I was going up to Minnesota to pick up my son (W3PZ) and head over to Hamvention together. We put together an alternate plan just in case Hamvention was canceled, and we'll now be camping out and putting Houston County, MN on the air with his CTX-10.
Bridgeport - come for the qso's, stay because you got murdered. But seriously, thanks for the neat vid.
I had 84 QRP contacts on 40m SSB during a SOTA/POTA activation last year running 6w from an FT818 into a SOTAbeams 20/30/40 linked dipole. During the SC QSO party I broke a good number of pileups by announcing "N1RBD Mountaintop Portable." That seemed to pique some interest among the contesters. I love working from summits!
I'd like to work you from my local beaches! I reckon we could easily do voice on 1W. BTW, try being a little closer to the water. Not necessary to be feet in water, just a little closer to reduce ground losses - it makes all the difference! If you read Practical Wireless, I have an article about seaside operating in the April 2020 edition!
Some very shady characters for sure. I had to pack up when, I could only hear Dr. Dre coming from someones subwoofer full blast.
I can't offer a side-by-side comparison about radials, only that I have always used elevated radials - two in all cases (noting I have excellent, very highly mineralised ground at home). Certainly, at the seaside, two elevated radials are perfectly adequate. I'm sure others will argue about that, but I have the data ;-) You may be interested in: https://mw1cfnradio.blogspot.com/2019/09/more-data-from-beach.html