The best birthday is a field day! 🙂
Pre-history
I was trying to escape to my birthday somewhere this time as well… Typically, I fly and drive alone to a place that is strange enough to visit but worth visiting for a few days. In the past, it was Israel, the Russian Far East, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and a few others places…
This time, I hoped to be in China for a business trip and then jump to a short break somewhere, for example, Vietnam, where I haven’t been before, and work from there with something like XV4/OH7O. However, time had flown too quickly, and I was too late with business trips and everything … and I realized that I was stuck in Kazakhstan 🙂
Since I very stupidly burnt my antenna analyzer just a few days before that and all the fun with radio amateur business revolved around antennas, I worried that my plans were crushed-landed.
However, I managed to fix the analyzer after spending a couple of hours in the lab – the DC-DC converter was stupidly fried by me – and I was extremely happy that the luck was on my side and the rest of the electronics survived. Now, even the always-discharged batteries are not a problem – I just needed to keep a USB cable with me and a power bank.
Thus, I had everything needed to play with antennas in the field during my birthday.
Since I have visited the wonderful Plateu Assy two times already and time is precious, I wanted to try something else. Kazakhstan is the 7th largest country in the world. It doesn’t have much sea. But it was a lot of pretty empty steppes. OK. Let it be steppes…
I have a paper that says something about UN/OH7O, which looks rather official. But I still didn’t want to encounter any conversation with tourists or police about “what is this 12-meter shiny aluminum thing you are erecting and who are you, what are you doing, and who gave you the permit?”. So, I needed a relatively remote place with as little attention to my antenna and me, but not too remote because it was my birthday after all, and I expected to get calls and messages. Thus, unlike with Plateau Assy, where to be off-grid is OK, on Sep.5th, it wasn’t an option.
Besides, I finally wanted to play with an electronic logbook that I still didn’t have… I needed mobile internet for all this…
Before driving the field, I dropped a message to the local HAM WhatsApp group and got some good ideas about the location. I marked the points into the navigator and started driving north from Almaty. The idea was to find the closest place meeting the wishes or reach the suggested places if nothing was found earlier.
The steppes are vast in Kazakhstan. Thus, in about 1-1.5 hours, we found a place in the field north of Kapchagay Reservoir. The location was remote enough with a nice view and it was nearly a noon. It was the time to play with antennas.
In my previous life (25 years ago and earlier), I have always built my transceivers. It was a long time ago, and purchasing a transceiver was out of the question for multiple reasons.
However, time passed by, and I have my own company building autonomous robots and precise indoor positioning. Thus, the desire to build something made of electronics is well satisfied.
However, I still need to build something 🙂 Since I can’t focus on transceivers, it is great fun to focus on antennas
– Provides relatively few compromises for the DX-work, on 20/15/10 meters. Ideally – also capable of 40 meters
– Easy to set up and dismantle
– Reasonable cost-wise
The requirements are contradictory, obviously. Nevertheless, they are not undoable.
I love and recommend 1/4-wave elevated verticals with resonating radials because the combine nearly everything I need in the field:
- Portable and light
- Easy to design
- Easy to install and dismantle in the field
- Don’t require trees (we are the steppe, after all … – there are very few and short ones only or no trees at all)
- Transmitting low angle to horizon – good for DX
- Easy grounding – no need for dozens of radials of typical GP antennas
- Can have multiple separately-tuned resonators nearly not affecting each other (see SWR graph below)
Since I planned to play with antennas and experiment, I took with me twice as needed amount of tubes and other materials … – to be on the safe side 🙂
I love the 20-meter band … but the 15-meter band is certainly more fun… Uruguay calling you just among other stations with about the same RS report – it is always cool 🙂
It is so wonderful to be back in the air after such a long break!
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