Just like at home, I run a very modest amateur radio station when out portable. This is to reduce the setup time and physical footprint so that I can operate from virtually anywhere.
Transceiver and ancillary equipment
The HF transceiver is the very popular Yaesu FT-857. It’s nice and compact, has a relatively simple menu to control all of the features and really is a nice piece of kit to operate once you’ve worked with it a few times.
It is a multi-band transceiver and transmits on the HF bands (0 to 30MHz), VHF bands (50MHz and 145MHz) and UHF (433MHz). This is really handy when out portable, but the VHF and UHF bands are rarely used by myself.
There are a couple of connectors on the back of the unit that enables the rig to be used for digital modes and to be controlled from a PC rather than you having to twiddle knobs and press buttons on the rig itself. This is handy when changing bands in digital mode software.
Attached to the transceiver is an LDG Z11 Pro II antenna tuner. This is a great piece of kit, that wasn’t that expensive to purchase and it has not failed to tune any antenna I have connected to it to-date. The 2,000 memories allow the unit to automatically re-tune itself very quickly when I change bands; which I often do when operating FT8 to see if I can catch rare openings on the adjacent bands.
I’ve never done this, but you can power the Z11 Pro II with 8 AA batteries located inside the case. This will further reducing the drain on your power source when out in the field.
I have used a variety of data interfaces over the years and a little while ago I had the opportunity to purchase the rather rare Yaesu SCU-17 earlier in 2018. It’s worked very well for me since I obtained it and contains a very sensitive sound card for encoding/decoding digital data signals and a transceiver control (CAT) interface. The latter allows my data software to change bands, modes and control the PTT. I can’t say it’s better than the ZLP interface I used before it, except that the ZLP lacked the CAT interface, but it is encased in a metal chassis so I would assume that it is better shielded against any local interference; that and it does look a little smarter when running demonstration stations.
As with the FT-1000MP at home, I have at my disposal and external microphone; this time it’s the venerable, and slightly more compact, Yaesu MD-100. The quality of the audio from the microphone is very good, many a special event station and dx-pedition have used these units around the world and they are highly regarded. However, I think I’ve only used it twice and the handheld mic a couple of times more as most operations are digital of one flavour, or another.
The power supply of choice is a Watson Power-Mite NF. It’s very compact, delivers a stable output voltage when the transceiver is keyed and appears to pretty quiet RF-wise, though there is a tunable filter on it to shift any interference away from the transceiver’s tuned frequency if required.
Antennas
I have two main antennas to choose from when operating mobile depending on how much space I have in the car when travelling.
The car mounted antenna is a Snowdonia Radio Company SRC 1080. It’s a really simple antenna, just a whip with an 9:1 UNUN at the bottom to match it to the transceiver. The whip element’s not as long as those found on £20 mono band mobile antennas, but it does perform remarkably well. During my recent camping trip to Cornwall I worked five continents using this antenna on all bands from 80m through to 6m.
It’s permanently mounted on the car using a triple mag-mount and the vertical antenna’s laid horizontal to minimise any effect it would otherwise have on the radiation pattern.
I’ll often use this antenna when operating from buildings too, extending the mag-mount’s cable in to the building using some decent UltraFlex 7 cable from Messi & Paoloni. This cable performs better than RG-8, with lower losses, but is much more flexible and is roughly the same diameter as Mini 8 cable.
We’ve actually used this antenna for several special event stations when the weather’s dictated that putting up a mast might not be the most sensible thing to do and it’s performed admirably.
The other antenna is also from Snowdonia Radio Company. The HF360 is a 21′ (-ish) fibreglass vertical antenna, with a 9:1 UNUN at the bottom for matching, mounted on a speaker tripod about 7′ off the ground. It’s DC grounded, so there’s no need for earths or ground planes, and can be assembled in less than two minutes so is very easy to get up and running in a hurry.
This is the antenna I prefer for special event stations, providing space in the car permits. We took this one to out on our recent EMF Camp trip and worked 300 stations on both sides of the pond (Atlantic) in just over two days using it.
These two antennas have performed better than many people anticipated for several years now and I hope they continue to do so for many ears to come as they’re not produced any more and I can’t replace them with anything of comparable build quality, or performance, for the price (taking in to account inflation) that they were selling for.
Computer equipment
Until recently an elderly, but still relatively fast fourth generation i5 Acer laptop has been the main portable computer for operating the station. This has been perfectly adequate for running any digital mode I’ve tried. However, it is rather large and bulky, quite heavy with a pretty poor battery life of little over an hour and a half.
Earlier this year I upgraded to a 14″ full HD, i3-7010U equipped, Lenovo IdeaPad 320. List price was about £400, but I was fortunate enough to find a used (less than twelve months old) one for just £200, complete with a slight scratch on the lid, at a local used tech emporium. The power is more than adequate for processing digital signals, though an upgrade to 8Gb of RAM will be performed in the near future. The battery, at six hours between charges, isn’t the best, but it’s still a lot better than the Asus, the power consumption when charging is much lower and the charge time is much shorter.
It’s been pressed in to service for the recent EMF Camp special event station and will be active this coming weekend for the Churches on the Air special event station. I’ll report on it in more detail after a few more operations.
Computer software
The laptop’s running the latest version of Windows patched with all the latest updates and is working fine – no issues to-date.
The only software installed to-date is the WSJT-X software for FT8 and Nettime for time synchronisation; it’s essential for keeping the laptop’s clock exact so that you don’t miss any contacts.
Everything just works fine at the moment and does exactly what it’s supposed to do.
Conclusion
I have managed to pack all of the equipment, except the laptop and antenna related kit, in to a 9L Really Useful Boxes case. That’s great because I can just chuck in the boot of my small car and still have lots of space for everything else that needs to be taken along on a trip.
The laptop’s home is a new backpack from HP, the Odyssey 15.6″. It was chosen, not only because it looks good with its grey and bright green flashes, but because it’s durable, has plenty of pockets for storing accessories and cables, has a dedicated storage area for tablets and has a water repellent surface. Best of all, it is only £13.99 if you’re a student or teacher and £29.99 if you’re not. Bargain.
If you have any questions about anything I’ve mentioned please do not hesitate to contact me and I’d be happy to have a chat with you.