KCØPET Pages
July 2009 Portable Op - Southeast MO
Again, we took our regular week vacation around July 4th to the family farm near Whitewater, MO. This will be the second year of the "QRP ham shack by the pond". I set up on a picnic table by the farm pond and worked on my sunburn and collected ticks while operating. I ran 4 to 5 watts on the K2. My setup is somewhat simplified this year with the addition of the internal tuner to my K2. You can see the W3EDP antenna "arcing" up from the radio.
I started out with my experimental W3EDP antenna. It is constructed of #18 speaker wire in an end fed zep configuration. Later in the week, I added an 80M dipole about 15' above ground. Both antennas used the handy trees near the picnic table. Most of my operating was on 40M and 80M. I did more operating this week than the total of the last several months at the home QTH.
The 80M dipole worked great. The W3EDP was just so-so. Most of my signal reports were poor. I used my 9:1 Unun on 40. Oddly enough, the unun actually lowered the impedence to about 2 ohms on 40 (from about 7 ohms), but the K2 tuner was better able to match it that way. The unun also helped on 20 meters. I found this version of the W3EDP to be resonant on 30 but have not yet made any contacts on 30. Anyway, I need to do more experimenting with this antenna. I am pondering building a tuner specifically for this antenna, but that will be a future project...
K2, 7AH Battery and Code Warrior Junior Paddle. W3EDP Antenna and Coax to 80M Dipole Can Be Seen.
