Amateur Radio WB3GCK QRP Portable from
The Outer Banks (again)

July 29th - August 3rd, 2007

My family, along with my brother's family, have been vacationing on the Outer Banks almost every year (except for 2006) for the past 11 years.  I always look forward to doing some QRP portable operating from down there.  This year, we were again in Corolla, near the  northern-most part of the Outer Banks in North Carolina.  We typically rent a different house each year, so I never know exactly what to expect, antenna-wise, until I get there.  I always take a couple of wire antennas along, with the hope that I'll be able to get something half-decent strung up.  

Based on my last ten trips to the Outer Banks, I figured that I could count on having access to a 3rd story deck and room enough to run a wire out to a tree or something nearby.  The antenna I used for this trip fit the bill.  I went with an antenna that the old timers sometimes referred to as the "Up and Outer."  Basically, it's nothing more than a center-fed doublet with one vertical leg and one horizontal leg.  Before I left for the trip, I made up a simple 56-foot doublet fed with about 35 feet of 300-ohm TV twinlead (the cheap brown stuff).  Once I got to Corolla, I strapped a 28-foot Jackite telescoping pole to the railing of the deck and used it to support the vertical leg of the antenna.  The horizontal leg was attached to a nearby pine tree.  In what has become a family tradition, I once again enlisted the support of one of my athletic nephew to toss a golf ball with a line attached up over a specific tree branch.  (He got it on the second try.)  Using my trusty homebrew Z-match tuner, the antenna loaded up nicely on my primary bands of interest:  40, 30 and 20 meters.  

For the first couple of days, I operated from a screened-in porch, enjoying the nice breeze.  One day we had a thunderstorm and I decided to relocate my equipment indoors.  For the remainder of the trip I operated from the master bedroom on the 3rd floor.  I used a cardboard tube from a spool of twine to bring the feedline into the house, keeping it away from metal as a best as I could.  

I had quite a few QSOs during the week.  On my first day of operation, I gave out a few points in the Flight of the Bumblebees contest (although band conditions were horrendous).  During the rest of the week, I worked some 40 meter CW in the mornings and moved to 30 meters in the evenings.  I had a lot of fun working PSK31 on 30 meters late in the evening.  A nice group of folks hang out there.  I was getting some very good signal reports from West Coast stations and was able to work a few European stations with 5 watts.  So, I was very pleased with this year's choice of antenna for the Outer Banks.

I'm already starting to make plans for next summer!


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Antenna mounted on the 3rd story deck


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Antenna viewed from
the ground



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Antenna feedpoint


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Operating from the porch

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Operating from the porch
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Indoor operating position
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Getting the feedline into the
house
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Currituck Lighhouse viewed
from the house







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