Topband: CQ 160 Blog W7RH portable (Response to Tree)

[Bob Kile]

Copy of email response to Tree re: CQ160

Hi Tree,

Winter operation of my remote is very iffy for battery status and is 
often not accessible due to weather. I had a opportunity to operate from 
Texas at a K7CA air B&B. It was a real experience for this old guy.

I arrived Tuesday evening in heavy fog and rain in Freeport, TX. Fiber 
glass masts were drop shipped there from DX Engineering. The tool kit 
included Ameritron AL1306 and SUN SDR2DX with a bunch of wire. Wednesday 
the 50ft top loaded vertical with two elevated radials went up but 
remained un-tuned in heavy rain. By evening Thursday I had a K9AY up and 
working without a pre-amp.

Things were not looking good. Trashed by stationary thunderstorms and 
very heavy rain there was no operation until Friday the start of the 
contest. It stormed and rained 3.5 inches overnight. We originally 
planned a multi operation but that was scrapped before 2200 hours UTC 
with 20 0ver S-9 thunderstorm QRM that lasted well into Saturday 
evening. Tree it was horrible! I had stationary storms North and over 
head with another large storm just south in the gulf. I think I worked 
only 79 stations first night S&P cherry picking those above the noise. 
It was very bad luck. The storms hung in the Galveston area for three 
days before moving east late Saturday.

The K9AY was not great but a face saver in that I could hear and work 
some Pacific DX Saturday. Due to limited space it was too close to the 
transmit antenna that I could not detune during TX, but it got me some 
urban operation ears. The TX antenna worked very well, too well for the 
RX capabilities. It was a 50ft top loaded vertical with two quarter wave 
elevated radials. I'm sold on that concept!

In the series of events I was not able to get a good feel for 
propagation. The K9AY worked but signals were obviously way down. 
Propagation favored East and West with good coverage to South America. 
Signals to the north were very attenuated. The signal to noise ratio was 
however improved enough to call CQ Saturday night. I had hoped to work 
EU Friday and lots of JA Saturday morning but had to work left overs 
Saturday when conditions improved. All in all very difficult for this 
OLD guy who has less than 50% hearing.

Would I do it again? Hell yes! Plans are to return next year to a beach 
front house on the gulf itself

73

Bob W7RH

On 1/30/24 03:17, TreeN6TR wrote:
Texas??

Tried calling you a handful of times - but didn't even get a "?" from you.

Must have been like my portable operation in Indiana where the 
residential noise level was horrible.

Tree


-- 
W7RH DM35OJ


If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little. George Carlin