This site is dedicated to my pursuits in Amateur Radio, Cooking, Travel, Fishing, Firearms, National Parks, Engineering and Coding, with the occasional explosion thrown in. It's a bit all over the place, but enjoy the stories.
2 weeks ago I was told I needed to fly to Milwaukee for <insert corporate speak here> to do <insert more corporate stuff here>. My travel plans and work schedule would allow for some downtime to go outside and explore the area, and while there are a few Satellite operators in the area, there were a few grids that needed some rover love too. Plus it was a part of the country I'd never been to before with the arrow, and I'm always looking to expand my VUCC/R portfolio. A couple things I was thinking about before though.. I've been toying with a home based automated station since the trip to CM93. It's still got a lot of work to go, but it's more or less passable.. kinda... most of the time. Where I was staying for work was only about 90 minutes south of EN65, which is a grid that I (and quite a few others) needed. So how to go operate /P from that grid, with my equipment, and still have equipment at home running my remote station. Also since I would be flying, space would be at a premium and small multi-use equipment would be the order of the day. Also some power (to control the pileups) and all mode capability were a must. What to do..
The Home Station. It mostly Works.
Well, first thing first - the 821 has to stay at home. Too big, plus it runs the remote station. So that leaves with with the 857 as my only other all mode rig. I've got a Funcube Dongle Pro+ I've used on occasion, but all the stuff to hook up to laptop and run power inverters in the car and a table to put the equipment is such is a pain, and not conducive to a guerrilla portable operation like I was needing to conduct. So after much soul searching (and a couple beers) I settled on the 857 solo. This was not an easy decision to make. In the 3ish years I've been a Satellite operator, I have never run half duplex. Even my very first contact on SO-50 I was full duplex on. I learned that full duplex was the way to be, and the semi-duplexers were lids that just jammed up the birds talking over others. Semi-Duplex operation is the devil and should be shunned. Well, now here I was getting ready to tip toe onto the dark side's playing field. Gee whiz, how things change.
First the build... how to make a mobile rig like the 857 portable. The most obvious solution is to hang it around your neck like the 817, but finding a way to attach it to myself would require some construction. After getting a tip from Matt, KK4FEM, he said that metal rulers ($2 a piece at Harbor freight) make great side mounts for the 857. After grabbing the rulers, finding the correct M6-4 screws, some hole punching and drilling, and liberating and old strap from a backpack, we were in business with the radio. Next I hacked up some small 5 ft RG8X jumpers (cause I've got a ton of that coax laying around) crimped on proper connectors to work with a Comet 4160 Diplexer I had, put my small 8400mah Zippy battery in the pocket of my hoody, connected the mess of cables together and to my spare arrow, and I became a fully contained pedestrian mobile ground station.
Building Tools, out of Tools
So, now to test. From what I understand the standard 'rule' for operating half duplex on FO29 is to find a quiet 10khz chunk of transponder or so AWAY from the center - In this case I went to 435.870 and scanned up and down 10khz to make sure it was clear. I then fixed my TX at 145.930 - figuring I'd come out at 870 +/- doppler. I then took an educated guess (as the bird was about 10° above the horizon) on a 60° TCA pass, figuring I should hear people responding to me about .878 or so. I also made sure to give a fairly long call and specifically say I was half duplex in my CQ call, asking for people to give me a long call in their reply, cause it would take me a second to tune them in. Right away I picked up KD8CAO, who did just what I had requested, giving me a nice long phonetic response allowing me to tune him in easily. We had a quick chat, with my TX remaining fixed on .930 and my doppler slowly dropping in frequency as the bird's relative speed to me changed. I picked up W5PFG and a few more, and called it a successful test. Alright, so this just might work afterall. I packed everything up, loaded up my suitcases, and went on with my week.
Fast forward a couple days and I'm on site in Milwaukee. I find myself on the EN63/53 with my setup. SO-50 is coming, I work the pass, hand out some grids. Not too bad. SO-50 is probably the easiest, and simultaneously the hardest of the birds to work half duplex, in my opinion. In theory you just fix your TX at 145.850, listen on the downlink, everyone is one spot. Piece of cake, right? Well, not so much.. Everyone and their dog is on SO-50 these days, and like any single channel repeater, everyone is talking over each other.. so without full duplex operation, you don't know if you're actually making it in. This is, obviously, problematic.. but it's not the end of the world. If you're in a rare spot, you can let some others do some work for you. Since they're wanting to talk to YOU - they'll keep at it until you answer them. This makes it a bit easier as the one being chased, versus the one doing the chasing. Also, be prepared to answer people a few times if they don't seem to 'hear' you when you respond, there's a good chance you're getting stepped on. Just the way of the world.
It's cold... and dark.. and cold.
So SO-50 was working pretty well. The next night I tried an AO-85.. this is a little trickier, since you have to adjust the uplink instead of the downlink. Luckily I've worked it enough that I had a pretty good idea of what the doppler should look like, and managed to make a handful of contacts. AO-85 is also a much less busy bird than SO-50 is, and the operators that frequent it tend to have better skill. So, having a handful of passes under my belt, I upped my game a bit.
Peter, 2E0SQL is an AMSAT friend, and at the time was hunting his 100th grid for his VUCC. EN63 (where I was staying) would have been a new one for him. If you notice the callsign though, you know he's in the UK, and transatlantic passes are not exactly a piece of cake, let alone using something other than my 821, and a short arrow, and RG8X, and me being half-duplex. It would be a challenge to say the least, but that doesn't mean we weren't going to give it a shot anyway. So we found a pass that worked, decided on a frequency I would call CQ on, and then he would hunt me down and we'd try to make the contact. Luckily my hotel room was on the 3rd floor, and I had a balcony, and it was facing the proper direction for the bird. So even with alot of factors stacked against us, we had the Location factor on our side. All the stars aligned, and right at my AOS Saturday morning I started calling CQ and Peter found me and we had a very quick QSO at 6200km, with all the above caveats. Not too shabby. Even better, I found MI6GTY calling CQ a few khz below us, and by dumb luck managed to adjust my uplink close enough he was able to find me. So on a 3.2° TCA FO29 pass, with sub-optimal gear managed 2 transatlantic QSOs while still in my pajamas, on the balcony of my hotel room. That was pretty cool, I have to say.
Mountain or Building.. Still all about the Location.
I could keep going on for a while talking about this, but I drove around, made some more contacts, finished up my project, and came home. To tell you the specifics of everything would take multiple more entries, and I don't have that kind of time. I do want to mention specifically though meeting up with David, WN9Q who lives a bit north of where I was doing my work. I had some downtime between passes Saturday afternoon, and I stopped by to meet him for a bit while he was helping at a community Ice Rink. We attempted the world first Zamboni Mobile QSO, but didn't have much luck, being inside a building and all.. We chatted, swapped stories, and played around on the ice with heavy equipment and Arrows... all in all a great afternoon. David is a super cool guy, and it was good to meet him in the frozen north. 73 my friend.
Yes, I was twisting for polarity.
David, WN9Q and Dave, KG5CCI
I guess the point about all this I'm trying to make is, half duplex should not be your go-to method for working the birds. It felt really really weird skipping most of the mode B passes, and not hearing my own voice to know I was getting in and on frequency. I would not recommend anyone use semi-duplex for chasing folks either... unless you're the DX, no one is going to give you the slow calls that are required to switch around and make the QSO. Satellites are a fast and furious business, and you gotta be on the ball to be a good chaser. All this said, if you ARE the DX - and you know people are going to be looking for you, and you're in a situation, like I was, where you're strapped for space, time, and resources, and the only other alternative is simply not having a radio at all... semi-duplex will get the job done. Stick primarily to the mode J birds, fix your transmit, never key up unless you're hearing things first, let the chasers come to you, keeps things simple, and practice. Like every aspect of this hobby, there are lots of ways to get that contact made. Don't let you preconceived notions of how to do things hold you back. Embrace the new and the different. You might just surprise yourself. I know I sure did.
Illinois State Beach on Lake Michigan. Looks nice, still cold.
I always complain about being busy, but it's no joke the past month or so. Work stuff is increasing at a high pace, and my grad school work is entering it's final sprint. I did however manage an interesting, fun and productive few days on the radio.
First, FO29 is fast approaching apogee on ascending passes. When it does this, Europe gets just ever so slightly in range of me here in Arkansas, and you can really stretch the footprint. A few months back I made a great contact with Jerome, F4DXV on FO29 from his portable location in JN05ha where he has a perfect horizon view. I was on Shinall mountain, here in EM34st (my normal low elevation spot) and we made a great contact at 7587km - 13km shy of the record I set with F4CQA a couple years back. Well, we both knew more was possible, it was just a matter of finding the right spot and right time. Fast forward a few months to February 26th.. FO29 wasn't quite at apogee, but she was close, and a Sunday morning was the perfect time for both of us to give it a shot. Jerome headed to his portable location in JN05ha, and I headed up the road to Mt. Nebo in EM35IF. Even though it was almost a 90 mile drive for me, it was the perfect high altitude location, and it was 20km further in great circle distance, making it a good candidate for a new record shot. We both got on location, setup our cameras, and waited for the bird... which of course showed up on time and quickly exchanged our grid codes and reports, and voila - a new record was in the book.
I've got some video, but I just haven't had time to put it all together yet. For now, Here's the Audio Recording that Wyatt, AC0RA managed to capture of both of us, and some pictures:
Dave, KG5CCI, EM35IF Mt. Nebo Arkansas 2/26/2017 1317z
Jerome, F4DXV, JN05HA, near Mussidan, France 2/26/2017 1317z
Thanks to Jerome for suggesting the idea and congratulations my friend on a WORLD RECORD qso at 7608km. Also thanks to Wyatt, AC0RA, for sitting in the middle and grabbing a nice recording for us.
On a nowhere near as epic, but still cool note - had some good mail this week:
Eugene UX0FY, who is Yuri UT1FG's QSL manager sent me a list of grids that I've worked the captain in the past couple of years. I was especially keen to get my hands on CM79 - which is where I worked Yuri during his cruise up the west coast a few years ago, and is one of the most difficult of the Magic 488 to work. Yuri and Eugene are both sort of tough to get in touch with outside of the radio, so hopefully if they (or you, and you know them) are reading this, a huge thanks to you guys from sick radio nerds like me. Living vicariously thru the satellites to the DX on the other end is what this hobby so damn interested. Best 73s, and here's to many more.
With this new grid infusions, it brings my grid total to 609 confirmed.. if I ever get around to taking my cards to a checker, that will put me in the top 20 grid chasers of all time. Pretty crazy for a guy with an arrow and only a couple years under his belt eh? Then again, I'm still not even to 50% of what the top 5 have, so there's a long ways to go.
I post this video with only the following context: Gabe, NJ7H is on a rare grid road-trip thru the Northwest part of Canada. He stopped on the DO22/DO32 Line to do two passes; A Ukube-1 pass to my west, and a single SO50 to my northeast. I drove to the mountain to have the best chance at a QSO, and it managed to pay off as I picked him up quickly on Ukube-1.
Instead of tearing down and going back to the office though, I disconnected all the TX portions of my rig, and setup to record video only because I wanted to demonstrate how polarity works with a perfect horizon, and because I thought it would be good to show a solid rover like Gabe in action.
Well, I got some video alright, and it showed way more than what I had bargained for. I present to you the 1/23/2017 2012z SO-50 pass from my location in EM34.
So.. Here's the play by play:
(Waiting for AOS)
(Start to hear the modulation of the bird)
(Someone keys down)
NJ7H Announces himself.
(I start playing with Polarity, showing how it MATTERS)
KB1PVH Calls NJ7H/VE6 - Completes QSO.
WC7V Calls NJ7H/VE6 - Completes QSO.
N8HM Calls NJ7H/VE6 - Completes QSO.
KB1RVT Calls NJ7H/VE6 - Completes QSO.
NX9B Calls, N4UFO calls at the same time, smashes NX9B
NJ7H/VE6 Starts to Answer N9XB - But WA4NVM comes in and smashes NJ7H's QSL..
NJ7H/VE6 Answers WA4NVM, gives grids.
K8IPV comes in an announces himself after a lull.
NU4FO calls NJ7H/VE6 again.
WA4NVM calls NJ7H/VE6 again.
Someone says "Hey already got you rick" which is quickly followed by NX9B giving his call, again.
WA4NVM announces himself, again, probably trying to get NJ7H/VE6.
N4UFO Clearly says "Hey answered you rick" and then gives his own callsign, again.
NJ7H/VE6 answers N4UFO gives grid. N4UFO quickly gives 73s - Completes QSO.
KC1EXK calls NJ7H/VE6 - Completes QSO.
N9IP calls NJ7H/VE6 - NJ7H/VE6 answers, but is stepped on by someone announcing themselves in EN80, like K8IPV.
NX9B announces himself, again. NJ7H/VE6 QSLs him, again.
WA4NVM calls NJ7H/VE6, again. Gabe answers him, again. WA4NVM finally QSLs him.
NX9B cals NJ7H/VE6, again.
K8IPV calls NX9B.
N9XB calls NJ7H/VE6, yet again.
NJ7H/VE6 QSLs NX9B, for a THIRD time.
W4FS calls NJ7H/VE6, but is stepped on by N9IP.
W4FS calls NJ7H/VE6 again.
KK4FEM calls NJ7H/VE6.
Someone announces "He has half a degree"
W4FS calls NJ7H/VE6 again.
Someone asks "What were the grids?" "Delta Oscar 22 and 32" is answered. "Thanks"
N9IP calls NJ7H again.
"He's out of the footprint, minus 1 1/2 degrees"
"Delta Oscar 32 Again?"
"Delta Oscar 22, Delta Oscar 32"
NM3B answers "QSL, NM3B FN01, your call again?"
(I bust out laughing in the background)
"They were asking about a station that's out of footprint Wayne"
"If Everyone would listen we'd be alot more efficient here. Especially in such a narrow window"
End of the interesting stuff.
Analysis:
Wow.
I honestly think most of this goes into the category of what a friend of mine referred to as 'general liddery'. The commentary, post footprint talk, and just randomly announcing yourself is kinda silly, and definitely requires better situational awareness, but I don't believe there was any malice intended. Get better situationally aware, get better ears, just try harder. It happens though, we all make mistakes. I screwed up myself tonight on a few occasions... No Harm, No Foul..
....Except where there is harm intended.
<This is going to offend some people. Stop reading now if you're a precious snowflake>
Two operators in particular, N9XB and WA4NVM broke the cardinal rule of Satellite operating. Never transmit if you can't hear. Both of these operators have been at this a long time. They have a ton of grids (more than me) - They have automated stations, and they know the score. NJ7H had to answer WA4NVM twice, and had to answer NX9B 3 times before they finally used their 'release to listen' buttons and heard their QSL.
I try real hard to cut people slack, but these two deserve no slack at all. Their activity is bordering on malicious interference... and this is not the first time, or even the second time. If you're reading this, and you operate Satellites (two things that are very likely) then you've probably heard these two at it - and you know quite well they're repeat offenders.
Do me, yourself, and this entire community a favor. Tell them to piss off. Operating practices like these are a pox on amateur radio satellites. We as operators have to call out our own when they act like this.
As I fully expected, my post about Logging Satellite Contacts to LOTW generated a fair number of questions and got some interest. In particular, how I log EVERYTHING into the different logging systems came up a couple times. So strap in, here we go...
As said before, I operate primarily Satellites, with some portable terrestrial mixed in, and I also activate Summits on the Air. I use LOTW as my primary QSL path, and I use the QRZ logbook for an online logbook database. LOTW and QRZ both accept ADIF uploads, though they are slightly different in how they do it. I also have to upload my SOTA activations to the SOTA database to get credit there. What this comes out too is there are 5 different types of files I typically have to generate if I've had an all band SOTA activation weekend. That's a ton of different data to work with, but it's doable. I'm also a spreadsheet fiend - in my day job tons and tons of data is moved about via spreadsheets, and they lend themselves to script friendly formats (like CSV - comma separated value) well. So the idea I had was take a spreadsheet, be able to toss in the minimal amount of information required about my contacts, and then have a script generate everything based on that input. Challenging, but not impossible.
So, here's how it works, I've got 3 main files that do the work. The first is the Logger Spreadsheet. Looks something like this:
As you can see, there's a little bit of everything going on here. In places where you make a satellite contact, just mark which Satellite it was. The script will fill the mode/frequency and special propagation values for LOTW and QRZ. Where you make a SOTA activation, it will automatically create a SOTA file as well for upload to the database. Anything that isn't a Sat contact, will be considered an 'HF' contact (even if it's something like a contact over 2 meter simplex) and a different file will be made for QRZ/LOTW upload there. Note: You have to either put in a bird name, or fill out the frequencies... if you do both - the script will overwrite your submitted frequency values, and if you do neither the script will error out. If you put in a bird name the script doesn't recognize (more on that in a second) it will also error out. If in doubt, look at the examples in the picture above, which is also the sample file that I included with the download.
So, where does the bird data come from? Glad you asked! There's a special Text file that contains all that in (drumroll please) CSV formatted reference file name appropriate sat-data.txt. It looks something like this:
Every bird that I might make a QSO on, I keep listed in this file. The breakdown should be easy enough to understand, but in case it isn't.. Here's what each field means.
Cool? Good. When new birds got chucked into orbit, instead of having to piss with the entire script, just add a new line entry here and you're good to go. Try and make sure the name is in the same format as LOTW accepts though, cause if it isn't exactly right, it will error out when you try to get TQSL to upload it, which is something that has caught me before.
The final file in the bundle is the Perl Script itself. There's really nothing here you need to mess with.. just make sure it's in the same directory (or folder) as your sat-data.txt and your "Logger-Spreadsheet.csv" and you're good to go. One caveat to the "nothing to mess with rule" is that if you want to be fancy and set your own home grid, or change the names of some of the variables, at the very top of the script you can do just that. Fire up your favorite text editor, and the open 25 or so lines of the perl script look like this:
Home Grid, Input Spreadsheet Name, and Sat Data file name are basically the only variable's that should really matter. Just keep em the way you want, and you're good to go. Don't mess with any of the code below the "DON'T MESS WITH ANY OF THE CODE BELOW THIS" banner. That is unless you want to. It's open source. Have at it.
Once the script is ran, in the directory where you launched it you'll get any number of 5 different files. They're named pretty self-explanatory, but for verbosity I'll cover em all.
satqrzimport.adi = Upload this to QRZ for you Satellite Contacts
satlotwimport.adi = Upload This to LOTW for your Satellite Contacts
hfqrzimport.adi = Upload this to QRZ for HF
hflotwimport.adi = Upload this to LOTW for HF
sotaimport.csv = Upload this to the SOTA database
Each time you run the script it will delete these files (if they're in the directory where it's being run) and build them from scratch, if they are needed. You can keep uploading the same filenames over and over again to all the respective systems (LOTW, QRZ, SOTA) and they don't care.. it's all about what have you done lately with them.
So still Interested? Download the files Here and make your logging life lots simpler.
Anything else that might come up, hit me up on Twitter @KG5CCI.
So I hit another milestone this morning - I finally got to 100 Oscar Entities confirmed, which enabled me to apply for the AMSAT Oscar Century Award. In the process I also qualified for the 2 lower awards for 20 and 60 contacts, I just hadn't bothered with those up until now..
Oscar Satellite Communications Achievement Award The Oscar Satellite Communications Achievement Award is for working 20 contacts on any satellite. A contact is defined as one with a station in your state or another state, DXCC country or Canadian call area.
Oscar Sexagesimal Award
This is the same as the Oscar Satellite Communications Achievement Award but is given for 60 satellite contacts. All the qualifications and costs are the same. Oscar Century Award
This award is the same as the Oscar Satellite Communications Achievement Award but is given for the first 100 satellite contacts. Qualifications and costs are the same.
I'm pretty jazzed, because this is realistically the most prestigious award I can get on the Satellites with the current fleet operating the way it is. With a theoretical max distance of 8000km on AO-7, and nothing any higher, there are finite number of countries in range of me here in Arkansas, making the ARRL DXCC award next to impossible to get. Hopefully in the future we'll have some birds at a higher altitude making more DX contacts possible, For now though, I'm really happy.
For some fun stats, Doug, N6UA gave me the most entities - at 4. Nebraska, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. 2nd was a tie between Patrick, WD9EWK who got me Delaware, Nevada and Arizona, and Carl, KA4H, who got me Virginia, West Virginia, and Ontario.
For the Type of Contacts I worked all 50 US States, 12 Canadian Call Areas, and 38 DX entities. Of the 38 DX entities, 13 were contacts made by portable operators not native to that entity, and 2 were made by the same portable operator (Tor, DJ8MS operating from /LA and /OZ) and 11 contacts were made in excess of 7000km.
I was able to confirm 80% of my contacts using LOTW - and the rest were confirmed via direct mail card. Also every single contact was made using portable handheld equipment on my end, and completed using FM Voice or SSB Voice (No CW). I've never operated using a tower or an automated rotor, and the maximum power I've ever used is 40W. I think it's a great testament to what you can do on the Satellites when you challenge the accepted norms, and start thinking outside the box.
From here, the focus is back on grids.. currently sitting at 474 confirmed with 525 total worked. The chase never ends.
Getting your logs into Logbook of the World can be tricky. There's several fields that are different from HF contacts, and of course the old idea of transmitting on a different frequency than you receive can be hard to grasp sometimes. Never fear however, there is always the chance for better living thru technology.
I present to everyone, a stripped down version of the 'automatic logger' that I use, written in Perl. First thing to remember, I am an engineer, I'm not a coder.. that said I've realized that coding helps me do my day to day work better, faster and easier, so sometimes I do code. I like Perl cause it's very much an engineer's language.. it's coarse, gruff, to the point, and while somewhat less than elegant, it gets the job done. So consider this a 'Beta' version.. It's a variation of what I use, and I've tested it pretty thoroughly, but you might still introduce something I wasn't prepared for.
The script is pretty simple, it takes a CSV file (which you can make up in notepad, or alternatively and a bit easier excel) and converts it into the proper ADIF file for instant upload to LOTW via TQSL. The fields are as follows:
Your-Call, TheirCall, Date, Zulu Time, Bird, My Grid, Their Grid
In an excel sheet it looks like this:
In a generic text .csv the same files looks like this:
Doesn't really matter, just get those fields in there.
Leave the first line alone - the script will pop it out of there. It's pre-configured to grab 'sat-logger.csv' as the file, but you can change that too if you want, also the output will write to satlotwupload.adi by default, but like everything that's customization too.
If you're a Linux user like me - you should be able to handle it from there. If you're a Windows User I highly recommend Strawberry Perl for making .pl files extensible, or I may make it into a .exe one of these days too (watch this space).
Standard Code disclaimers here - Offered in Open source, no warranties, guarantees, or support offered - use it if you like, if not, that's cool too.
This is Part 2 of the Santa Rosa Satellite Expedition. I've been swamped with work the past month, so I'm a bit behind. I'll try and get Part 3 done over the holidays.
As discussed in Part 1, you're pretty much on your own on Santa Rosa Island. As Amateur Radio operators, we're used to our technology being functional 'when all else fails' - but this is different. Modern communications systems haven't failed, they simply don't exist. There is no electricity, so things like power supplies and amplifiers aren't an option. You've got to bring your means of communication with you, and your own means and powering that equipment.
First thing to mention, due to its pervasiveness in our society, is that there are no cell phone towers anywhere close to Santa Rosa. I turned on APRSDroid as we left the harbor just to see how long we could get pings from the Cell phone.. we never even made it to the closest of the Islands, let alone Santa Rosa.
Now, interestingly enough on Saturday afternoon while on Black Mountain, I was sporadically getting signal. I have no idea which towers it was coming from, but it was there. Also Sunday morning down next to the ocean (in the middle of the fog) I was able to grab a screenshot of that 1 precious bar of 4G LTE signal while in CM93XX. So long story short, Cell Phones *might* work.. sometimes.. maybe.. for a little bit.. but don't rely on them.
But hey, remember, we're hams right? Who needs cellular signal! Just talk on a repeater, right? This is Southern California after all, and the repeater network is extensive. Heck just next door on Santa Cruz Island, Diablo Peak has a 220mhz repeater on it, you can basically see it from CM93 with the naked eye. We had 7 repeaters on our list for communication for the trip, as follows:
Channel Island Harbor Repeater: 445.760- PL 141.3 Diablo Peak Santa Cruz Island: 223.920/222.320 PL 131.8 La Vigia Hill: 146.790/146.190 PL 131.8 Santa Ynez Peak: 145.180/144.580 PL 131.8 Santa Ynez Peak: 224.120/222.520 PL 181.8 Santa Catalina: 147.090/147.690 No PL Santa Catalina: 224.420/222.820 PL 110.9
Diablo Peak was obviously outstanding. We could get into that repeater anywhere on Santa Cruz (including the campground) using an HT at minimum power and a rubber duck. The only real problem we found on it was *no one* was ever on it. We constantly monitored it thru the weekend and I don't believe we ever heard another soul. A shame too, cause it sounded great. The other SBARC repeater on La Vigia Hill and Santa Ynez Peak worked great on our HTs from basically everywhere OTHER than the campground. As mentioned in Part 1, the campground was located in 'Water Canyon' and the 200' - 300' walls did a number on signal any direction other than precisely east. A 500 yard walk out of the canyon though, and you were easy copy full quieting on an HT with minimum power. The Channel Island Harbor Repeater back in Ventura was iffy. Sometimes we could get into it with a duck an 5W, sometimes we needed to use 10 Elements and 20W to get into it, and then were scratchy. The direct line of sight back to Ventura went over Santa Cruz Island, with it's 2000' mountains. I think this probably gave us the fits, and when it WAS working on the HT, I think propagation was assisting us. Speaking of propagation, that brings us to Santa Catalina. Distance from Santa Rosa to Santa Catalina is right at 100 miles. It's all over open ocean, but that's still about pushing the limits of what you can do with 5W, FM, and a rubber duck. Sometimes we could get into the Catalina repeater no issues with an HT, sometimes we couldn't.. and the differences were stark, it either worked, or it didn't. That said from the top of Black Mountain we were consistently able to get into the Catalina repeater using a beam and 10W for comfortable copy though. The Catalina club had also just installed a brand new 6m repeater on the Island as well, like the week before we got there. We were able to get full quiet copying using a dipole and 5W on that. It was a welcome change to the typical 2m/70cm repeater we're used too in the center of the country.
We did most of our simplex operating Saturday afternoon from the top of Black Mountain. Wyatt was trying some 10GHz stuff for the contest, with a small horn and 250mw. He actually heard a bunch of people pretty well, but had trouble being heard running such little power at such distance with low (relative for 10GHz) gain. It was still a helluva effort though, and was cool to watch. 2 meter and 70cm was a hoot. We made quite a few 50-75 mile contacts on each, and ran the VHF/UHF bands with a couple of operators. We actually even worked 1 DX contact on 6 Meters, a Mexican Ham 200+ miles away in Baja, with a dipole and 5W on the 817. That was pretty cool for having NO E-Skip propagation going on. Contact with fellow Satellite Operator KG6FIY on 146.520 when he was using his HT in Los Angeles was also pretty fun. Talking to someone in one of the most densely populated areas in the country, from a desert island mountain top is the very epitome of so close, but so far away that defined this trip.
We talked to quite a few people driving around in the traffic that controls life in Southern California just by calling CQ. They were all really surprised and intrigued to hear about what we were up too. For hauling all of our equipment on our backs to the top of a mountain, and using only what the batteries could put out, I was pleasantly surprised with our terrestrial simplex operations. I think a serious expedition focused on Terrestrial with prior planning or on a contest weekend could rack up some serious contacts.
We made probably 100 HF contacts as well, during a few brief sprints of operating. The Band conditions were really quite awful, and so it was a challenge most of the time when we had planned to operate, but we still did OK. 20M was OK during the day, and we made a few QSOs with European stations, and did alright with the rest of the US on 40m and 20m. I think if you really went out with a dedicated plan to do HF IOTA/SOTA/NPOTA you could do great - but that's just not really our thing, and was more for fun than anything else.
That said, the reason we were there, was Satellites. We worked people on 12 passes and made 120 total QSOs. 91 unique stations were in the log. We operated from a few different places on the Island, and all were OK since we were primarily concerned with facing east. At the mouth of Water Canyon there was a picnic table that worked well to set the gear on. Typically one of us would log, and the other would work the pass. We also operated one evening from the CM93/CM94 line, as it was only a 3/4 mi walk from the campground, and we actually had a ham down in San Diego who was interested in working us on 6M from CM94. We did Satellites on the side of Black Mountain on the hike up and back, and from the top during our simplex afternoon.
There were no real surprises on the Satellites, other than the great disappointment we had at an afternoon FO29 pass where the CW lids were pounding the bird so hard that our little 5W SSB signal was barely being heard. There were a lot of people that were putting all their marbles on that pass to work us, and couldn't find our signal in the passband due to the selfishness of others. A special thanks to those jerks who insist on Satellite QRO CW because you fail as operators any other way. I hope your transmitters fry and you give up the hobby.
Most passes we used Wyatt's FT817x2 (one to TX the other to RX) and a standard arrow. We also had my Alaskan Arrow for a few of the really low elevation passes, and we used my 857 on the SO-50 passes when more power was a necessity to burn thru the lids. For power, a single 8.4AH Zippy LiFePo4 battery would run both rigs during a pass, and worked just outstanding. From an equipment perspective, those little Batteries are one of the few things in my kit I really don't see any room for improvement on... they just work.
With the dual 817s, most passes were done with only 5W of transmit power. During a typical pass we would barely use 1/2AH of total power juice from the battery. We brought 4x 8.4AH batteries with us, and maybe only used a bit more than half of the juice we had available, including all the Satellite passes, several hours of HF (usually using the 857 at 25W) and several hours of VHF/UHF simplex work, and several long repeater QSOs. I'm glad we had lots of Amp Hours available though, we kept from running any batteries below 20% and operated all we wanted with any power levels we wanted, for short periods of time.
Even though we were wildly successful with the 817/857 combination, If I were going to go back, and not focus on as much hiking all over, I'd probably try and find a way of getting the Icom 821 out there. I'd never used the 817s before, and while I've tinkered with my 857 on Satellites, I've really become quite addicted to the constant power, extreme sensitivity, and dual band convenience of the 821. For what we were doing though - backpacking and hiking - and space and weight was a premium, I think the choices we made for gear were just fine.
All in all, if you're planning on a radio trip to CM93, for gear remember that every pound counts, make the most out of your power, and be prepared to use your gear not only to rack up QSOs, but also to communicate with the outside world. Cause you really are operating from the edge of civilization out there.. and that (to me) is truly what radio is about.
