Hilltop/HF field day portable operations tips for VU hams

ARSI promoted Field Day/Hilltop coming soon (Feb last weekend)!. 


Having been to couple of DXpeditions, IOTA and field trips including VHF hill topping, I thought of sharing some  tips and insights with all.

YouTube video embedded has a presentation delivered on behalf of ARSI by me. There are lot of SOTA and field day web resources from where one can derive useful tips as well.




There are some more points i have compiled and shared in some groups as follows:

The process for applying  temporary QTH address change is much simple. As per my knowledge there is no rejection by WPC for well documented application VU2 and VU3 callsigns are getting the permission upon following the procedure.

All the documents are available at https://arsi.groups.io/g/Members/files/WPC for member's benefit.

Following are the clear steps for hilltop/field days:
1. Decide your QTH and inform contest manager via contests[at]arsi.info ( location -gridsquare, team lead call sign)
2. Gather all the team member's personal details (get their signature on the respective forms)  PERSONAL DETAILS _Sample.doc  
This form has to be filled by all the hams going to remote locations and/or part of the team
3. Collect one passport size photo from team members
4. Collect xerox copy of the license and  any renewals
5. Write one consent letter per team. If entire team is going to use a special call sign one may request that or you can mention that each team member will use their own home calls, no change in callsign required ( Remember for contests we need one call from the team location. all team member can work under one leader's callsign or special callsign.) Consent letter_sample - Copy.doc 
6. Complete the payments to Bharathkosh (Rs 200/- per ham license) refer well documented guide at ntrp_payments_guide.pdf 
7. Mention these payment receipt details in the consent letter and send to WPC along with all other documents mentioned above via regular post or speed post.
8. We have observed that the permission will be processed in 3-6 weeks

Hope these steps help regarding WPC.

Now for the location permissions: 
There are multiple aspects to get local permissions. There is no documented rules in India as I have seen. 
1. Some places such as forest areas require only local office intimation and verbal/written permission. 
2. Some places such as Mulayangiri in Karnataka required police permission since the teams operated in Wireless repeater site. 
3. Last time few hams approached state's police wireless wing and got blanket permissions for all such restricted sites. 
4. Some places such as St.Mary's Island may require permission for overnight stay from District Commissioner
5. If entering some reserved areas, better to approach local administration office (who is incharge of the area such as Forest, PWD, police).
6. Most of the other places will not usually require permission to operate if it is explicitly not mentioned 

With all the resources you have, i am sure many will join and have fun with this outdoor radio activity !

Best of luck
VU2XE

Lowband HF experiments near coastal river delta

Not all hams have similar aspirations of field days. Some go to outdoors for pure fun and relaxation, some to enjoy nature, some to learn about disaster communications using portable setup and some more like us may go in search of low noise heavens!

Many mighty rivers merge to Arabian sea in this region

Hailing from Dakshina Kannada district, I grew up traversing small bridges each day while making trips to school, college and later travelling up the coast from Mangalore till Kundapura etc. The mere scenic beauty of coconut plantations on the banks of these rivers always captivated my imagination. 

After my interest in Ham radio started to grow, I had started dreaming about operating from such locations. As you approach the coast river water draws sea water making it saline. Unlike some backwaters of Kerala, here the water is mostly saline with high PH values except for monsoon season (June - August). Land in these areas are salt soaked and highly conductive. As a ham, tell me if it does not ring your brain hi hi!

Little bit of planning:
In recent years from my Bangalore QTH I had done some decent operations on higher bands. But with Sunspots going down, 40mtr and lower band operation caught my curiosity. But playing with 80mtr and 160mtr from apartment terrace is much less feasible and one would have to be satisfied with the compromises. 

Around the time when VU7T plan was going on with larger team, I wanted to go to a low noise area within VU with single simple objective of having two or three bands to operate at night. When my friend VU3NXI Siddhu got to know of my intention, he caught on to it. I was bit nervous as he was not much on CW and I would go only with CW limited operation. Anyways, I started checking on various websites and zeroed on location based on Google Earth's images and its immediate elevation characteristics. There are many hotels on the coast, but I wanted to go to individual lonely place where they can give entire property access and with no nearby hawkers. I found one small house near river delta point just north of Udupi town. I then had few rounds of information exchange with the owner explaining the purpose of our stay and activities we want to do. Once they got convinced, booked their property on airbnb website.

We applied for temporary QTH change permission for our respective calls. Thanks to WPC, got the permission within 3 weeks without any followups!. Since we had clear objective of low band, we never set goals on QSO counts, but spent time on antennas to be made. N6RK loop (project from VU Contest group) was one antenna for RX and

Terminated RX Delta loop balun 9:1

second antenna I had in mind was terminated delta loop. For verticals we carried 12mtr spider pole and thought of making one vertical and two inverted Ls. The moment I made this field trip news public, many started asking us to carry amplifier and bigger antennas. Come on guys!, this is my first trip to unknown place and that too first experience with low bands. 

I had planned for weekend of ARRL 160mtr contest as some low band operators would have prepared their antennas and winter time propagation advantage on our side. Other than taking down my own station, getting some extra length of coax and some wires cut for 160, 80 and 40 there was not much fancy thing required for us. 

At the location:
Myself and Siddhu reached the place just north of Udupi by overnight bus.  Upon reaching the place we realized that we might be in dreamland as we did not see any HT electrical lines, nor densely populated places in 2-3 kms. We also realized that we should go higher abandoning 12mtr pole to 65-70ft tall coconut trees. We made a quick call to the host and fortunately tree climber was available that day who rushed to our place. 

Our impromptu Antenna setup 3 band trap less full size !

Couple of years ago, i had purchased a large spool of nylon fishing chord from Decathlon store which came much handy. We asked the climber to tie one rope to the tree and drop nylon rope similar to pulley lift. He did the job perfect within 15 minutes. As hams we have to apply all our creative juices to the job done and doing something different and experimenting was exact reason we had this field trip. So we did not pay much attention to whether something should be as per books or no, but we just applied our thoughts. We didn't knew exact height of the tree so we first lifted 80m element and found that around 5 ft of wire would be left after going straight. Pulled that back and now along with 80m (with upper string attached ~5ft lower, we attached 160mtr with center of the wire around 5 feet length away from the main rope. We did not attempt to test SWR yet. We pulled the setup back again and then attached 40mtr element which would hang halfway mark. Few pull up and down we could get symmetry between ropes when we pulled the ends away from center. We then attached homemade choke (mix31 with RG142)at the base of element and pulled elements apart so that it is spaced. For radials we had two for 40, one each for higher bands. Which were run on adjacent to coconut trees at 5-6 feet height. SWR tests showed sharp dips to 1.1 range on all bands near CW region. Aligning the radials would impact SWR with raise in ground loss as we couple of times dropped the radials and saw SWR shooting up above 10. With vertical exercise now completed we went to relish local food at restaurant around 5 kms in nearest town to us.

After lunch we put N6RK loop just around 2ft above ground (next day we raised this to 4 feet above ground and noticed improvement in reception as lot) and delta loop using 12mtr spider pole we had carried. We also had a quick A - B switch done there for playing with loops. 

We were stunned with noise levels. Though I have been to VU4 and VU7, I could not believe signals we were hearing on mainland. Most of the time we just resorted to magical SWLing than CQing!. City

VU2XE and VU3NXI - grey line DX

life had snatched away all our ears and this was really like applying balm soothers. We also found that N6RK loop though having lesser gain, had very low noise and signals appeared clearer. Though signals were very strong on 40mtr, we wanted to make most of our time on 160 and 80mtr. On the first day, I was very tired after long journey and antenna work, so Siddhu operated radio most of time after midnight. Second day, we spent on re adjusting location of the loop to right on the edge of water line and raising delta loop height. That night I also entered lowband chat room as there was good internet available. Each QSO I made on 80mtr had a feeling similar to ATNO!. Hams started asking me to go down to 160mtr after 12:30am IST ( 20UTC). And I did so to realise that good signals come by that time onward. Some NA hams were also getting us well, but I could not hear them.  Keeping watch on morning grey-line approaching fast over the location, I heard a weak K signal. Just seconds away that signal was stronger like 539 -549. It was KA1R the only station we had from NA on 160mtr. He must have studied our google location and was on right time to give us a call. Greyline was so quick that we could not hear any others from NA. 

Boat to cross small hop!

Just after this we dismantled in rush to catch our bus back to Bangalore. Our experiments on the field was most gratifying experience. DXpedition type of goals would not have allowed us to think through, reflect and apply some raw ideas which worked for us in this trip. 

Malpe beach. Launch pad for IOTA  AS - 096 St, Mary's Island

We worked few VU hams such as 
VU2CDP, VU2CPL, VU2ABS and VU2BGS on low bands. We thank them and global top band DXers for being on air/chat rooms with us to help listening, VU3NXI Siddhu for accompanying me and experiencing/sharing joy of the practical aspects of field operation.

Zone vs Band Statistics

So.. what are you thinking now?... Go places! with bit of planning, lot of fun awaiting for sure!

VU2XE
Kiran

Some videos showing our simple antenna setup:

Following is diversity reception audio(use head phone to listen to stereo from 80mtr yagi in one and 1000ft beverage in other) clip shared by VE6WZ. Unfortunately I did not hear him :(

CQWW CW 2017 - 40mtr was the ruler this time!

Last year CQWW, I had discovered value of low bands during the contest and wanted to improvise one band at least this year.  Well, there was great news on propagation with improved Solar Flux with new sunspot appearing on Sun's plate. So hope for higher bands as well. However,it is "the" contest time :)! So...

40mtr authority!

After much of background work talking to many hams in VU and reading some DX articles, I thought of settling on 40mtr vertical. However, I was having issue with listening. VU Contest group member VU2PTT extended his help by providing me a kit of N6RK loop components. Few weeks before the contest I started experimenting with this combo first with only vertical and then fixing N6RK loop. I could hear EU very well, however, W6 stations reported deaf on cluster during our grey line period. I was really amazed at the same time by one another ham from Bangalore working W stations (update Jan 15 2018: Topband reflector discussions on some using NA based SDR for RX and making QSOs from VU. It was no surprise then for me that I could not hear anything on my antennas!). Also there were hams in Kerala (they have location advantage and some use large beams) working US on 40mtr without much difficulty. So there is lot to improvise to dig out layers of callers in future as well. For now N6RK loop was great booster to me on getting that 2nd tier stations.

W6PQL amp got extra breathing space!

Now with one additional band in relatively good condition, I was happy and prepared. During final station check on Friday evening around 10 UT, I got a shocker with Spiderbeam behaving badly with varying SWR. Panic rush to terrace and tightening balun and wire lug contact nuts seemed to resolve the matter. 

American pan cakes to celebrate morning  Caribbean Qs

Contest day morning provided good start on 40mtr and then after around 5UT, turned to 15mtr to buzz that for next few hours putting more than 350 Qs by 10UT. There was no sign of 10mtr having any signal which limited any possibility of big runs. By this time, I was hoping to switch to 20mtr and try to put another 300 before switching to 40mtr at night. The problem with Spiderbeam SWR contacts surfaced again and had to suspend the 20mtr operation till next morning as our apartment security would not allow us to enter terrace after dark!. Bit disappointing, but hope lingered around 40mtr to make most of it. And, sure it did so running for next few hours till late night around 20UTC. By this time, QSO count had crossed 700. I could make clear difference from operating with only dipole last time vs with vertical + loop combo this time. Stations which used to be in shadow of noise earlier emerged in clear this time.

Desi Chinese Soup
kept me going for mults!

Second day, I went and fixed contact issues around balun where there was some residue of rubber around the washer and nut. I had planned outing with family rest of the morning hours. I may not have missed any openings, as when I returned around 9UT, there was no sign of 10mtr opening. 15mtr and 20mtr SnP started on slow pace. Did not get much response to running other than K3LR, W3LPL, ZF9CW and few other North Americans coming back. However the signals were not strong. Partially, the new high rise building which has comeup north west to north east might be the cause as well. As per HFTA software, high rise is cutting down low angle elevation signals which are crucial for NA shortpath from here. Finally, I made some drag towards the end on 40mtr before closing early at around 19UTC after crossing 1000 mark.

There are lessons each time. 

1. Use of UP and Down arrow functions to control RIT during Run pileups. This is very nice feature of N1MM logger to dig out stations from the pile.

2. Improve reception to the max before turning the power to max - many low power and QRP stations located in quieter locations (and probably with good RX antennas) can hear and call you. 

3. Better yourself at usage of SDR waterfall and spectrum in assisted mode. Anchoring for the run or to identify weak multipliers it can be a good tool. Also if you are using SDR, try SO2V function, i tried to make it work but did not take it much further. Unlike SO2R, SO2V does not require second amplifier if you are making jump on the same band or have amplifier with auto band switching for the multipliers.

However much one is prepared, expect some issues. Low bands are really rulers in these times. Hopefully, I can add another band - 80mtr next and even better receiving capability.

Thanks all for the QSOs.

73s

VU2XE Kiran

Following are the detailed count from contest log:

Band     QSOs     ZN   Cty  
    7      475     24   71

    14     150     17   46   
    21     370     23   63   
    28       8     2    2   
 Total     1003    66   182

Score: 632,896

Link to last year’s blog post: http://kiranpadiyar.blogspot.in/2016/11/what-got-me-here-will-not-take-me-there.html

40mtr Vertical project

Here is new edition to my station... Homebrewed 40m vertical. Nothing fancy, just aluminium sections clamped to specially designed tilt base.

Base plate, made with 1.5mm aluminium sheet.

Tilting mechanism designed by me
and VU2MUD

closeup of vertical

Vertical on our terrace

Construction story to follow on ARSI HRN magazine soon!

VU2XE

VU7T Lakshadweep DXpedition

Just returned from a Radio DXpedition to Lakshadweep.
Following is the regional news coverage of this event:
http://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/in-other-news/111017/grand-get-together-on-air.html

Lot of learnings, friendly people, joy of spreading awareness about Amateur Radio and many more hams across the world getting their most sought after DXCC score made this trip a fulfilling experience.


Cheers
73
Kiran VU2XE

Youtube live event on Radio Contesting

Amateur Radio is taking me to many areas of learning. Recently, i have been elected to Amateur Radio Society of India as a GC member and then got requested to play Contest Manager role there.

I believe in learning and sharing the knowledge all the time. Thought of reaching VU hams via newer mediums such as Youtube live events. I attempted first live event today at my following: Amateur Radio Channel :

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgcvEOny7T5AGbQksYowPsw/videos

It took good amount of hours (probably 25 hrs over 3-4 weeks  to collect materials, format slides, record and edit all necessary elements.

Software used:

1. Videopad for editing
2. OBS for streaming
3. QSOOrder (connected to N1MM during contests) for sound clips
4. Bensound.com for sound track

What I gained? - many friends in ham world and learning of new techniques in the process.

Cheers!
DE VU2XE
Kiran

SWR raise with Power and troubleshooting

We are hit by late Monsoon rains here in Bangalore. Probably month's worth of rain down poured within few days last week. It is the time when hams here normally need to be extra vigilant about antenna and open area transmission lines for any moisture traps in the line.

During WAE SSB contest (9th and 10th Sept 17) while giving WTC, I noticed that suddenly otherwise all good SWR shoot up and drowned the signal putting my amp on alarm mode. Went to terrace to check all the antenna parts and coax joints etc. I have a Spider beam and a 40 meter vertical connected with separate Coaxes coming down to shack where they end up in the Antenna Switch, then to Directional Coupler for my SWR/Power Meter, then to LDMOS Amplifier and finally to TS590.

I found that small drops of water inside of the spiderbeam antenna coax joint. Shook that part to drain any drops out of the joint and then put insulation tape again on top. Back to shack, it did not seem to improve the SWR. Even with Amplifier on  bypass mode, i could see SWR going over 9 on power meter.
I suspected that the homebrewed Balun box at antenna feedpoint getting flooded due to rains. I didn't had any drain holes made to them to take care of such situation. This means, i had to lower the spider beam which is a cumbersome task for me..

Many of my friends VU2PTT, VU2IBI, VU2DED, VU3NXI and others provided some very good tips including how to check Coax separately, Checking the connector etc. I thought i checked everything.
Couple of days later, i just connected Coax coming to shack directly to the rig, bypassing all other jumpers, power meter, power amp etc. I could see SWR as expected less than 1.5. wow!. When I connected back to Antenna switch, again SWR shoot up.. So now it seems i have cornered the problem.

But then, that evening again i started some more test. I connected coax directly to TS590 and started given 100W for few seconds. I could see that SWR raising from 1.2, 1.3-1.5 , 1.7-1.9 and then 2.5 and i stopped. This indicated that my problem is not so easy to solve.

I then went for Time Domain Reflectometry (TDR) with VNA to see if i can detect anomalies in the Transmission line. Following images show the patterns i observed. First one is for line running to 40mtr vertical (it has LMR 400 25 mtr and 15 mtr lengths), second one is for line running to spiderbeam (it has RG213 25 mtr and 10 mtr lengths) and last one is brand new 15mtr length quality 213 rolled in my shack with one open end.

I could make that on RG213 line running upto the coax junction, there is no reflections and segment is holding good on pattern. It indicates to me that, line is clear of any water content. Then i went and checked the barrel joint to find a sticky type of material on center pins. So, replaced the barrel connector with the new spare one i had  to find that the Spiderbeam is now giving the expected results!.
On the Vertical antenna path, i noticed that the crimped connector on LMR400 is freely rotating giving up ground connection. This requires replacement of my coax till i get a new crimp done.


So this troubleshooting continues...!

Enjoy
73
Kiran

I cannot afford an island! – Living with noise in our times

For sometime i was pondering about RF noise. I have seen and read many articles about fighting noise in the past. There are great articles out there for those who wants to jump in and get those well proven methods implemented. I wrote this article couple of week ago trying to think bit differently.

Hope some of you will find interesting as well and probably attempt concept mentioned here.

Please check this PDF article at following link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8FrRlsLMAHpQi1XMEE1VENyaHBmNGlmNkRic2ZoaVJQYm93/view

73
Kiran
VU2XE