Cedar Lakes mid-lake

I was QRV for the first time from this spot at Cedar Lakes at 12:00local. It took me 5 minutes to set up my station plus the usual EFHW. After tuneup on 7020Khz om Monk ZS4SF came back to me and gave me a 599+10db report. I gave him the same. The repair I completed yesterday on the ATU was now working fb. The problem was a broken wire on the smallest toroidal inductor. Looked like the wire had been damaged on installation. This being the beauty of the K2. Any faults can be corrected by the operator. I also repaired my Palm Paddle, however a more permanent fix is needed. The design for the cable could be better since all strain is taken on the screen.

Ialso copied ZS0BOT/B on 7027Khz, 509 and ZS2VJ on 7052Khz also 509. The band was in reasonable shape and very quiet. ZS4SF also reported some QSB.

Cedar Lakes upper park bench site

On Easter Sunday March 31st at 12 noon I had half an hour to spare so gathered my gear and walked up to the park bench in the upper east corner of the Cedar Lakes property and right under the electric fence. I was QRV by 12:10 pm with no problems. The end of the efhw was up 25 feet with the mid point being about 10feet up.. This is a good location since it is quite high up the slope behind cedar lakes. I could hear at leas two electric fences. My noise blanker on setting 2 was able to eliminate some of the fence noise spikes but not totally. It is better at eliminating a single fence since I imagine that it settles on a specific cadence. When there is more than one fence it is unable to resolve fully.
 I called for about 10 minutes and was answered by om Derek ZS5DM in Kloof near Durban. He reported a perfect day weather wise and gave me a 599 signal report. He was unable to QSO for long. By 12:30 I was back at the house and ready to head to a braai at my sister's place. I was again truly amazed at the ability to effectively communicate over a long distance with such a simple and fast deployment. This time of day seems to be optimum for SA wide operations on 7020Khz at this time of year. It will be interesting to see how propagation changes as the season progresses.

Bird crap is an occupational hazard :)

Cedar Lakes picnic bench upper lake

Today, Easter Saturday March 30th, I took a walk and set up my field station from a nice picnic bench with a lapa for shade. A lovely view from here looking NW across towards the Lion Park. There is a tree about 50 feet away which I was able to get my yoghurt bottle over in one shot. I reckon practice makes perfect. I find it quite easy to get the end of the EHHW up at 20 feet with the center up about 10-12 feet. I still find that the launch rope is too sticky for this application. It is often more effort to get the weight to fall to the ground than it is to launch to 20 feet. I also need to think about getting the middle of the wire up at 20 feet in a kind of inverted Vee config. Max radiation takes place from the center of this antenna according to what I have read since it is basically a dipole (albeit NVIS config). This is an interesting area to explore further.
I quickly fed the other end of the efhw wire through a convenient spar atop the grass lapa shading and down to the picnic table. I was QRV after about 15 minutes set up time at 14:15hrs local. I started calling on 7020KHz and was answered by ZS4SF om Monk in Welkom, We had an good chat although Monk was having some trouble copying me from time to time due to heavy QSB. I would receive a 599 report and then next over, the signal would drop to a zero on his scale. He even tried swapping radios to see if an improvement could be obtained. I had no trouble copying his QRP and QRO signal fb. The propagation conditions definitely were down since I only copied the ZS6LP antenna test signal at 549. Grid square KG33xu.
At 14:00 hrs local I checked into the ZS0AWA net run this week by ZS6AJY om Barrie. Also on the net was ZS6AZP Dave from Irene. I copied Dave's QRP signal FB and I look forward to working Dave and his QRP signal in the future.

Lessons learnt this trip:

1. Take a cloth to clean the picnic table
2. Take some timing measurements for set-up time as a measure of improvements in technique
3. Write in detail what the steps are for a fast and smooth field deployment

Cedar Lakes ZS0AWA net

I took a one kilometre walk down to the upper lake here in the Cedar Lakes property. A beautiful afternoon. Unfortunately kids were sitting at the picnic table I had earlier planned to use. I found a nearby tree and deployed the EFHW into a tree about 3 meters high. I then strung the wire over a branch and down to a spot at the bottom of the tree. Total deployment time was about 10 minutes.
The net was run by Andy ZS6ADY. QRV at 14:00hrs local. Also checked in was ZS6AJY Om Barrie. Barrie had problems copying me due to QSB. Both gave me a 559 signal report. My Antenna was working but not great. I enjoyed the net and ragchew with Andy lasting for about an hour. I also heard ZS1TTJ in CT and ZS3AOR slightly up the band. Their signals were down.
This trip I was able to carry all my gear in the K2 carrying case. But still room for improvement for sure.
Observations this trip:

1. Be prepared to deploy in a place where you had not planned to. Take a towel to sit on.
2. Even with the wire only 3 meters up I was still able to QSO in the net albeit with QSB

Upper lake deployment site @ Cedar Lakes, Fourways 

Cedar Lakes Gauteng end-fed-half-wave (efhw)

At 13:30 local, I walked out from our apartment a distance of about 500 metres to the upper corner of our Cedar Lakes gated community. There I located a nice tree to sit under which was right under the electric fence. Well lets see what I can hear! My Inventory for this trip consisted of the following:

1. Small backpack
2. K2 with internal battery, carried in purpose built case
3. mini-Palm paddles
4. 7.020Khz (20.32m) long 0.5mm pvc covered wire
5. EFHW antenna tuner
6. Coax connector from K2 to tuner
7. Antenna launcher consisting of a 10m long cord tied to a yogurt bottle filled with sand.
8. Leatherman
9. Earplugs
10. Electrical tape
11. Waterbottle
12. Notebook and pen
13. Hat (on my head)

Using my sand filled yogurt bottle antenna launcher, I was able to get my EFHW up into the tree about 8 metres after two throws. I then strung the wire across to a branch in my shade tree up about 2.5 metres and routed it down to the tuner which was sitting on the ground near the radio. After setting up the K2 and bypassing the internal ATU I was able to tune the wire to an SWR of 1:1 with ease using the efhw little tuner and about 400mW. Based on the marked spot on the tuner dial I could see that the system was operating correctly and there was no noticeable coupling to surrounding objects. I then touched the K2 chassis and noted no change in SWR. I figured that a counterpoise (other than the chassis and metre long connecting cable) was unnecessary. This antenna loves it when the rig is on the ground. I was QRV after a 15 minute set up time and turned the power up to 5 watts. I immediately heard ZS4SFon 7020KHz. I called om Monk in Welkom FS and had a wonderful 40 minute rag chew with him. We QSY'd down to 7015KHz due to a net starting up at 14:00hrs. He gave me a solid 599 report and he was 599+20dB. I was absolutely amazed at how good this efhw worked. I could hear the electric fence but was able to eliminate the QRM completely by using my noise blanker on setting 2. The wx was looking threatening so I packed up after making a few CQ's with no answer and walked the 500m back to the apartment. I reckoned this trip was a great success and I look forward to more QSO's with Monk in the future. It sure was nice to do a bit of qrp/field/cw on a lazy saturday afternoon!

Improvement opportunities:

Cerdar Lakes, Fourways, behind our apartment

1. I need a cw rig for 40m with built-in batteries. 2 watts. Rockbound on 7020khz.
2. Built in LED type swr meter in the tuner altoids tin.
3. The efhw wire can be much smaller gauge
4. Use a fishing weight as the launcher
5. Get a miniature notebook
6. Use smaller coax for the feeder line.
7. Try to tune the EFHW using the built in K2 tuner (however I will be surprised if it works since the EFHW exhibits an end impedance of about 5kohms??
8. A small towel to sit on to prevent 'ants in my pants!' 

40m EFHW + Antenna launcher. Too bulky!

EFHW tuner showing expected tune mark on 40meters

EFHW tuner. A parallel tuned circuit with 5K to 50 ohm transformer