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Portable and Mobile

8 October 2022 John Holstein
Portable

I love to work portable and mobile. I don’t get to do it as often as I would like, so I savor every single contact made. For those not familiar with portable operations, especially QRP, a lot of time is spent for limited numbers of contacts. It’s not for everyone. I love the idea of carrying everything I need in a backpack (whether I am on my motorcycle, side-x-side or truck), finding a remote location and setting up some antennas and making a few contacts. I can spend hours on this, making no more and a couple of dozen contacts, mostly SSB/Phone, packing up and heading home or camping out in a tent for another day of portable ops to follow.

I have a QRP backpack rig setup that I can grab-and-go at a moment’s notice. I keep the battery charged and ready. The only thing I might grab is my Heil Pro-7 headset. Otherwise, get some snacks and away we go.

Here’s a list of equipment I keep in the backpack:

  • FT-817 w/handmic and owner’s manual
  • AutoTuner
  • LiFEPO 12ah battery
  • Logbook/pen
  • Tarp
  • Hunting Cushion Seat
  • Small Tripod Camp Chair
  • Super Antenna
  • G5RV Dipole Antenna
  • Paracord
  • 1 50′ of RG8x Coax and 1 25′ of RG8x coax + adapters

If I am planning to camp, I’ll pack along the appropriate equipment for that as well. Everything will fit on my KLR650 Motorcycle.

Our club, WV8CCC (Coal Country Amateur Radio Club) spends some time together operating portable as well. Either Field Day or one of our “mini expeditions” to a cool location, we get together from time to time and setup portable operations. During Field Day, I usually setup both my Travel Trailer and my Cargo Trailer for use during the event. 

 

A couple of years back, I had the opportunity to RV “out west”, worked a little along with way, but not nearly what I would like to do…. We’ll get to that some day. I hope.

WV0CQ /MM, /KP4 and /KP2 – 7/29-8/6

I will be working:

/KP2 – St. Thomas (hopefully on 8-1-2017 @ 14:30z – 15:30z (10:30a – 11:30a Atlantic Time) and again on 8-1 @ 23:30z (7:30pm Atlantic Time);

/KP4 – Puerto Rico (hopefully on 8-2-2017 @ 12:30z – 13:30z (08:30a – 11:30a Atlantic Time) and again at 23:00z (7pm Atlantic Time);

/MM (Maritime Mobile) “here and there” between 7/29 and 8/6, 10:00z – 12:00z (6a – 8a Atlantic Time). I will try to have coords available during our exchange, I may or may not have grid square location done, you may need to do this yourself based on the coords I give.

This schedule is subject to change, depending on the XYL

I will be working on 20m Phone, somewhere between 14.320 – 14.347 and I’ll be monitoring local repeaters and 147.52 during my cruise on Carnival Magic.

For more info on this expedition and my report, please go here.

 

 

 

If you’ve taken a look at my “project page”, you’re probably already familiar with the 857d and the “exoskeleton cage” case I’ve built for it. /Portable# will be my additional “stroke-suffix” any time I am out in the field and operating alone and not in my mobile. I’ll be adding pics and such to this site as we progress.

Equipment Currently Used:

Yaesu FT-857d

Super Antenna

LiFEPO 120wh 10ah Battery

LDG AT200 Pro Tuner