Roughing it in Alabama

Sometimes, you just have to get out there in the field and rough it, no matter how bad the conditions. This was not one of those times 🙂

We went on an “end of the year” vacation to Alabama to visit family for a week. During our trip, I was able to get out and setup my SuperAntenna on a couple of occasions and work some QRP Portable from EM62. Both were within the same grid, at two different locations. On both occasions, I was lucky enough to have metal fencing available and as you all know, I love me some metal fencing for my vertical SuperAntenna.

As you can see from the pics, I’ve added a Dewalt 20v to 12v converter and a Dewalt battery to the setup. I still have the LiFePO battery, but on this trip, I solely used an 8ah Dewalt battery for the duration of my activities, which lasted for three different operations at two locations for a total of about 4-5 hours of ops. This did not put a dent in the available charge on the battery.

I used my time wisely and calibrated the new NanoVNA meter for 10m thru 80m, along with working SSB portable. I made several contacts, including getting back into the 8pm WVDXA rag chew on 3.831 where I was able to talk to a couple of our members from Alabama back to WV with 5w on the FT-817. The SuperAntenna, per the NanaVNA, was able to tune up 80m the best out of all the bands 10-80 with what showed as a 1.04 SWR while using the chain link fence as a ground plane. The fence is about 220′ long and 4′ high.