On Saturday, I operated from the SouthEast Alabama Rocketry Society launch in Samson, Alabama. It was a very foggy morning. I setup a 40 meter dipole and the rig was my Icom 7100 on a 30 amp hour battery. As we know the dipole is a a great performer for portable ops if you can get it up in the air. I got the center up about 30 feet with a Jackite pole. The ends were at little less than 20 feet using the smaller fiberglass poles. I used a 70 foot run of coax to locate the antenna 40 feet behind the flight line. On this coax I did not have the ferrite beads for a choke but hey it worked fine anyway, I actually started out on 15 meters. The SWR was over 2 to 1. The Icom 7100 does not have a tuner so I used a compact MFJ 901b tuner. I recently picked up this tuner at our local club. The tuner worked fine and I am going to include it in my high power go box.
I had a advertised that I would be on 40 meters among the RaDAR community and local hams. It was a pleasure to make a RaDAR to RaDAR contact with Bob KK4DIV. He was camping with the family at Laurel Hills in Northwest Florida. Bob was using his FT 817 and a random wire in a tree. His signal was solid copy and up to S7 at my location. Note this contact qualifies for a 5 point bonus in the RaDAR Rally. I also worked two Panama City Florida hams Bob WB4BLX and Vic K4GXV on 40 meters SSB.
 |
| Bob KK4DIV's setup on his camping trip. |
I spent saturday night in Dothan, Alabama with my Parents. On Sunday afternoon. I setup the Alexloop and the KX3 in the backyard, I got five contacts in on 20 and 10 meter CW. The best contacts was with Bert F6HKA. Bert is an outstanding operator and is a Senator member in the Straight Key Century Club.
So I picked up five Rally points, one point per QSO, at each location. I toyed with moving to a second location each day to pick up five more at two points each, But I ran short on time. You can find out more about the Rapid Deployment Amateur Radio (RaDAR) Rally at this
link.
 |
| My launch of a Warthog rocket on a G motor. |
