lets give them few contacts for field daya bit of your time this winter has been bad weather for all north america and it will be a little colder and more windy for them too set up stations .LETS GIVE THEM FEW PIONTS 1H home sate or province country 5/5 real signal report THANKS ALL
Thank you VE3DDL. We are operating 2O from 8,500ft/2500m here in central Colorado. Using battery power, Yaesu and Icom portable radios, SOTAbeam, Buddipole and an office-chair hamstick on 20 and 40. SSB mostly but a little bit of digital yesterday. Using our club call sign - NX0G - and heading back out around 8am today. In this photo you can see the shelter, SOTAbeam and Buddipole antennas and Pikes Peak in the background. 73, Carl
Big thanks and 73 to everyone working winter field day this year. As NX0G, 2O on battery power we worked 66 (I think) stations on 20 and 40 meters. My first contact today was N4GAS on 5 watts with the Buddipole 20M vertical. I'd forgotten to turn the power up after hitting the tune button. Our 9 year old was taking care of logging duties along with tuning through the band listening for stations we hadn't heard yet. She was quite the trooper this morning. It was 4F this morning when we turned on the radio. Now she says she wants to do a winter SOTA activation with me. Huge thanks to everyone out there working winter field day. 73, Carl
How'd the BuddiPole work for you? I just got mine on Friday but didn't have a chance to play with it this weekend.
It worked great Richard. The first few years I had it I didn't play with the vertical configurations much - dunno why. I should have! For WFD I configured it as a 20M vertical - used 4 of the 22" extension arms, a 9.5' whip and TSRB on 1:1. No coil. Connected the counterpoise wire to one of the rotating arm kit brackets/adapters just to make it easier to tighten. Feedpoint was about 9-10 feet. Probably should have tried a foot lower or shortened the counterpoise a few inches as SWR was 1.5:1 at 14.225Mhz and 1.7:1 at 14.350Mhz. Regardless - it worked great. We ran a really casual operation and I talked to 32 unique contacts in 18 states plus Canada - both east and west coast. Even managed North Carolina on 5 watts early in Sunday morning. Can't see it in the photo but make sure you anchor that tripod base. I use whatever's available - big rock, tree, dog tie out - anything to keep it from tipping over. ...and that's why I have spare parts now... hihi Oh yeah - the EZUP metal poles froze to the ground. Another thing I learned on winter field day. 73, Carl
From what I've read about it, when used as a vertical dipole it's supposed to be really good for DX. I see you're in CO. what kind of DX are you able to get with it, aside from Canada?
