Pota

We headed to Caledonia State Park for the Arts & Craft Fair for a couple hours. I threw the 12.5m EFRW into a nearby tree. 40m was dead. 20m and 15m were very busy with SSB contesters for the IARU HF World Championship. Via FT8 and SSB, I could hear lots of EU on 15m, 17m, and 20m, but not much in local signals. Not many people were hearing me, so I only made 4 contacts in the hour or so that I tried.

Firecracker Hamfest

Matt and I wandered around and talked to some people. I only bought a few small things:

• tiny efhw kit.
• nice 65W PD 20Ah power brick.
• broken kenwood HT, won’t power on, but charges. (took a chance, but no plan.)

US-4356, Boyd Big Tree Preserve

• EFHW from pavilion, across side trail entrance, into a tree.
• Rough time with SSB to start. I couldn’t be heard. I’d stalk these multi-operator activators for 10 minutes, prepare my logs, and then not be able to contact them.
• Operated all FT8 on 40m.
• One SSB P2P at the end.
• It was very hot.

While operating, I got an email from a contact, so I sent a photo and explained my setup with WSJT-X and the x6100.

US-4567, Capt John Smith Chesapeake Trail stretches from New York to the Chesapeake Bay following the Susquehanna River, so that means we can activate from any public land within 100ft of the river. I drove from Turkey Hill to Bainbridge evaluating spots along the river:

• Riverfront park in Columbia would be nice
• The boat launch on south side of Marietta has a nice bit of beach.
• The park on the north side of Marietta is a bit too busy, but did have a nice area of grass and trees.
• I setup at the Riverfront park in Bainbridge.

I threw the EFHW into an inverted-V in tree and back down to a bench. I worked SSB first for some park-to-park activations, and then switched to FT8 on 40m.

Matt and I activated POTA US-1743, White Clay Creek, DE. I deployed the 20m-long EFHW into a tree, which worked nicely with no SWR. Matt deployed a telescoping dipole on a mast. I worked only 40m, and Matt ran 20m. We didn’t interfere with each other at all. I forgot my 5525 power splitter to run both the laptop and radio off 12V battery, but fortunately I didn’t need it for the computer.

I was traveling to DC the weekend of ARRL Field Day, so I found some time e-bike from the hotel to activate US-0655, the National Mall from a park bench at the mall. I clamped the GRA-1900T right to the bench. Field Day was happening, so traditional bands were very busy. I jumped to 17m for a quieter, POTA-only experience. The LiFePO4 battery hadn’t been charged in a while, so it went dead by the end of my activation. It was a bit of a race against the dwindling battery. With the battery completely exhausted, and running on the internal battery of the x6100, I got to 12 contacts.

I had played with the radio the night before. I tried my gra-1900T and the 12.5m EFRW in the hotel room. We were on the 9th floor of 10 floors in Downtown DC. I barely got out for a moment on 40m with the wire, then nothing. The whip did absolutely nothing.

Initial Tuning

The one-page document that comes with the GRA-1900T antenna detailing the jumper positions on the coil and the lengths at which to set the whip for each band didn’t seem to match up all that well, which led to some frustration out in the field.

I decided to use my NanoVNA to reconstruct my own instructions for using the antenna. I extended the whip fully and recorded the resonant frequency for each jumper position of the coil. Knowing those frequencies, I can set the jumper and shorten the whip until the SWR sweep on my x6100 is happy. The SWR graph on the x6100 can be misleading sometimes, because it often shows a birdie dip or 2 in the graph, but now I’ll always know that I’m to shorten the whip to get where I need to be.

I’ll eventually apply labels to the coil with these frequencies.

US-1425 Susquehannock State Park

I took the GRA-1900T out to Susquehannock State Park for a field test. My plan to tune the antenna worked well. I set the jumper for the frequency below my intended operating frequency and shortened up the whip until the x6100 showed a good SWR curve. Easy!

Oops, Broken Fishing Pole Mast

Since I hadn’t used the fishing pole at the park, I forget I had it and left it behind when I packed up. 2 days later, I returned to retrieve it. Some kids had found it, had trouble collapsing it, dug in the dirt with it, and broke a section.

I was able to put it back together with the remaining sections, and I 3d-printed a new fork/loop to make it useful for supporting wire.

US-1356 Pinchot

I setup at a pavillion far away from everyone else, so as not to burden anyone wondering what I was doing. Putting up the 20m-long EFHW, I got the socket and throw line stuck in a tree. I had to cut it loose.

I tried 10m for 2 FT8 contacts, but that’s all the further I could stretch that band. The rest of my contacts came on FT8 40m, and one P2P SSB contact on 40m before I packed up.

US-1418 Sam Lewis

At the second park, I operated mostly 20m with the GRA-1900 coil and whip. I was struggling to get that to the right settings, so I finally just extended it and hit the tuner on the radio.

I accidentally crossed the 0000UTC mark into the next day, which means it’s a new activation. I scrambled to try to complete the new day, but fell short.

After a bike ride in Harrisburg, I visited US-4356, Boyd Big Tree Preserve. I used the 20m EFHW sloped up into a tree near the main pavilion. I spoke to a park in Western PA, and a museum ship on Great Lakes in Toledo, OH. 15m FT4 was busy with lots of contesting, so I also ran some FT8 on 20m.

The go-box is over-stuffed again with extra rope. I need to slim it down again.

SPARC Elmer Night

I spent the Elmer Night tuning EFHW again with the NanoVNA. I proved that I saw the same graph when the antenna was stretched shallow vs a higher inverted-V.

I tried folding back the EFHW wire. It changed the tuning slower than cutting the wire. DX Engineering has a video about this. I didn’t get it finished at the meeting, since because it got dark.

Memorial Day Weekend POTA US-4361, Kings Gap Environmental Center

Matthew and I setup at Kings Gap Environmetal Center (US-4361) near the campground. I spent the most the time still slowly tuning my EFHW, and then dodging the rain. I barely made any contacts by the time I got the antenna in the air, and then the thunderstorms returned. We bailed, and I put the antenna up back at the campground strung over the site from tree to my fishing pole to telephone pole for the rest of the weekend. The twisted cords I’ve been using started unwinding, so it’s soon time to replace it with braided mason line.

I compared the 20m EFHW with the 12.5m EFRW at Sam Lewis (US-1418). I threw really high and made both antennas nearly vertical into high trees, not inverted-v.

EFHW could hear pretty well, and the SWR sweep showed again that I could shorten it, so I did lower it and take off a few cm.

The EFHW didn’t seem to like its counterpoise. With the counterpoise, it was giving me an SWR of 2-2.5:1 on 40m when I transmitted. If I removed the counterpoise or kept it coiled up, the SWR was lower. I still made most my contacts on 40m.

I think the radio may have again been interfering with the mouse when transmitting. I already had chokes on both ends of the feed line, but adding the counterpoise helped that common mode interference. It was a rough day.

The EFRW would not tune well at all on 40m with or without its single counterpoise. That surprised me greatly, because I had tested that same unun with my existing EFRW antenna out the front window at home.

I wonder if it had something to do with each antenna being mostly vertical. I wonder if they needed more radials instead of a single counterpoise. K4OGO (Walt of Coastal Waves and Wires) always adds so many radials to his verticals.

This had me questioning everything. I thought I was doing something really good by getting the wires high and vertical. When I brought the radio home and connected to the same old EFRW, it was again performing normally.

I also learned that the POTA website cuts off your activation and starts a new one at 00:00UTC, 8pm, so I ended up with 2 QSOs counting toward a second (incomplete) activation at the park.