{"id":552,"date":"2011-07-31T20:20:31","date_gmt":"2011-08-01T01:20:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/?p=552"},"modified":"2011-10-21T15:54:33","modified_gmt":"2011-10-21T20:54:33","slug":"two-more-radio-expeditions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/?p=552","title":{"rendered":"Two more radio expeditions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, after successfully carrying the Buddipole on a plane to Silicon Valley and making a couple of 2000-mile contacts on 5 watts (see this blog post<\/a>), I’m happy to report that I’ve had two more happy expeditions: one to Iowa, another to Oregon. I’m going to start collecting location-specific patches and sew them onto the Buddipole bag as it travels!<\/p>\n

During a lovely family vacation to Dubuque, Iowa, I had a chance to sneak out of the hotel after dark with the antenna and Yaesu-817ND bag. I walked down to the west bank of the Mississippi river, and managed to set up a 40m horizontal dipole about 10′ high just before the sun set. Luckily, the bank sloped down 20 feet diagonally to the water, and I think the entire surface of the river acted as a gigantic reflector for my horizontally-polarized signal. Using only 5 watts, I had a lovely ragchew with a gentleman in North Carolina. Only one quick smartphone-picture was made of the antenna’s base before it got too dark:<\/p>\n

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Last week I was at a conference in Portland, Oregon (very close to the Buddipole makers!) and did a quick Google Earth inspection of the terrain. I located the highest hill in town — Council Crest is over 1000 feet high — and then took a bus up there at dawn. Here’s the equipment just before I left the hotel room, the Buddipole bag and the radiostation bag (containing radio, tuner, analyzer, and 4.8Ah nanophosphate lithium ion battery.)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Once up there, the bus informed me it wouldn’t be back till 4pm, ugh. Oh well. So I took in the great view of the whole city and valley; it was easy to see Mt. Hood on the horizon. <\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

Setup was fairly straightforward. I spent 30 minutes building a no-compromise 20m quarter-wave vertical, with two wire radials hanging down onto the stone walls. After fooling with lengths, I could get the SWR down to about 2:1 to 2.5:1 across the whole band.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The total height was close to 10m tall.<\/p>\n

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And then I quickly set up the radio station.<\/p>\n

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During my three hours of activity, I spent an equal amount of time trying to make contacts and explaining myself to all the passers-by. Most people thought I was trying to “sample” the atmosphere or something. Another person who was an EE engineer (but not a radio ham) seemed to think that 5 watts was a ‘huge’ amount of radiation, and I couldn’t seem to talk him out of it.<\/p>\n

I did manage to make three contacts on low power — two via voice to Alberta and B.C., and one morse-code contact to Oregon. When the other guy said my morse tone was “drifting around”, that’s when I knew the battery was dying and time to pack up!<\/p>\n

Since I was alone up there, I had to spend an hour hiking downward through thick forest trails. My favorite part was the four-way intersection.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

…but eventually I made it to the zoo, and from there was able to hop on the light rail back to the convention center!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, after successfully carrying the Buddipole on a plane to Silicon Valley and making a couple of 2000-mile contacts on 5 watts (see this blog post), I’m happy to report that I’ve had two more happy expeditions: one to Iowa, another to Oregon. I’m going to start collecting location-specific patches and sew them onto the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ham-radio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=552"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":575,"href":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552\/revisions\/575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}