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I seem to get requests from time to time, to bring up this topic on the blog.  I can only speak for what has worked well for me.  There are as many number of solutions to this as there are QRPers who like to go out into the field, and I have only tried a relatively minor few.

The first thing to consider is what kind of portable operator are you?  Some of us are “Time is precious! Let’s get on the air and operate!”  If you’re one of these (like me!) then you are interested in ease and quickness of deployment.  The faster up, the faster I can get on the air.  Although antenna efficiency is important to you, it is not your primary concern.  You don’t want to be pumping RF into a string of wet pasta; but you want to spend your day outdoors operating – not finagling with antennas.

 For this type of operator (and I belong to this species) I have two recommendations:

 1 – EFHW antennas.  Basically, a piece of wire that is a half wavelength of the band you intend to operate.  A matching device or counterpoise is needed.  There are oodles of articles on EFHW antennas.  The best seem to be treatises by Steve Yates AA5TB and Joe Everhardt N2CX.  Google “EFHW” along with their call signs and you will get there.  If rolling your own doesn’t appeal to you, you can also purchase commercial versions. LNR Precision markets perhaps the best known models, the PAR ENDFEDZ series.

http://www.aa5tb.com/efha.html

http://www.njqrp.org/n2cxantennas/halfer/halfer.html

http://www.parelectronics.com/end-fedz.php

The name says it all – “End fed” – meaning needing only one support.  Basically, you throw a bottle (or some other weighted object) into a tree to get a hoist line over a branch, attach one end of the wire to the hoist line  and pull it up.  The other end connects to the matching device or your radio and you are good to go.  It’s simple, uncomplicated, and works well.  If you read any of Jim W1PID’s blog posts on AmateurRadio.com, you will see the resounding success that this type of antenna can provide.

Personally, I use the PAR ENDFEDZ 10/20/40, which will allow me to operate on those three bands without changing radiators.  If you want to operate on a different band, you can change the radiator wire.  The PAR comes with a chart that tells you, for each band,  how long a piece of wire to use with their match box

2 – Compact verticals.  What do you do if there are no supports?  A Buddistick or a PAC12 antenna could be the solution for you.  Both of these are basically the same idea.  A compact vertical which uses a tapped coil to make up for the fact that you are not deploying a full sized vertical.  You will have to bring a ground spike or small tripod or some other self improvised arrangement to deploy one of these.  You will need to use either radials (as recommended for the PAC12) or a counterpoise wire (as provided with the Buddistick).  This is not a true counterpoise, per se, but is more the “other half” of the vertical dipole that you are using.

Set up is relatively quick; but not as quick as the EFHW, especially if you are good in tossing bottles over tree branches!  It takes time to deploy the radials in the case of the PAC12 and the amount of “counterpoise wire” used with the Buddistick is critical.  The length will affect the SWR of your installation.  For both of these, it is handy to bring along a small antenna analyzer along (such as one of the Auteks) to help you tune the antenna rather quickly.

There is another way to deploy one of these compact verticals, which was brought to my attention by Bob W3BBO.  It worked well for him when he was living in an apartment for a while, and I used it and in turn, discovered that it worked well for me, too.  Instead of using a tripod, painter’s pole, ground spike, or whatever as a support for these compact verticals, you can instead attach the vertical to some kind of mount and attach it to your car.  I use one of those Lakeview tri-mag mounts.  Attach the vertical to that, pop it on the top of the car and go to town.  Yes, you have to find the best place to tap the coil, but the car acts as a great groundplane and there’s no need to fuss with counterpoises or radials.  It has worked well enough to garner DXCC and WAS for W3BBO while he was apartment living.  I have used this arrangement during outdoor QRP sprints and while on vacation and have had surprisingly good results.  This is NOT to be used while your vehicle is in motion however – strictly stationery mobile!

As a side note, I have used Hamsticks which are kind of related to this.  They are quicker to deploy than either a Buddistick or PAC12 plunked on your car.  However, you have to have a different radiator for each band that you intend to operate on. And my feeling (and I have no empirical proof to back this claim up, so take it with a grain of salt) is that Hamsticks are less efficient and even more of a compromise than a Buddistick or PAC12.

Now if you have a lot of time to operate, or if maximum efficiency is a concern to you, you have other solutions that you can pick from.   In instances like these, you might want to use a dipole or doublet, made from lighter weight materials.  Say you’re going camping for a week and there are plenty of tall trees available – why not?  Even if you decide to use one of these as a sloper, you’ll need to keep the low end roughly six feet off the ground for safety reasons.  You don’t want any unaware pedestrians walking into your wires! So you will need TWO supports – if you use heavier materials – then maybe even three.

I have made 44 and 88 foot versions of the Norcal Doublet.  I have made them both out of ribbon cable and speaker wire.  The ribbon cable is way lighter; but the speaker wire seems hardier. I have used the speaker wire just like the ribbon cable – that is, as feeder and radiator all-in-one.  What can I tell you?  They work well.  Not as efficient as a dipole fed by open line wire or coax; but well enough for temporary operations. The only thing is that you need two trees, ideally, and you need to get the wire up as high as you can.  Other than that, they will get you one the air.

http://www.norcalqrp.org/norcaldoublet.htm

There’s a good series on YouTube, by GB Hoyt  on deploying W3EDP antennas.  I have one of these as one of my permanent station antennas. There’s absolutely no reason that one can’t be made from light weight materials and taken out in the field.  It is a great multiband antenna and requires a balun and a tuner; but it is an option.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGYqRJCNmuY&list=PL4131B8B79AA5C84F

This is by no means an exhaustive or authoritative list. I am sure there are many, many more options available to you – limited perhaps, only by your imagination.  But what I have listed here is what I have tried and they have worked well for me.

Here is a good resource:

http://home.frognet.net/~mcfadden/wd8rif/field-antennas.htm

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

Tecsun PL-360

The only item of radio equipment in my Christmas stocking this year was a Tecsun PL-360 FM/MW/SW DSP receiver. These smartly-styled radios in black or silver are widely available on eBay for less than £30 including postage from China. The radio looks and feels a much better quality item than you might expect at that price.

The PL-360 covers medium wave, Band 2 FM (with stereo decoder) and 13 short wave bands from 2300 to 21950 kHz. Unlike most cheap short wave radios that have a frequency counter displaying the frequency of an analogue VFO, the Tecsun PL-360 is a true digital radio having a fully synthesized PLL VFO.

The Tecsun is also a digital radio in that it is DSP based not the usual superhet. The benefits are immediately apparent when you listen to the radio – it has that clear, open sound characteristic of DSP receivers. The internal speaker does not deliver much bass but you really hear the difference, especially listening to FM stereo, when using earphones, of which a Walkman-style pair are included.

For AM use Tecsun supplies a rotatable ferrite rod antenna that plugs in to the top of the radio. This can be used over a frequency range of 150 to 1710 kHZ, though note well that this radio does not have a long wave band. The 7-section telescopic whip antenna is 38cm (15in) long and is used on the short wave and FM bands.

Showing the rotatable MW antenna

The tuning control is a click-stopped rotary encoder which tunes the radio in 1 kHz steps on short wave and 9 or 10 kHz steps on medium wave. The radio can be tuned outside the broadcast bands but this is rather a tedious exercise due to the 1 kHz steps – there is no provision for direct frequency entry using a keypad. The  Tecsun PL-360 does not demodulate CW or SSB so there is not much point in tuning into the amateur HF bands – a pity, though that is not unexpected at this price level.

For tuning the Tecsun has a neat trick inherited from TV receivers. Called Easy Tuning Mode (ETM) the radio first tunes the entire MW, SW or FM frequency range and stores all the frequencies on which a signal was heard in memory. You can then tune from one signal to the next using the click-stopped tuning control. This makes short wave listening really easy and pleasurable. Doing an ETM scan of the short wave bands takes a few minutes. The feature is a useful tool for checking out HF propagation, though it’s a pity the tuning range stops at 22 MHz.

Power is provided by 3 x AA cells which may be standard alkaline or NiMH rechargeable (not supplied.). A charging circuit is built-in and power may be applied using a mini-USB socket on the side, so you can charge the batteries from a PC (using an appropriate USB cable) or a mobile phone charger. A charger is not included, but you do get a long wire antenna that clips on to the top of the telescopic whip for improved short wave reception, and a nice faux-leather case.

As an alternative to the Easy Tuning Mode the receiver may be tuned manually and frequencies entered into memories, but as mentioned earlier this is quite tedious. There is no programming software that would enable memories to be set up using a computer. There is a built-in clock which is quite accurate and includes an alarm function. The radio also has a temperature sensor and displays both temperature and time even when switched off.

To sum up, the Tecsun PL-360 is a portable radio of surprisingly good quality and performance for the money. Its Easy Tuning Mode makes casual listening a pleasure, the audio quality is excellent and the provision for rechargeable batteries is welcome. At less than £30 it is a real bargain.

Well, actually last night AND today were a lot of fun!  And there’s more to go tonight as the 40 Meter QRP Fox hunts start up again tonight.

I ended up working only three stations last night. First, I had a quick 2X QRP QSO with Dave NE5DL down in Texas on 20 Meters to start SKN off.  That was followed by two rag chews. The first was on 40 Meters with N4LZY, Jerry in Tennessee and was followed by a chew with K3OWZ, John in PA.  John was  using a Heathkit Apache and a National NC303 receiver.  Good stuff!

I was on the air off and on for a good portion of today. I worked Dan SM5IMO in Sweden, and had a nice chat with John VE1BA in Nova Scotia.  John was running three Watts and had a killer signal into NJ.  That was followed up by a nice chat with another John – K4BAI in Georgia.  John and I meet up in the QRP sprints and the Fox hunts.  John is a “Ham’s Ham” and a gentleman to boot.  It’s always extremely nice hooking up with K4BAI.

I worked Dave K3Y/2 on 40 Meters.  LOUD signal into New Jersey from New York state.

The I had an experience that was unique.  I was working Stan AEØSL on 20 Meters when the band kicked out on us and we both faded away into the QSB.  From there, I jumped on up to 17 Meters and worked VP2MRV in Montserrat.  After finishing up with Nao, I began to tune around 17 Meters and whom should my wandering ears hear calling CQ?  None other than Stan AEØSL, who I had just worked only minutes before on 20 Meters.  He was much, much louder on 17 Meters and we were able to finish up our busted QSO.  Now how many times has that happened to you?  Dare I say – not many?

I then finished up my afternoon by busting a small pileup to work K1GI/VP9 in Bermuda.  A pileup for Bermuda you ask?  Well, yes.  There were hardly ANY signals on 17 Meters, so in this instance, even Bermuda was like chum to a shark.

Last night and today, the majority of my Morse was sent with my Vibroplex Original that I restored a few years back.  I was surprised how quickly I was able to send decent  presentable code.  It’s like the old adage about riding a bicycle – that once you learn, you never forget.  I didn’t sound atrocious to the point that I was embarrassed to be using it; because believe me, if I was that bad I would not have subjected anyone’s ears to a bad cacophony of dits and dahs.  Also, the Reverse Beacon Network was picking up my CQs, so the skimmers were able to decode my sending.  And if the computers were able to figure it out, then a real live Ham should have had even less trouble.

It’s been a long time since I’ve had the opportunity to spend so much of a day in the shack, behind the radio. I thoroughly enjoyed it and could get quite used to it, given the chance.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

I’ve been in Hawaii for the last two weeks. I operated QRP with a wire antenna on several occasions.

This is the cottage we stayed at during the first week. There are lots of pictures, but it’s pretty long to post here. To read it, please go to my web page at http://www.w1pid.com/hawaii/hawaii.html

Happy New Year, Jim W1PID

Greetings and Happy New Year!  Our celebration last night was one that married 40-somethings with kids often have — a night spent at home watching Dick Clark’s New Years Rockin’ Eve.

On the amateur radio front, this past weekend I participated in the Stew Perry Challenge, a 160m all CW contest.  I debated whether to go QRP or 100 watts and decided to go with 100 watts.  Although I can’t brag about the amazing performance that QRP and a rather modest inverted L would have given, I certainly had as much if not more fun than last year’s event.  I netted over 180 contacts in my casual operating effort, even bagging about six west coast stations.  I think the Stew Perry Challenge is a cool little contest, perhaps underrated.  Its uncommon exchange for an HF contest, grid squares, and its unique scoring that takes into account distance and worked station transmitter power makes for an interesting contest.  I wrote in my notes for 2013 that I have make a serious effort and do all 14 hours in the test next year.

I can’t say I have any hardcore amateur radio News Years resolutions, other than “do what I like and like what I do”.  I started following this mantra three years ago and it has served me well. I tend to avoid getting into rituals but one I do want to start after authoring one last year is getting at least one amateur radio article published each year in a mainstream magazine (i.e. QST or CQ). I also tend to avoid competition, but I want to “up my game” in the PA QSO Party and also make more than a casual effort in one of the big contests.

In the Radio Artisan lab there are two main projects in progress. I have a working prototype of the Arduino based balanced antenna tuner. It’s been a technically challenging project, but very interesting. I still need to improve the SWR sensor performance and develop some shortcuts in the tuning algorithm to lessen the tune time. The other project is learning KiCad, an open source EDA program for developing schematics and PC boards. In the next week or two I will publish a post on my experiences. It’s not perfect but it’s definitely a viable replacement for the venerable and popular Eagle program.

Here’s to a healthy and prosperous 2013. Work, eat, sleep, and play radio.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!