Portable Amateur
Radio, W7ZOI / 7
W7ZOI/7, Field Day with
KD7LXL, 2002, Near Naches Peak, Chinook Pass,
Washington State
Wes Hayward, w7zoi.
Updates: 4Jan11, 14Jan11, 15April11, 24April11,
27June11, 25June12, 15aug12, 24June13, 28April16, 3July16,
13Aug16, 21Dec16.
Click here for reports for Field Day 2008, Field Day 2011,
Field Day 2013,
Field Day
2016 , UHF Contest--August2016
All
Photos on this website are my own. I took them, or they were
taken by my sons or other hiking/climbing companions.
I've tried to acknowledge the photographer.
None of these photos are the result of web
surfing. All photos are
copyrighted: If you want to use a photo on your
own site, just write to me about it.
{w7zoi}{at}{arrl dot net}.
Contents (click on a topic of
interest)
Introduction
Summits On The AIR, SOTA
My first experiences
California,
1961-1966
Back to the Pacific
Northwest
Some portable
transceivers
Field Day experiences
Single Sideband on
Field Day
Not all portable
operation is in summer
VHF in the mountains
UHF experiments
Some comments on
equipment
How heavy is the
pack?
A disclaimer
Introduction
This web thread deals with portable amateur radio activities where
equipment is taken into the field. Amateur radio has
sometimes been the main reason for the outing, such as
participation in a contest. Just as often, the ham gear has
been taken along as a supplement to a hike, a climb, or a
backpacking junket. Some folks also carry their ham gear
along on trips with bicycles, canoes, or
kayaks. All fall into the realm of this discussion.
This site is strictly a personal history of some of the things I
have done and does not deal with the activity of others in this
area. While many of the photos show operation with
friends and/or relatives, this is not a site for a specific club
or group. All of my trips have been on foot in
the mountains of the US West.
There are other sites on the Internet that
specifically deal with portable operations and I encourage the
interested reader to investigate them. An especially
good one is SOTA, or "Summits on the Air." This
organization was founded by Richard, G3CWI and his colleague,
G3WGV. Click HERE to
get to the UK web site that will then point to sites in other
countries. Note that Richard is also the author of a
column on portable operations in RadCom, the journal of RSGB.
Richard really does get out into the field himself
and is not a mere armchair adventurer.
There are other sites to be found on the web.
There is a down side to the SOTA activity: It tends to
emphasize operation from named, documented summits. There
are many parts of this country where summits of any kind are rare,
yet there is more than abundant opportunity for portable ham
operations, perhaps coupled with kayak or canoe boating on water.
Land travel may be by foot or bicycle.
Even when in the mountains, it is not necessary to be on a
summit to garner the thrills and advantages of portable operation.
Often an un-named ridge or pass will provide views
and antenna opportunities that rival those afforded the summit
traveler. I generally just look for good radio locations
(that must also be scenic) and do not worry about them being a
summit. Alas, by now most of my peak bagging days are past
anyway.
The dominant reason for taking ham gear into the field is very
simple; it is great fun. But there is serendipity:
It is always good to exercise our skills to be ready for an
emergency. Amateur radio can be effective in moderately
remote mountain locations where nothing else is available, other
than some expensive satellite services.
There are two additional factors that motivate us toward portable
operation. The first is the restriction often imposed
upon us by our lifestyle within society. Many folks
live in apartments in cities where antennas are nearly impossible.
(Some folks manage to get on the air with attic antennas
and the like, but it requires imagination and sometimes a lot of
work!) Others live in developed housing areas where antennas
are discouraged, if not strictly prohibited. Portable
operation may be the ideal solution for the folks fighting these
restrictions.
The other factor is noise. This is one that I'm presently
fighting, albeit only with marginal success. The
noise comes from the many electronic gadgets that are said to enhance
our lives. It's hard to find a household that
doesn't have numerous computers running. This goes beyond
personal computers to include the microprocessors in the microwave
oven and the clothes washer. It also includes the insidious
digital data converters that supply us with high speed internet,
telephone, and high definition cable television services.
Light dimmers and touch lamps are other problems.
The noise emanating from these sources is relatively
short range. Some of it can easily be attenuated merely by
walking away from it. I'm amazed how quiet a band can
become when I walk a mere quarter of a mile into the woods south
of my neighborhood. Some noise sources are stronger
and propagate further. These can be heard in the
local parks, but completely vanish in the mountains.
It is sometimes quiet on the ocean beaches of the West, but not
always, for they are often close to civilization.
There is a more esoteric, yet equally important virtue to portable
operation -- it provides an activity in our lives that instills a
sense of adventure. We need this. Even as a
"geezer," I still yearn for the excitement that was more common in
my youth. Rock climbing and mountaineering are,
alas, little more than memories for me. But I still manage
to get out for some hiking, modest backpacking, and even some casual
winter snow shoeing. Portable ham radio
is often part of these junkets. The radio
contacts from the field, even to just the
next state, can be more exciting than the best DX garnered from
home!
OK, so much for the preface -- let's get to the subject.
Some of the things to be discussed are HF contesting from the
hills, including Field Day, VHF contests, winter operations, and
special events including an interesting, albeit obscure winter QRP
version of "field day". But the discussion starts with
personal history.
First treks
By the time I started participating in amateur radio (Novice
license in 1955) I had already done a little bit of backpacking,
starting with Boy Scouts. Both interests grew more or less
together and it was reasonable that at one point they would merge.
Both activities continue with me, a half a century after they
began. My first hike with radio gear was in July of 1958
with my brother Den. We hiked to the top of Badger Mountain near
our home in Eastern Washington and I took a rucksack with a
portable rig, a canteen, a nibble of cheese, and some extra
ammunition for our 22 caliber rifles, for we were also hunting
rabbits and old tin cans.
I had made a sked (schedule) with George, K7BFI ahead of
time, not knowing if we had a chance of working anyone else. The
transmitter ran about a half watt input power to a single
3S4 tube powered by a 90 volt "B" Battery while the receiver was a
three transistor regenerative job (see QST, July, 1957,
p36.) My only photos of that trip did not show the rig or
the operation. The rig itself is also long gone, but I hope
to duplicate it someday. I vividly remember
just how strong George's signals were from the hilltop. I
also recall hearing some weak signals in the background that I
would never have heard from home. I worked George on
both 80 and 40 meters. Noise was absent to a level that I
had never experienced. The same rig was taken along on a
mountain backpacking trek later that summer, but nothing was
worked or even heard. But we had camped at a lake, deep in
the woods and surrounded by high mountains, so it is not
surprising that nothing was worked.
WA6UVR/6. (1961-1966)
I finished my undergraduate college experience and got married in
1961 and we left the northwest for California. The
move brought a new call, WA6UVR. By now I was doing
quite a bit of backpacking and climbing in the Sierra.
This was beginning to dominate my amateur radio interests as
I read the pages of the publications of the day to find out more
about transistors. I eventually dismantled all of my vacuum
tube equipment to garner parts to be used to build solid state
gear. The first solid-state station was operational
in February, 1963. The first ARRL Field Day with portable
gear occurred that year on a trip with WB6AIG (now K6GT.) We
drove to a remote spot on the crest of the hills above Palo Alto
California, hiked up to the top of a wooded area, strung a dipole
in the trees and operated my newly constructed 1 watt solid state
station. It was great fun, something to whet my appetite for trips
into the mountains beyond the foot hills. The rig was described in
QST for August, 1964. While I remember the strong signals, I
also remember problems with the poor dynamic range of the
receiver. That issue was to become another passion a
few years later.
The photo above shows the first time I
combined amateur radio with an overnight backpack and climb.
This was Field Day of 1965. I was joined by Chuck
Wilcox, K6DMW, on a hike up the north ridge of Mt. Dana in the
high country of Yosemite National Park.
Our camp (shown in the photo) was on Dana's north
ridge at about 12,000 ft. The antenna was a telescoping 12 foot
mast that supported an inverted Vee dipole. The experience was
overwhelming. I had never heard 40 meters with such a
proliferation of signals, and virtually no noise. The
signals were from all over the country, even in the early
afternoon when we first got the antenna up. It was also an
exciting camp location, much more scenic than the comfortable
camps "on the lake" experienced on my earlier fishing motivated
backpacking trips. We made only a handful of
contacts, but we still regarded the trip as an overwhelming
success.
This was the rig on Mt. Dana. The crystal controlled TX (left) ran
about 3 watts output. The superhet receiver was filled with
Germanium transistors and a two element crystal lattice filter.
The overall box was 5 x 6 x 13 inches. In those days (of crazy
youth) we didn't worry as much about station weight! Three
external 6 volt lantern batteries provided transmitter power. The
hike was a 2000 ft elevation gain over scree from Tioga Pass.
This is the north face of Mt. Dana from near our camp, still 1000
ft to go. The summit is reminiscent of Colorado rather than the
more typical granite spire summits of California's Sierra Nevada.
The next morning produced a common
dilemma: Do we continue to operate the radio or do we climb
the mountain? We did the climb to the summit, just over
13,000 ft elevation.
Again W7ZOI / 7
California was a wonderful interlude, but Shon and I wanted to get
back to the northwest. When we did, in 1966, I was able to get my
old call back. Here's a July 1967 climb to the summit of
Washington's Mt. Adams.
(photo by Andre' Zoutte, WA7IHJ.)
I'm operating at the left. One fellow was holding the antenna mast
while another steadied the call pennant in the wind for the photo.
Note the RG58 coax blown out by the wind. While the
temperature was blistering hot over most of the Pacific Northwest,
we were in the middle of a lenticular cloud covering the top 1000
ft of the 12,300 ft peak. We measured the temperature
as 38F (3C.) The box near the photo center is the summit
register box. We thought at the time that it was attached to a
chunk of wood on the ground. We discovered in later years that the
wood was actually the roof line of an old summit lookout cabin,
placing it 10 ft or so above ground, but buried in ice. The rig on
Adams was a modified version of that used on Mt. Dana. It was
after this trip that I began to look seriously at schemes for
lighter, more compact portable equipment.
So what's this Mt. Adams all about?
Mt. Adams, 12,307' elevation, as viewed from the
Goat Rocks Wilderness, about 20 miles to the north. The Mt.
Adams timberline (and road's end) is at about 6000 ft elevation,
leaving 6000 feet of hiking to reach the summit. This photo
was taken in early July sometime in the early 1990s.
The late 1960s and early 1970s era included a
great deal of experimentation, much of it related to rigs for the
mountains. Some early direct conversion receivers resulted
from some of this work. Urges to build portable rigs
seemed to occur a couple of times per year. The "spring"
motivation is predictable. But it also seemed to happen in late
fall and early winter when Oregon weather is at its ugliest. Two
rigs that came out of these urges are the larger "Mountaineer"
(QST, Aug 72) and a smaller cousin, dubbed the "Micro mountaineer"
(QST, Aug 73,) shown below. The uM was an early
version of a topology that became popular using a crystal
controlled oscillator to control both a simple transmitter and a
direct conversion receiver, affording an especially simple
transceiver.
Both boxes run an output of about half a watt, a level that we
concluded was about right for an extended trip (batteries that one
can carry) while still offering reasonable performance. Modern
batteries (year 1990 and on) will easily support higher
output power. Both rigs saw considerable application in the
mountains with the right hand photo showing the Micro mountaineer
in use, Dec 1972. Operation with gloves or mittens is
a must. Both units provided technical direction for
equipment to follow. The photo of me operating
in the woods was taken by Gene Single, K7IUN.
Incidentally, that photo was not posed. I was actually
working VE6WG when the photo was snapped.
Commercial equipment continues to evolve.
Consider the photo below:
(N7FKI photo)
This photo shows a recently introduced, ultra compact and
versatile "trail friendly" commercial transceiver, the KX2 from
Elecraft. (photo taken in June,
2016). This KX2 belongs to
N7FKI. This little box is just slightly larger
than the Micromountaineer above, weighs just over one pound with
battery, offers CW and SSB plus digital modes, and delivers
up to 10 watts. It's truly amazing how far things
have come.
ARRL Field Day
The ARRL Field Day was often a major activity in my schedule of
Mountain/Ham treks. These were often collaborative
efforts. Considerable effort was sometimes devoted to
building rigs and antennas especially for FD, and in the
development of some ancillary tools. The following photo
shows a table that could be dismantled and stowed in a pack.
W7EL/7,
late 1970 time frame. The lower shelf houses a
transmatch and rather heavy battery while a couple of transceivers
and a keyer are on top. One of the transceivers is
one that was described in Solid-State Design for the Radio
Amateur, p214. (ARRL, 1977) Two clip boards were used
for this operation. One is for the log while the other is a
cross-check sheet. (By now, we were making enough contacts
that this was necessary.) A half amp solar panel was
included in the mix, although we later discovered that ARRL ruled
it illegal, for we were using the panel to top off the
storage battery. They wanted solar contacts to occur
without a storage cell. We had done that often, but not
always when in the field. Oh well.
We were picking up some other lore along the way. For
example, it was vital to include mosquito nets and/or repellent.
But some of the most effective brands of "bug juice" have
the nasty chemical property that they react with the classic
yellow paint on pencils. So, we often kept our
pencils wrapped in plastic.
Another detail that we observed was the
difficulty in getting lines into the high trees that we often
encountered. We eventually started taking a sling shot and
a spinning reel with medium weight fishing line. This tool
allowed us to get the antennas up to quite high levels. The
limitation now became the weight of transmission line that we were
willing to pack in. This photo shows Roy, W7EL, launching a
line into a tree. We used 1 or 2 oz fishing weights,
but Roy quickly discovered that they were nearly impossible to
find in the dark green trees unless the weights were painted.
One can now purchase a sling shot of this sort with an attached
spinning reel. (Is there no end to the influx of
appliances?)
By 1989 son Roger (KA7EXM) had
graduated from college and was living in Northern California.
He and I decided to meet for Field Day at a location
that was close to half way between us. Oregon's Mt.
McLoughlin is a 9500 ft peak just north of the California border.
We drove toward each other and met the day before the
contest, hiked part of the way in, and and camped. We
continued to the summit on the following morning. We operated on
Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, camping on top.
This view shows Mt. McLoughlin from a lake a few miles from
the peak.
Here's Rog, just after we reached the top. The peaks on the
horizon to the north are around Crater Lake, the Sisters, and
beyond. The view to the south was dominated by Mt. Shasta, 50
miles away.
This is the 40M rig used on McLoughlin, a direct conversion
transceiver running about half a watt output. The
transceiver has a couple of crystals built into it, but also has a
VFO that can be used. The VFO is the box riding "piggyback"
on the transceiver. The smaller box is a transmatch.
The red enclosure houses C sized NiCad batteries. Our
"table" was rock at the top of the peak. The right photo
shows a stuff bag housing the entire station. The collapsed
antenna mast is 14 inches long, but expands to 12 feet; it
supported an inverted Vee fed with RG-174 coax. This
is the same support used on Adams and Dana. Many thanks
again to Chuck, K6DMW, for that 1965 contribution; it has
certainly been used a lot!
The left photo above shows the 40 M rig with California's Mt.
Shasta 50 miles or so to the south. The right hand shot
shows Roger sitting on a pile of rocks while working our friend,
Jeff, WA7MLH. At the time, Jeff was 120 miles to the
north where he had packed into and camped upon a ridge near Broken
Top in the Three Sisters area of Central Oregon. This was a
difficult contact for 2M FM, made possible only because Jeff had
carried a small beam with him. (We should have done
the same thing.) FM gear can be very useful in the
mountains, especially for search and rescue (SAR) groups.
It was, however, a profound disappointment in 1989 on McLoughlin.
FM simplex activity is even less today than it was then,
and I expect that it would be equally disappointing for Field Day
today. (We will have more to say below about VHF Weak
Signal work.)
This was our high camp on top of McLoughlin. We used
bivouac bags instead of a tent.
One can see some unusual things when camped on top of a
peak. Here we see the shadow of our peak at sunset.
McLoughlin was an excellent radio location offering a comfortable,
single propagation hop on 40 M to much of the US West Coast.
With only half a watt output, we still made a pile of
contacts.
While we tend to think of the summit of a peak or pass as being
the ideal locations, that is not always true. On one trip,
Roger and I ended up in a stand of trees well below the pass that
had originally been picked from studies of the maps. The
pass just looked too hostile as a camp place, especially in the
rainy weather we were experiencing.
The pass is at the right edge of the left photo above while our
eventual camp is shown on the right. This shot shows me
(well, my boots) operating in light rain. This location
turned out to be especially good, for the slope behind and below
provided a lower angle launch to the east than we would have
obtained from the pass. (Roger and I crossed that pass a
few years later.) See the now classic book by Moxon
for a discussion of dipoles that are below the summit.
(L.A.Moxon, G6XN, "HF Antennas for All Locations,"
RSGB, 1982.) That location would be a good one for a
return trip. Hmmmm.... Roger?
Note that we were camping on snow. This is a common
situation for FD, which happens early in the summer backpacking
season. Snow normally presents no problems so long as some
insulating pads are included for sleeping and operating.
Through the 1970s I often did FD with Jeff, WA7MLH. Sometimes we
cheated and operated for a few hours from a location that was
close to the car, although it
always made us feel guilty. On other trips we went up on the south
side of Mt. Hood. We did a couple of mid 1980s Field Days
from a cool location at an off trail tarn in the Jefferson
Wilderness of central Oregon. Here are shots of Jeff
and some of the rigs. We are looking across our lake to a peak
called Three-Fingered Jack.
WA7MLH
The gear shown above is a pair of CW transceivers for 40 and 20 M
that I used. Jeff had taken rigs along for DSB. He
has amassed a great deal of back country experience with SSB and
DSB at powers from less than a watt up to about 30 watts.
Click HERE
to see Jeff's most excellent web site about his
appliance-free shack.
Some of the Field Day trips outlined above take on mini-expedition
characteristics with a lot of planning and a lot of junk to pack
into the hills. FD can equally be a casual event
where a minimal rig is thrown into a rucksack and taken out for
the day. A FD of this type was to Lookout Mountain in 2005.
Lookout is a few miles due east of Mt. Hood. I hiked
in by myself, but was then surprised by Rick, KK7B, and his wife
Sara, KB8FCZ. Their son, also Rick, K7XNK, was along for
the walk. They hiked in and found me on the ridge east of
the peak proper. I elected to stay off the peak
itself, for it is a popular place for day hikers.
Generally, it is best to not pollute the area with the
sounds of CW blaring from a speaker. Also, I generally
prefer a bit of isolation from other hikers.
The left photo shows Rick listening to my transceiver while the
right shot shows the rig and log book.
This is a
1996 shot of yours truly making a few final contacts before the
antenna was taken down and we hiked out. The weather
had been good, but it was starting to rain lightly by the time
this photo was taken. This was the last contact before the
log book and the gear was shoved into the pack for the hike out.
(KK7B Photo.)
The photo above features my grandson, Tom, KD7LXL, digging into
his pack to find a rig to go with the antennas we just erected.
This was on FD of 2002. The lead photo at the top of
this page is also from that 2002 trip near Chinook Pass in
Washington. The Goat Rock Wilderness and Mt.
Adams can be seen further to the south.
Field Day with Single Sideband
I'll admit to being a hopeless CW enthusiast. Like
most of the kid hams I encountered when I was in high school,
I got my novice license with the thought, "Well, I'll learn
the code to get my General and then I'll get on phone." But
like many of us, I got hooked on the excitement of CW, especially
when I discovered how much more I could do with simple CW gear
compared to simple phone gear. But times change.
I'll admit that I've had a lot of fun building SSB gear.
It's been fun to design it, get it going, measure it, and
put it on the air. But I still don't enjoy SSB operation as
much as I do CW, even today.
I've operated SSB with low power during Field Day on a few
occasions and it has been a lot of fun. Shown below is a
1997 operation at a park about a 10 minute hike south of my home.
This transceiver operated on the 40 meter band with an output of
about 1.5 W on both SSB and CW. While this may seem like an
excessively low power for phone operation, it was still quite easy
to make contacts on Sunday morning of Field Day weekend.
The SSB transmitter included speech processing in the IF.
Although the SSB experience was fun and successful, it was even
easier to make CW contacts with the same antenna and power output.
Often the CW contacts were much further away than
those I did with SSB. At home, this rig was
used with an outboard 20 W power amplifier that greatly enhanced
the results. See Experimental
Methods in RF Design (EMRFD, ARRL, 2003) and QST
December, 1989 and January, 1990.
The above shot shows an unusual SSB station, this one for the 20
meter band. This was the brainchild of a good friend, Bob
Culter, N7FKI. Bob has an Elecraft KX-1 multiband CW
transceiver. One of the bands is 20 meters. Bob
realized that the internal menus would allow considerable latitude
in offsetting the nominal carrier frequency from that received.
With this freedom, it was possible to use the transceiver in
the receive mode to copy SSB, but to then use the transmitted
carrier as injection for a phasing transmitter. Bob
based the transmitter on KK7B designs, but
with RF circuits redesigned for the 20 meter band. He then
built a linear chain ending in a Mitsubishi RD16HHF1 MOSFET
running about 8 watts output power. The speech processor in
Bob's rig used an Analog Devices SSM2167 integrated circuit. The
rig was much more effective with the speech processor in
operation. This Field Day operation occurred on the
playground of an elementary school close to Bob's house.
Tom, KD7LXL, and I used some SSB on 15 M with his Yaesu FT-817
during FD for 2002. That was close to a maximum in
the sunspots and conditions were outstanding. As I recall,
we worked quite a few folks around the US while using nothing more
than the 5 watt transmitter output with a 40 meter dipole about 10
feet above the snow. See the lead photo for this web
article.
Other Seasons
Field Day is always fun, but amateur radio in the back country is
certainly not restricted to that one weekend. Often, Field
Day weekend is too early in the season to get to the interesting
locations in the western states, for the roads are still snowed
in. This varies, year to year. Later in the
summer is usually more practical, but does not fit with the
amateur radio calendar. In addition, the trips later
in the summer are often reserved for more intense backpacking
efforts and may not include ham gear. This leaves the
most of the rest of the year for ham treks. Spring and
autumn are both good. Some of the best radio trips I've
done have been in winter. The earliest of these was a
snowshoe trip to Mt. Rainier's Van Trump Park in January of 1970
with Dick Bingham, W7WKR. (I'm still looking for photos from that
wonderful trip!)
Here's a photo looking into the entrance of an abbreviated snow
cave that I dug on a mid 1980s solo trip. The transceiver is
sitting on "the roof," right after keeping a sked with WA7MLH. It
was a kick to work Jeff from the field after I had worked him so
often from home with him in the hills. Setting radio aside,
the mountains are a special place in wintertime with an intense
quiet that becomes hard to imagine after the busy, crowded world
we normally experience. A quiet
radio environment adds to the enjoyment. The contacts
are also fun and often unusual. Imagine an early dinner,
followed by retirement to the warmth of a down sleeping bag with
the transceiver and batteries pulled inside where the wonder of it
all is described in the language of CW to the folks who are still
at home.
This shot shows another quasi-snowcave. Even without
a roof, the shelter trench offers a
warm place to relax and protection from the
wind. Roger and I dug this one while on a day trek on
snowshoes. The goal for that trip was to exercise a new rig
in the field. The rig was an updated version of the Micro
mountaineer, later presented in QST, July, 2000. The
trip was in February, 2000. The larger item on the cave
shelf was a stove to make soup for lunch. It's
amazing how much warmth is provided by a shelter like this that is
dug in only 10 or 20 minutes.
Here's another shot of Mt. Hood from a favorite haunt, a place
called Ghost Ridge. This was a trip with my older son, Ron
(now KF7HAP) in February of 2007. Mostly it was just
a winter camping excursion, but we had a radio goal as well, which
was to work a contest called FYBO essentially a winter Field Day
for QRP enthusiasts. Click HERE to read
more about that trip.
VHF Portable
Among the great virtues of being in the mountains is the great
panorama presented. The most obvious vista is the
visual one, but the mountains also provide an extended radio
vista, one that is especially useful at VHF. It's a
thrill to operate from a slightly rare grid square that is a long
distance from population centers and to generate pile ups on the
VHF bands. Over the last dozen or so
years I've had the pleasure of going on several expeditions with
son Roger, KA7EXM. He has managed to put several
interesting grid squares on the air and to make some very
interesting, relatively long haul VHF contacts. The modes
that he has used are CW and SSB, all with QRP power levels.
We always use his call on the VHF expeditions.
(Photo by either KA7EXM or WB6JZY. TNX guys.)
Roger and his work colleague Jack Trollman, WB6JZY, near the
summit of Mt. Conness in California's Sierra Nevada Mountains.
They had a small 2M Yagi and an Icom IC-202.
Roger's VHF antennas are generally Yagis for 2M and up. A
simple dipole is used for 6M. The 6M activity is not
usually featured, but is sometimes included merely because his
main transceiver, an FT-817, includes that band. The
VHF Yagis are those described by WA5VJB. See the articles
in CQ VHF, August 1998 and October,
1998. Roger has built these antennas for 144, 222,
and 432 MHz with excellent results. He uses a homebrew
transverter for 222 MHz. See the article in QST by W1GHZ,
January, 2003.
The above two photos show Roger working
folks back in Portland on 144 MHz CW and SSB. The location
was relatively high, but did not really offer a direct,
line-of-sight view of the areas we worked. Still, the
signals were very strong and we had no trouble making contacts
with QRP gear. This trek was for the 1998 VHF SS, a mid
January contest sponsored by ARRL. It's a
wonderful excuse to get out on snowshoes.
This photo of Roger is from another VHF SS trip to the same
general area on the Pacific Crest Trail.
Roger on the summit of Lookout Mountain, which is due east of Mt.
Hood. The antennas for this stack are, top to bottom, 144,
222, and 432 MHz. Click HERE to
see some close-up views of the antennas, showing the construction.
The horizontal wire in front of Rog is a 6M dipole.
This location was interesting in that Mt. Hood served to shield us
from routine signals in the greater Portland area. We were
still able to make good contacts to the north and south.
Our Portland contacts were limited to some of the BIG stations on
SSB, plus one QRP station (KI7N) who was pleased to go on CW to
work us. The mast that supports the antennas
is made of aluminum tubing of about 5/8 inch diameter with an
overall height of about 10 feet. The stack, made from old
tent poles, is well under a pound and easily fits in a rucksack.
Roger keeps an on-line list of his VHF portable activity.
Click HERE for
that list.
Here are a couple of shots of Roger on a trip we took to "tie in
rock" above the Elliot Glacier on Oregon's Mt. Hood.
We got up to about 8500 feet on this trip, providing a line
of sight shot to hills in the Seattle, WA area. The antenna
system here was a 5 element Yagi for 144 MHz that was eventually
replaced by a 4 element WA5VJB design.
One of the best VHF mountain topping treks we did was to Maxwell
Butte in the Mt. Jefferson Wilderness Area of Oregon.
Here's Roger working a few guys on 144 MHz CW. For more info
and more photos on this trip, click here.
The ARRL approach to VHF contesting differs from that
used for Field Day. The FD rules include a "Class B" where
one or two people can operate a single transmitter
station. This class adapts itself well to backpack
contesting efforts. In contrast, the VHF contest rules have
a QRP class, but restrict it to a single operator. Because
of this, I have rarely participated in any actual station
operation on our VHF junkets. There have
been moments where I would love to have operated a little, but it
is a "single operator" event. Oh well.
One approach is to go into the field, work the contest, but to
never submit a log or score. Rules don't really
matter then. The down side of this is that the published
results are not then representative of the actual activity.
Even this is of little consequence owing to data-mining that
happens with submitted logs.
All of our efforts have been with SSB and CW. These modes
are clearly preferred for long distance weak signal applications.
FM can still be effective if the location is good enough.
FM is also a very useful tool for communications
within a group that may be spread out on a trail.
An outstanding location for any mode is the summit of Oregon's Mt.
Hood, shown here in May, 1982. Mt. Hood is the
highest point in the state of Oregon at a bit over 11,000
ft. It's not usually a difficult climb, but it is slightly
technical. KA7EXM in the above photo is giving
2M FM a try. With a few watts and a half wave vertical, he
opened repeaters that were 300 miles distant. Roger
and a friend, WB7SHE, operated from the summit of the South
Sister, another of Oregon's large volcanic peaks, where they
managed a 250 mile contact while running only 0.2 W, but that was
CW. As an aside, in 2013 I had the pleasure of
working Tom/KD7LXL on 2M SSB. Tom, our first grandson, was
on the summit of Mt. Hood while I was at home.
UHF Portable
Our main emphasis has been on simple HF operations, mostly
CW. However, son Roger has become quite interested in
portable operation with VHF gear. His experience has
taken him up through 432 MHz. (Cell phones don't
count!) We recently joined John, K7CVU, on a hike to a
location that we have visited in the past. But this
time we took UHF gear. John had a transverter
that ran 2.5 watts output at 1296 MHz. His
antenna was a 5 element Yagi that we put atop a very small
backpacking camera tripod. The IF for the transverter was a Yaesu
FT-817.
Here we see K7CVU with his 5 element 1296 MHz Yagi.
This provided contacts as far away as 168 miles. I
suspect that we will try to do more at UHF, for this was extremely
fun. Click here
to read about this trek.
Equipment Thoughts
Often folks will ask about rigs for portable operation.
There are many choices these days including a number of high
performance kits. I still prefer to brew my own. The
experience is then more complete with the operation becoming an
extension of the experiments that led to the gear.
I presently have several 40 M CW rigs that I take to the
mountains. One is a version of the Micro mountaineer,
shown by clicking here.
This is a crystal controlled direct conversion rig.
Another is a VFO controlled superhet shown below.
This transceiver runs 1 watt output and has several features built
into it including a frequency counter and keyer. The string
of Ni-MH batteries shown will power the rig for a typical weekend
of operating, if not longer. (The heavy keyer paddle shown
is only used at home!) The front panel
LED ceases to function if the battery voltage drops below 11.5.
The transceiver weighs just over 1 pound with a receiver
current consumption of about 35 mA. Click HERE to see the schematic
for this rig.
Similar gear for the 14 MHz band features improved performance
with more power and a stronger (higher dynamic range) receiver
front end. This equipment is described in Experimental
Methods in RF Design ( EMRFD, ARRL, 2003).
Commercial gear for the VHF bands is readily available although it
is not as common as that for HF. One popular offering is
the Yaesu FT-817. The performance has been completely
satisfactory, with one major exception: The FT-817 eats
batteries alive. On the mountain top contest
activities, we have often carried an 8 Amp-Hour Sealed Lead Acid
battery to run the FT-817. Starting with a full charge, it
is depleted by the end of an overnight contest. The problem
is not high transmit power. Rather, it is the excessive
current consumed at all times. This results from the use of
relays for all band switching. The FT-817 is a good
choice if the operating interval is short.
A much older monoband rig offers performance that is, in many ways
far superior to the later
multiband designs. This example is a classic 2 M SSB/CW
rig, the IC-202 from Icom. While the rig itself weighs more
and is larger than the FT-817, the total weight per watt is much
less when batteries are included. Receive current for
the IC-202 is around 70 mA, so it will last for an entire contest
with a set of internal C-cells. We have also had good luck
with a Mizuho MX-2. This little rig produces a couple of
hundred mW of SSB and CW output in a package the size of a
traditional 1980s era FM hand held. The Mizuho uses
a convenient 9 volt supply.
One portable
rig from Elecraft, the
KX3, is also noteworthy. This box provides
CW and SSB on all HF bands plus 6 Meters. A 2
Meter internal transmatch is an option. This
box is quite light weight and has low current consumption and
would be an option. A cousin to the KX3 has
just (2016) been introduced, the KX2, and it is even smaller
and lighter. However, it covers fewer
bands.
There is clearly justification for brewing one's own rig for the
VHF bands. Numerous examples are included in Experimental
Methods in RF Design (EMRFD, ARRL, 2003) to serve as a
starting point. Several variations of a phasing
transceiver for 2M are shown in Chapter 12. A
Universal Monoband Superhet Transceiver is presented in
Chapter 6 (see page 6.83) with the one shown operating in the 6M
band. It could be built for any HF band or even for 2M
merely by changing some LC filters and the LO chain.
That rig has been a great performer, yielding sporadic E contacts
from W1 to Hawaii from Oregon, even at the 3 Watt level with a
dipole antenna. Numerous contacts with Japan also
happened when we had F2 propagation at a sunspot maximum and a
small Yagi antenna.
Homebrewing will become necessary as we move to
UHF. Some commercial FM gear is available for
1296, and imported SSB/CW transverters are available.
But there is no turn-key solution available.
Perhaps this is part of the lure of the 1296 MHz band?
How Heavy is the Pack?
This photo shows a vital part of the game, that of at-home testing
before taking the gear into the field. In this case, the
total weight of the station is determined with a kitchen scale.
It's coming in at about 2 pounds, or a kilogram for
the set up shown. Note that the keyer paddle, earphones,
and battery are included with the transceiver. The antenna
system must also be included when planning for portable outings,
for that is part of the pack load. After the "weigh-in,"
the equipment should be set up and used, taking care to add
nothing more than the gear that was on the scale.
There is an old adage for backpacking that says "Worry about
the ounces and the pounds will take care of themselves."
This clearly applies to the radio gear that will be carried into
the field.
It is very important to use the gear at home just as it will be
used in the field. If a commercial rig is to be used,
try to set the menu items at home so that frustrations are avoided
once on the hill. This is, of course, not a problem
with homebrew gear used by the builder, for he or she will know
how the menus function!
Some popular antenna solutions can be excessively heavy.
The telescoping 12 foot antenna mast that I've used for many years
weighs about 2 pounds. It easily fits in a pack and is very
robust, so it has been a reasonable solution when traveling above
timberline where there are no trees. A better solution is a
modern fiberglass crappie type fishing pole that expands to a 20
ft length. It weighs only one pound. It is the
preferred solution and is popular with many QRP radio amateurs
taking gear into the field, although it does have the disadvantage
that it is still long when collapsed. The one
I have is 45 inches, so it won't fit inside a pack. It is
easily strapped to the side of one though. A wonderful
telescoping mast is available that expands to 33 ft, or 10 M
length. It's a great thing if one is going to do an
automobile bound portable stint. But that mast weight is
3.5 pounds, making it of marginal utility for most backpacking.
These pack weight comments are predominantly "geezer"
considerations and should not be regarded as limitations by
younger hams or those used to hauling heavy packs.
We hauled large loads in our youth and a few extra pounds in the
pack made little difference then. But times change.
Most of us tend to be more concerned about pack
weight as we add a few years to the tally.
Final Thoughts
Finally, a word of caution: The activities presented
here are avocations that we have, by now, pursued for over 60
years. They are not extreme and certainly do not compare
with the feats of the modern 21st century
backpacker or mountaineer. They can still be more
demanding than a trip to the back yard or local park. If
these activities are new to you, by all means go with someone who
has done them before. Always take the right equipment
and know how to use it before you arrive in the woods.
Beware of some of the casual, small packs that are
sold to the QRP community. These are sometimes
found at hamfests or ham-equipment stores. Some of these
packs have no room for anything other than the intended rig.
Know about the backpacking "Ten Essentials" and
always carry them with you when in the back country. (Ref:
Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills,
Seattle Mountaineers, 1st Edition published in 1960. The 7th
or 8th edition is in print at this time and is still a great
book.)
With that said, give some portable operation a try. Even if
it is just to a local park, it can still be quite exciting and
great fun. Indeed, it may be the most fun that you
will ever have in amateur radio. That's been the case with
me.