Manyane camp at Pilanesberg National Park March 2014

Dung Beetle hard at work!

We had a wonderful weekend at Manyane camp/Pilanesberg national park, as usual. Given the unbelievable rains this past two weeks we were not sure what we would find there.

In the park we were only allowed to drive on the tar roads and one dirt road. We were amazed at the road destruction caused by the rains. There was water flowing everywhere with water flowing in over abundance out of the sodden ground.

From a radio perspective I deployed my usual end-fed half wave up into a tree at about 30ft height. This was a very easy deployment with the launch going smoothly and with only one try. This trip I used my field coupler which is a parallel circuit consisting of 30T on a T50-2 and a poly varicap installed in a altoids tin. I am amazed how well this coupler works. I also took along my ZM2 Z match tuner. In comparative tests with om Monk ZS4SF in Welkom he could not tell the diffference between the couplers. I received excellent reports all weekend for my 5Watt QRP signal with Monk saying that my signal was better by at least 2 s points over my home system which is an 84ft end fed wire. I always receive good signal reports on my EFHW and have full confidence in it.

Using the ZM2 I also tuned up on 20m and 15m. The bands were alive and DX condx were obviously good. The highlight of the weekend was a 5Watt QRP contact with PY2GQT on 40m just at sunrise 04:15UTC on Saturday morning. He gave me a 439 signal report hi.

We saw at least 9 Rhino this trip

Our favorite waterhole Ratlhogo was full to the brim with not an animal in sight

Operating in luxury

Field Trial and other fun at Manyane Pilanesberg NW province

We had tremendous fun this weekend as usual at Manyane campground in the Pilanesberg National Park. I took my homebrew rig (still on a piece of particle board) on it's first field trip. I deployed my EFHW up in a tree about 6 meters. This was not without incident. I managed to get the antenna well enough  over a tree that was a bit close to the operating position. I then tangled the launch rope in another tree in a vain attempt to get the end of the wire up higher. The result was I had to break the wire in order to get it down from the tree. The lesson learnt here is that the knot where the wire joins the rope needs to be smaller so that it can slide through branch forks easier.

I tried to make contact with om Daryl ZS6DLL in Centurion for his first CW QSO but unfortunately conditions were not good and Daryl also had some local QRM to deal with so no QSO was confirmed. I then checked into the AWA net at 2pm which was being run by John ZS6JBJ in Witbank. John gave me a 559 report. Dave ZS6AZP also checked in and gave me a 559 from Centurion area. I also copied Dave 559. John ZS5JON in the Durban area was unable to copy my 1.44watt signal although I could copy him about a 449. Conditions were definitely worse than usual for sure. It is also clear the 1.4 watts is not really enough power for net work.

I was able to enjoy a good QSO with om Monk about an hour before the AWA net and he gave me a 589 with the signal strength increasing. I also QSOd with om Mo ZS5BBW at about 5pm who gave me a 589. I concluded that band condx were unusual and that the band was very long. DX could clearly be heard.

On Sunday morning I was QRV in the rain, having had  a tremendous thunderstorm the night before and a dramatic drop in temperature.  By Sunday morning it was drizzling. I moved the rig onto the verandah with a resultant dog's leg in the antenna wire. I was unable to load the antenna properly. When I touched the rig there was a noticeable effect on the antenna performance. I was also unable to dim the SWR LED completely. I am not sure if this was due to a wet wire or the bent antenna wire. Nevertheless I could clearly hear the ZS0BOT beacon and also DX coming through from W Land.

My first field trial of the rig was a success. The rig performed according to expectation with the semi-break-in keying being a pleasure. I noticed some drift on warm up of the Rx and also some tweaking was needed as the temperature changes in the outdoor environment caused some small changes but entirely manageable.

Manyane Campsite Pilanesberg National Park

We had the usual great time at Manyane this past weekend where we hooked up with our friends Tony and Pat. They have a great camping trailer and we enjoyed  a number of excellent meals and a good social time there. The weather is still quite decent and mild so no problem staying warm.

From a field radio perspective, this was also a good fun learning experience. The sun spot number was reportedly over 200 which I believe is for the first time this cycle (I am not certain about that). The conditions were thus a bit different on 40meters.

I took along my prototype T-200-2 coupler (see pics below) and was able to preform extensive tests with ZS4SF, my friend Monk in Welkom. Path distance would be an  estimated 400-500Kms?  On Saturday morning I deployed both the 31 ft quarterwave counterpoise along the ground and a .05 wavelength 6ft 6 inch counterpoise. My EFHW was higher than usual. The horizontal part was about 45ft long and at a height of about 20ft. The last 20ft sloped down to my operating position. The band was a bit unstable and thus QSB did play a part. The 31ft was receiving very slightly better reports than the 6ft 6inch counterpoise but the results really were very similar. The only difference was the same as I had seen at home and in my previous park deployment and that was a significant difference in bandwidth.

I was very pleased to note that I had no problems loading up the efhw and achieving 1:1 SWR with both counterpoises. No problem at all.

On the Saturday AWA net I received lower signal reports than usual. Mostly 579 and using 5 watts. I don't know why this was? It could be that the antenna was a bit too high for NVIS work? Or the high sunspot number was affecting propagation? A station from CapeTown om Adrian did call into the net and I copied 549. However he was unable to copy me. He was able to copy the Joburg stations but down in the noise.

On Saturday afternoon I erected a 10m dipole at 25ft and was able to copy quite a few DX stations. The band was mainly open to the west and this was the direction that my dipole was deployed. I managed to work one station in India on SSB. I was running about 8 watts. He gave me a satisfying 57 report.

This was also the first time I got to try out my new efhw with the launch cord connected directly. I smoothed over the joint with plastic steel. This makes it easy for the system to slide through the branches. I need to get one more length of the smooth light cord since this slides over the branches so much easier than the thicker cord. The only negative is that if a knot is pulled tight it is much more difficult to undo the knot with the thin cord. I am not sure how to improve this factor.

I also tried out my new modular dipole system. I took only a single center connector/hub. Then I was able to change the dipole lengths accordingly by screwing the different quarterwave lengths into the chocolate strip using my leatherman knife. I found this time consuming and a pain. Give me a doublet any day!

Observations and future actions.

1. The efhw fixed component doubler definitely works in the field without having to tweek it. Next adjust the smaller T-50-2 coupler using fixed components.
2. The quarterwave counterpoise results in greater bandwidth than the 0.05 wavelength counterpoise, however the performance on the air is the same.
3. An efhw deployed higher does not appear to really improve local (NVIS) communications when compared to a 10-15ft high configuration.
4. The new fishing weight launcher is pure pleasure to use and I cannot think of any way to further optimize it. This launcher can be easily tied to any cord using a reef knot at about 3 ft length.
5. The modular dipole system using a single hub to reduce weight is time consuming to erect. Consider using a single wire that is marked for resonance on each band and that is simply rolled onto two shuttles at each end. This system I remember was used in the old days by the Rhodesian Army Signal corp with good success although it is heavy.
6. A coil of wire at the end of a counterpoise does not materially affect the length of the counterpoise. Uncoiling a wire to different lengths and leaving the remainder as a coil at the end makes sense.

I still don't have a good method to sucure the inverted L at the 'knee' point. This trip I tied a knot in the efhw. This came under some strain and I noticed that the pvc insulation had been slightly damaged. How can I solve this problem in future?

My Field gear for this trip. 

Click on pic to enlarge.

Top Left:

1. ~ Quarterwave counterpoise for 40m. 31ft in length.
2. ~ 0.06 wavelength counterpoise for 40m. Approx 6ft 6inches.
3. Four lengths of 20meter slippery cord including the fishing weight antenna launcher.
4. Leatherman.
5. Microphone for the K2.
6. Cable for connecting to the CW Paddles.
7. CW paddles folded away. Palm Mini paddles from Morse Express.
8. Altoids tin variable QRP coupler for EFHW antennas
9. RG58 coax. About 20meters.

Center Left:

1. Short coax connector  for coupler connection.
2. Earplugs.
3. Diploe center hub with 40m dipole connected.
4. Quarterwave wires for 20m, 15m and 10m. Can be attached to the diplole center hub using choc strips.
5. 12V battery cable for backup connection to car battery. (never been needed yet).
6. A bag of different BNC and PL259 type connectors

Bottom Left:

1. Pen.
2. Small notebook.
3. Box with prototype T-200-2 coupler
4. Elecraft K2 full featured Kit Transceiver.
5. K2 custom built carrying case.
6. Small backpack for all the gear in this pic (except the K2)

  

Only in South Africa will you see cooking camp ware like this :)

Tony doing his thing. This is a serious breakfast buddy!

Prototype high power efhw coupler using a T-200-2 Toroid and 115 pf coax capacitor.

Berry, Pat and Tony alongside the camping trailer. Superb!

Pilanesberg National park. Click to enlarge.

Manyane Campground, Pilanesberg game reserve

Berry looking happy :)

On April 30th Berry and I travelled to Manyane for a 2 night visit over the May day holiday. A very pleasant time was spent there. From a radio perspective, I was able to set up a very good EFHW into a tree outside our campsite and about 30ft agl. I then formed an inverted L configuration with the vertical section about 12ft long and connected in the usual way to my tuner. I was QRV at about 10:00 local and received a 599/QSB report from ZS4SF in Welkom. I could tell that the antenna was working particularly fb. I ran 2watts. After that QSO with Monk I called CQ for about 10 minutes with no takers. I then tuned up to 7070Khz and was able to enjoy a number of QSO's on SSB and running 5 watts. It is clear that making contact on Phone here in SA is a lot easier than CW. On Phone I chatted to ZS6JSE, John in Carolina 55/56, ZS6BTY, Vince in Pretoria 58/59. Vince was operating QRP 5 watts. Some QSB. He was using an extended double Zepp for 40m.I then talked to ZS6GQ in Alberton, Sid who was running 100W into an inverted Vee, 56+QSB.

Later in the afternoon at 13:12 local, I worked ZS3AOR, Pieter in Springbok Namaqualand on 7020Khz CW. I was amazed that he copied me. My signal report was 339. Unfortunately I did not copy his antenna or power. I then had an excellent QSO with John ZS6JBJ in Witbank . This was fun. John gave me a 599+20db report on my 2 watt signal. I then reduced my power to 1Watt and received a 599 report. At 500mW he reported 579 and at 200mW he reported 559 with QSB. This was proof that my EFHW was working exceptionally well and that the condx at this time were favorable. Towards the end of the QSO I could hear the band going long and DX music and pirate stations were heard. Overall I was very pleased with the result.

Observations:

1. If I can QSO Namaqualand on 2 watts in mid afternoon then my field setup has day communications Nationwide.
2. 200milliwatts is probably all that is needed for essential communications around Gauteng, NW province and Mapumulanga provinces.

'Room with a view'

The beloved Hornbill

South African Moonshine!