWR readings and resulted in 3 DX contacts. I returned to 20M and worked a further 4 DX stations via FT8, all on 10W of power into a mag loop in pretty grim WX (rain, thunderstorms)

FT8 via pskreporter – into .JP and East Coast America on 10W

Whilst not the activation I was expecting due to the weather, being able to diversify and setup in the Bongo resulted in plenty of contacts and being able to (TBC) activate the park. I was really glad to start out on telephony contacts and people thanking me to activate the park, it really makes it worth the time and travel to enjoy PoTA.

PoTA QRP Experiment – G-0362

Posted on May 5, 2022 by webmaster@hamradio.knipmeyer.co.uk

Unusually for a bank-holiday (National holiday / day off work) the weather was quite nice, I had already planned my trip to my nearest PoTA park, namely G-0362 Avon Heath, and headed out. I wanted to take a minimal setup to see how I would do !

QRP & Minimal Portable Setup

IC705
Alex Loop Hampack antenna
Laptop
Trolly for bags

I didn’t bring an external battery or even a chair to sit on, opting to just use the bench/seat at the location I was familiar with at Avon Heath. I was interested to see if I could make any contacts and for how long on only 5W and the Internal IC-705 battery. This made getting setup and on-air really easy, using a bungee to attach the loop antenna to the seat.

Telephony QSOs

I’m now starting to start-with telephony QSO’s over FT8 to get started, as such I started out on 20M as this band has plenty of activity and easy to slighty tune the Alexloop between FT8, SSTV and the Phone section of the band.

I was quickly rewarded with QSO’s into Italy and Spain, with my furthest QSO being with EA4GJP with an amazing 860 miles ! Using the MPW calculator I was getting 172 miles per watt for a 595 QSO !

Once re-spotted on the PoTA app I had a flurry of QSOs into Spain – I was rapidly getting used to telephony contacts and logging with pen and paper !

I turned my hand to FT8 but faced computer difficulties again and not having a table/chair didn’t fancy fiddling about with a cable/computer on a bench, reverted to Telephony on 20M again. I did go searching for other PoTA activations, but no chance of a park-to-park today.

With around 2 hours of operating on 5W the battery on the IC705 was almost entirely drained, but with a good set of contacts I felt happy to pack up and head home, whilst I didn’t get 10 this time out, i was glad to see just how good the IC705 and Alexloop antenna is, making it a viable QRP setup which can be easily setup and transported.

I did learn that having a battery will not only extend the life of my operation, as to be expected, but I can operate with only 5W on SSB outside the noise of QTH, which makes doing PoTA all the worth while. My next planned activation is in a very exciting/interesting place and am really looking forward to that !

First state-side SSTV contact (5/5/22)

Posted on May 5, 2022 by webmaster@hamradio.knipmeyer.co.uk

Being up and about in the small hours in the UK I was tuned into 20M SSTV frequency of 14.230, thinking just to let it monitor and pull in the overnight SSTV pics only to find a clear as a bell TX start from W2PTH.

For those who are new to SSTV, W2PTH has been doing SSTV for quite some time, his QRZ Page states 1976 ! Those familiar with SSTV would be familiar with the call sign and the ‘Cherry hill’ location appearing in his pictures.

Having heard the call, I thought to give it a try – I’ve never had much luck in reaching the states being limited to 50W but the signals where coming in exceptionally clear tonight, so thought to give it a try!

As you can see the stream of pictures came in just wonderfully and I was really happy to have W2PTH in my log book with my first DX contact into the USA.

Propergation differences just minutes later

As can be seen from the picture received just minutes later, the conditions had changed. It was fantastic to have such a great SSTV QSO with a great operator!

Equipment Used :- IC7300 50W power, Multi-band End Fed Antenna, MMSSTV on Windows 10 with KE5RS FTP Widget for uploads

2E0FWE Site

HAM Radio activites of Alan K.

Monthly Archives: May 2022