Qro patch

Thank you for the heads-up, Owen. I plan to include some SSB time this morning, if I can get spotted. I had assumed Eric found this as a one-off at a military surplus sale. I decided to buy two of them: one for me, and one for Vlado. While our wives were catching up, Vlado and I made our way to the storage shed and opened my antenna parts boxes. I did a little digging and found what I was looking for: some wire I purchased at a thrift store many years ago. Guessing it might be 20 gauge and might even be teflon coated.

It was ideal for antennas and eyeing it, I thought there might be enough for two doublets. I decided prior to cutting that I wanted our doublets to go as low as 60 meters 5, kHz and cover everything above.

We decided to pick a longer non-resonant length and just give it a go. Many thanks to my daughter Geneva K4TLI for helping stretch, measure, and cut the antenna wire with us! Assembling the antennas was incredibly simple as there are built-in binding posts attached to the twin lead on the winding fixture.

Vlado and I both decided to use the winder as the center-insulator of the antenna. This is actually how this military fixture was designed to be used. The negative, of course, is that the center insulator is relatively heavy. Eric WD8RIF , by the way, actually detached the twin lead from the fixture and posts on his unit and built a new center-insulator from a discarded 35mm film canister see photo above.

He wanted to keep the weight down so he could support the center of the doublet on his fiberglass masts. I had planned to hook up the doublets to my RigExpert antenna analyzer, then I realized it was essentially an unnecessary step. Vlado and I connected the doublet to the KX2 and tuned to 5, kHz.

After confirming the frequency was clear, I pressed the ATU button. We then proceeded to work about three stations on the air in CW with 5 watts. All of them gave us reports! In the end, we both walked away with two effective military-grade field doublets. Last year, my personal challenge was to validate all of my park and summit activations with 5 watts or less.

This year, my challenge will be to build a new antenna each month and deploy it at least once during that month during a field activation.

I do want to keep these projects quite simple and easy for anyone to build in one sitting. I already have enough ideas to take me through the summer months, but I plan on dusting off some of my antenna books for more ideas! Pack EDC. Gotta love the mountains! I had no complaints whatsoever about the drive, though, because it was within five minutes of the Zebulon Vance Historic Birthplace; one of my favorite local POTA spots!

After dropping off the girls, I drove to Vance and was happy to see that no one was occupying their one picnic shelter. These are ideal conditions in my world. I grabbed the Discovery TX for this activation. This is not the highest or most prominent in the park but to get to it you follow an old Chumash Indian trail that goes up the mountain making it a much rougher hike than usual.

The round trip is about 3 miles but took 2 hours to reach the peak. I noticed that the battery on iPhone was almost dead so was logging on paper. No contacts on 40 after 30 minutes of calling so switched to 20 and retuning my antenna.

My son came with me; that was really nice. Thank you for the mini field report and photos, Jon! What a beautiful location. The product is environmentally sustainable, guaranteed permanent, and backed by the best Customer Service in the Industry.

Simple, Trusted, Proven, Guaranteed! What Customers Are Saying. I appreciate everything you have done and you did this all for free. Maureen , Maryville, TN. You can hear her smile thru the phone.

Wilt B. The material always delivers, no doubt about it. Connie T. Matt asked us to try it, and said we would never go back to traditional cold mix. He was right! Steve T. With no hot plant on our Island, we use QPR for repair of both concrete and asphalt surfaces. Be transparent. Use your real name, and back up your claims. Keep it local and relevant. Make sure your replies stay on topic. Review the Patch Community Guidelines. Reply to this article Reply. Replies 1 Show 1 previous reply.