24 Sept 2021 – Heritage day – Public holiday in South Africa and I wanted to use the day to test my ‘Field station’ equipment. Xeigu G90, Buddipole, LiFePo4 Battery
First of all the following equipment:
24Ah 12.8v LiFePo4 battery – Homebrew – I constructed it from 32700 LiFePo4 cells – 16 of them in a 4X4 (4 X parallel and 4 X Series) configuration. It has a 20/10 (20 Amp output 10 Amp charge) BMS (Battery Monitoring System).
I utilized the Xeigu G90 radio and connected it to a Buddipole dipole antenna on a tripod – photographic light stand 3m high.
The actual test:
All went according to plan for the first nearly 30 minutes of the test. I put the antenna on the trusted MFJ259 and the settings according to my chart appeared to be spot-on for the antenna to be resonant around 7.1 MHz. I tuned to 7.105 and heard the station ZS90VTK – they were on the air on 40m from Kathu in the Northern Cape and I had to wait my turn in the ‘pile-up’ working them easily with 59 reports both ways on a mere 20W. I also heard stations in ZS1 and ZS2 but with the ‘low’ QRP-ish power of only 20W I could not get them with the antenna in a NVIS or is it ‘cloud warmer’ setup?
Now the next plan was to get the EFHW (end-fed-half-wave) antenna on the air – bus as it was rather hot I wanted to pour myself something to drink and leaving the operating position to fetch my drink – there was a sudden quite brisk gust of wind and due to the tripod not anchored it blew my Buddipole antenna over – Now all would have been OK had I been close enough to catch it but alas it hit terra ferma and the result was two completely ruined collapsible arms of the Buddipole. I was rather unhappy with myself at that moment and literally packed it up. I then set the EFHW in sloper configuration – top end at 10m and lower feedpoint end at approx 2m – I was offerring met the same reception as the Buddipole for the crew at Kathu – I also heard the Eastern Cape Guys and stations in KZN – The western Cape guys were not heard anymore. The EFHW would also have been in an NVIS config thus I will work on further improvements.
What do I take along from this?
1. 20W is not a bad output for SSB. especially in an NVIS setup.
2. Always have some sort of stability or stays or guys on an Antenna!
3. My EFHW is easier and faster to deploy and carry along for excurions than the buddipole which might be more suitable for a mobile camping trip type deployment.
What is next?
1. I will be looking to go to a Nature reserve or SOTA site in the next few days to test the capabilities of my FT817ND, KX3 and IC-705 and my own CW skills.
2. Working to get a video of all those test on the HamServ Youtube Channel.
3. If you are interested get in touch zs6jde@gmail.com and I will gladly assist with information and indicate where the different articles discussed here are available in South Africa.
73
de ZS6JDE