Amateur Radio WB3GCK QRP Afield
September 2007

Craig LaBarge, WB3GCK

It had been quite a few years since I've operated in the New England QRP Club's QRP Afield contest.  Seems like something always seemed to come on those weekends.  This year, I managed to get out and operate for a few hours.   To make things simple, I decided to use a set up similar to the one I used for QRP to the Field in 2005.  

For an antenna, I grabbed an experimental whip antenna I had been tinkering with and attached it to the truck with a vise grip antenna mount.  The whip antenna uses a homebrew coil with an 12-foot MFJ telescopic whip.  I had never used it before, so I didn't really know if it was going to work for me or not.  I got it to load up nicely on 20 meters but the SWR was a little high on 40 meters.  I decided to "fudge it" on 40 meters and used my homebrew Z-match antenna tuner to bring the SWR down to 1:1 at the rig.  It worked better on 40 meters that I expected.

For logging, I was using an old Palm  m105 handheld that I bought on eBay a few years ago.  The logging sofware was GoLog by NK0E.  It worked very well but, not having used it in a while, I was a little rusty at entering data using the stylus.  By the end of the contest, though, I was really getting the hang of it.  

The bands seemed a little weak and noisey but, with 5 watts from my FT-817,  this makeshift setup seemed to be getting out OK.  This was nowhere near a record-breaking finish for me, but it was a fun afternoon on a beautiful day in Valley Forge.

Click for full-size image
Operating location
Click for full-size image
Antenna mount

 Log:
BAND MODE  DATE     UTC  CALLSIGN      EXCHANGE RECEIVED                RST SENT
  14 CW    09/15/07 1532 NE5DL         559 TX 5W                        559
  14 CW    09/15/07 1536 WN1GIV        599 FL 5W                        599
  14 CW    09/15/07 1542 WB3AAL        579 PA 629                       579
   7 CW    09/15/07 1637 K9DXA         579 IL 5W                        599
   7 CW    09/15/07 1641 W1PID         599 NH 551                       599
   7 CW    09/15/07 1647 K4UIE         539 GA 2W                        539
   7 CW    09/15/07 1652 WA8REI        559 MI 5W                        599
   7 CW    09/15/07 1719 K8KFJ         559 WV 5W                        579
   7 CW    09/15/07 1722 WB3AAL        579 PA 629                       579
   7 CW    09/15/07 1725 VE3VA         599 ON 5W                        599
   7 CW    09/15/07 1731 AA4XX         579 NC 340                       599
   7 CW    09/15/07 1741 VA3OVQ        559 ON 5W                        579
   7 CW    09/15/07 1749 VA3SIE        559 ON 2W                        559
   7 CW    09/15/07 1754 K1CL          559 MA 459                       599
   7 CW    09/15/07 1758 N1LT          599 NH 647                       559
   7 CW    09/15/07 1801 VE3EUR        589 ON 5W                        579
   7 CW    09/15/07 1810 WB8E          559 MI 5W                        579
   7 CW    09/15/07 1823 K8CV          559 MI 5W                        559
   7 CW    09/15/07 1834 WA1ZCQ        559 NH 628                       579

Back to Homepage