Posts
HPM/140 Birthday Celebration Event
While this was a week-long event, I only found time to participate in the last two days. I first set up my portable station in our screened porch as the weather was just fine for that, my Icom 706MKIIG and the TransWorld Backpacker antenna. The setup of that portable station is quite easy and takes me about 5-7 minutes from antenna to radio and up on the air! No tuning, no tuner, no analyzer, just put the 8 antenna pieces together, chose the band and place the two connectors, run the coax, connect it to the radio, connect the radio to the power source, either power supply or battery booster and battery, connect the mike and earphones and that is it!
Yes, I can get fancier and have the computer control my radio and log my calls. That takes a few more minutes. And If I want to operate on digital modes, that too takes another minute or two.
I love to keep it simple and as efficient as I can. So I made a few /140 contacts from this station but then went to the shack to log them as it is easier to get the log printed there, so I worked a few more from the main station and antenna.
Here is a screen dump of my log (click on it to see a good sharp picture):
I want to thank the ARRL for making this celebration possible. It was lots of fun!
As you can see, perhaps not too clearly as the screen dump may be a little fuzzy but if you click on it, as suggested, , the real picture will appear by miracle, propagation was interesting, with lots of stations fron CA and even HI and two from AK, but very few from the Mid-West (other than later on on 40m) and none from the NE or the east coast other than FL. I even tried RTTY and had one contact, but I was really not setup for that, did not have my macros ready like I do in contests, so it was a little tedious and there were not many station on that mode anyhow.
Yes, I can get fancier and have the computer control my radio and log my calls. That takes a few more minutes. And If I want to operate on digital modes, that too takes another minute or two.
I love to keep it simple and as efficient as I can. So I made a few /140 contacts from this station but then went to the shack to log them as it is easier to get the log printed there, so I worked a few more from the main station and antenna.
Here is a screen dump of my log (click on it to see a good sharp picture):
I want to thank the ARRL for making this celebration possible. It was lots of fun!
As you can see, perhaps not too clearly as the screen dump may be a little fuzzy but if you click on it, as suggested, , the real picture will appear by miracle, propagation was interesting, with lots of stations fron CA and even HI and two from AK, but very few from the Mid-West (other than later on on 40m) and none from the NE or the east coast other than FL. I even tried RTTY and had one contact, but I was really not setup for that, did not have my macros ready like I do in contests, so it was a little tedious and there were not many station on that mode anyhow.
