[UK-CONTEST] Portable Generators....

[Dave Sergeant]

Yes, an interesting thread.

It is worth pointing out that with the ever increasing price of 
petrol/diesel the cost of running a genny for a /P contest is becoming 
a very significant proportion of the overall contest expenditure 
(together with of course the cost of same in getting to the site in the 
first place).

Running in the low power section with a battery powered station is 
becoming even more attractive. At Bracknell some years ago we pioneered 
this. An Elecraft K2 will run easily for 12 hours off a relatively 
small SLA battery (we used 2 4AH ones). Heating and lighting can be 
done with camping gas. However we found the hardest thing was powering 
the logging laptop. In those days we used an ancient Zenith laptop with 
an early version of SD, and had to resort to a separate car battery to 
power that as its consumption was more than the rest of the station. 
Although there has been considerable advance in laptops, especially 
with netbooks, iPads etc, I don't think there is much on the market 
that will run for 12 or 24 hours on its own batteries or for that 
matter accept an external 12V input.

And of course if you have an internet linked iPad on site, does it 
count as an 'assisted' entry?

The whole area of operating portable is a changing area and long gone 
are the days of bringing a few car batteries on site to drive the 2E26 
'10W' PA (how many remember those?...).

Due to our aging operators and no longer having access to a camping 
trailer it looks like we won't be operating in NFD these days.

73 Dave G3YMC

On 5 Apr 2012 at 8:52, Tim Hugill wrote:

> Not "off-topic" at all.  Without a reliable portable power source, the
> rest of a portable contest effort can be compromised.
> 


http://www.davesergeant.com