Extreme Rapid Deployment Operation 

Revision 1

Herewith is a description of my requirements for an Extreme Rapid Deployment Field Operation.

You will observe that this is highly optimized to perform one type of operation only.

1. Rapidly deploy in a park after a short walk during the daytime. Target under 4 minutes deployment time.
2. Ultra Ultra simplicity.
3. Make at least one QSO within an area the size of South Africa on CW, 7020Khz (in SA) or 7030Khz in the USA during one hour, NVIS operation.
4. Utilize a very simple direct conversion receiver with minimum components and moderate sensitivity and selectivity of 1.2Khz or even greater will be acceptable. To be quantified.
5. Utilize a very simple CW transmitter coupled to an EFHW coupler and able to transmit 5watts, 500milliwatts or 50milliwatts output power. Measure SWR exceeding 1.5:1.
6. Fully understand every voltage, resistor, capacitor, transistor in the circuit and the performance of the EFHW antenna. In other words 100% homebrew.
7. Carry 8 separate items in a small backpack.
1. A rugged lightweight enclosure consisting of all homebrew circuitry. TX,RX,SWR,ATT,EFHW Coupler, 12V BATT. I don't know the enclosure size yet.
2. Earplugs
3. Handkey (extreme lightweight using a microswitch).
4. EFHW 66foot 18awg wire with plug on one end.
5. 30 foot slippery cord with fishing weight on one end. Launch 15ft max into a tree.
6. Miniature notebook and pen
7. Small bottle water
8. Leatherman
8. Obtain a signal report at 5Watts, 500mWatts and 50mWatts
9. Give an accurate signal report.
10. Do a bit of ragchew
11. Confirmation that SWR is less than 1.5:1 using simple LED indicator.
12. Battery capacity for one hour operation at 5 watts 25% duty cycle. (this is an interesting part). This is 100mAHr capacity. 

The battery size and type needs some experimentation. I have used fancy technology LiPo's in the past. However they are a pain to charge etc and are expensive. So I reckon 9 AAA type batteries would be a good place to start. Will do some research here. 

In every case in my experience here in Joburg I have found a tree with easy deployment to 15foot. Then I have found another tree to sit under, about 50feet away with an inverted L type config. The efhw works excellently. I received a 509 report from Pilanesberg over the weekend from a station in Namaqualand Springbok using 2 watts.  ZS6JBJ gave me a 559 report from Witbank using 200milliwatts on my K2. 

My K2 is a joke for this operation. Talk about overkill!

I now am gathering the parts to build the TX/RX and attenuators. More to follow.