I was finally able to set aside some time to do an activation. Cheaha State Park is the closest to me and it is still over an hour away. It is my home park and I enjoy going there. Today’s mission was to try to pick up a few more bands for my N1CC award. N1CC is an award for working 10 different bands in 10 different parks. Propagation was not that good today so I stuck with FT8. I also reconfigured the back of my truck a little and it seemed to work better. I did a write up on my other blog here: https://canteenspoon.com/2022/06/26/hello-and-some-truck-organization/
From the outside back of the truck facing forward looks like this.
The boxes help me keep the back of the truck more organized. As a bonus, the boxes are at a good height for a desk. The current desk is just a piece of plywood I had. In the future, I will get something smoother. With the desk as positioned I can get in and out without knocking the radios around. I haven’t tried it yet, but I may see how my lounge chair fits in there. I may be able to sleep in there for a quickie activation. From the working position it looks like this.
Plenty of room to work and log. My other mode is CW and there is space for a set of paddles. The tablet is a Surface Go2 and while it works really well, the one caveat I have is when you try to charge the battery, it wipes out the receiver with noise. The waterfall almost turns white. But, I got almost 4 hours of playtime so while it is something I have to figure out, it can be later. The radio is an Icom IC-705 with the AH-705 tuner. This really is my favorite QRP radio.
The antenna was a Chameleon Hybrid-Micro with a 65′ antenna in the form of an inverted “L”. I used my hitch mount with a 33′ MFJ pushup pole. The other end was held up with my B&M 20′ crappie pole. I ran a 65′ counterpoise.
The antenna was okay. Next time I will probably run a vertical. Either my Frankentenna or my random wire. I didn’t feel like the extra effort to put up an inverted “L” was worth it. I like a small footprint so as not to attract attention to myself. I was running 10 watts with the help of a Bioenno battery. Band conditions were not that good today. I usually work a few more DX but I am satisfied with what I got. Here is an activity map.
I ended up with 38 contacts and I have 8 bands total. I will have to come
back in the evening and pick up the last two bands 60-160m. Thanks to everyone
who worked me today, some of the contacts were difficult due to unstable band
conditions. 73 Scott
kk4z.com 