Got up extra early this morning and drove to my favourite spot in the Royal National Park to do some portable work.
This time I took the 1:1 balun 10m pole and wire cut for 40m. I had to cut down the wire to bring it on frequency so this took about 45mins, walking back and forth lowering each leg of the inverted vee and finally hit 47 ohms 8 ohms z at 7.050 and was happy with that.
Wound the ft857 down to 5w and calling calling. I was getting 22dB rbn hits in vk4 so my signal was getting out. Not too long I had a reply from vk4tt on 7.0255 and then vk4dbj on 7.050 qsy to 7.052.
Having a listen on ssb I heard vk4fajp calling and was going clear due to no response so I grabbed the mic and replied back still on 5w. He was having some difficulty with qsb so I wound the wick up to 25w and no prob.
Time to pack up and head for home. Happy with the morning results considering low power and no cluster spots.
Going portable is really a lot of fun and enjoyable amoungst the bush surrounds.
73
David
VK2JDR
Portable Operations This Morning