Weekend Wrap Up

Saturday, I made a trip to Headland Alabama for the Wiregrass ARC tailgate.  It was also a chance to visit my Parents in Dothan. The tailgate was on the square in Headland. I met some folks from the Wiregrass club including Jim KC4HW and James KE4GWW. I was joined at the event by my Dothan buddy Thomas WD0HBR. With the weather being beautiful I took advantage of the town square to try some QRP. I setup an end fed half wave for 20 meters from a bench to a 18 foot crappie pole. I made a couple of contacts. I had some visitors take a look at the QRP setup. I was pleasantly surprised to see a couple of Panama City Hams Steve N4VSP and Henry N4HHM.at the tailgate. To top off a good time I won the main prize a FT-1900 2 meter radio. As they say it was worth the drive.

Sunday, I did some backyard operating trying out the Ten Tec R4020, SOTA Tuner, crappie poles and end fed wire. I thought an inverted L configuration would be a good one. But, even though the tuner LED would dim, the R4020 complained and would not load up. So after trying a few things I had good success with using a bead balun between the tuner and the radio and putting a 17 foot wire on the counterpoise terminal of the tuner. In fact this configuration works for a 66 foot full wave on 20 meters. I have several crappie poles taped to "step in" electric fence posts. This allowed me to get close to a half square configuration. See W0YSE diagram.

One post was not tall enough. Note the full wave 20 meters is a half wave on 40 which loads up fine. So two bands without getting out of the chair. I worked N0GBR who was running 1 watt from Omaha, N5URL from Okahoma City, and AE0SL all QRP ops.

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