ZS6DX/ZS2M
POTA South Africa
ZS6DX/ZS2M
I
have been quite busy with POTA (Parks On The Air) lately. I have seen how much
fun radio amateur are having in the USA and other parts of the world that I
decided to try and breath new life into the local POTA activities.
After contacting the local represented to try to add a few parks, and getting
no reaction, I contacted POTA in the USA. After a lot of discussion I am now
happy to announce that I am now the official admin person for POTA South
Africa. So if you have questions or want a park/trail/nature reserve added
please contact me via
EMAIL.
After announcing this on a few local forums
I immediately had requests to add new parks. So far I have added 5 and there
will be lots more in the future. 2 Of the entities I added are Baviaans Kloof,
where I was during the SARL field day recently, and the Suikerkop hiking
trail, a hiking trail close to me.
Depending on the weather, we are
suppose to have a few rainy days over the next week, I will be activating
Suikerkop hiking trail soon (Update 24/3/2024, a report on
the activation can be read
HERE). I would prefer to do this over a weekend to give
the opportunity to as many locals as possible to work the POTA activation.
Update 21/3/2024: On the
POTA subject, the new radio that I am planning to use for SOTA and POTA, the
Yaesu FT-891 has arrived from the USA. I will still using my smaller radios,
the FT-817, R928+ and X6100 for activations where I need to do a lot of hiking
and weight is really important but for normal POTA activations (and mobile
use) the plan is to rather use the FT-891.
I will be running it at 5W
on CW most of the time but if conditions are bad or I want to do an SSB
activation (every activation will also include SSB so as to not exclude the
majority of local, non CW, operators) I do have the option to run up to 100W.
The radio is also surprisingly small and compact, I will have no issue to put
it in a backpack for short to medium hikes.
First impressions of the
radio are great. Build quality is simply so much better than the Chinese
radios! The filters work really well and with a 3KHz roofing filter standard
as well as IF DSP variable band with it is really a great CW (and SSB) radio.
It also has a superb APF (Audio Peak Filter) that is simply amazing to dig out
a weak CW signal, well done Yaesu!
First QSO's
with the FT-891, the very first one was with a station in Qatar for a new one
on 12m.
Once I had the radio unpacked and connected I spent some time getting to know it, first few contacts on 10 and 12m included a new band-slot, Qatar on 12m plus some other good DX. I also spent about 30 minutes in the evening (9pm to 10pm local time) CWT session and it performed perfectly.
A look
inside the FT-891, top.
Bottom
view.
Dual fans, the radio is running quite cool even at 100W.
Final
amplifier section, very well made.
The construction and general layout of the radio is great, you can see Yaesu
have been in the business for a very long time.
A few quick checks show
that the radio draws around 700mA in receive, a bit more than the X6100 at
450mA but not enough to make a noticeable difference. Even at full power it
only draws around 17.5A so that is great, running at 5W we are sitting at
below 2A, far better than radios like the IC-7300 or my older FT-897.
Surprisingly the radio will produce over 120W on the few bands I checked, I
will never use it at those levels but it is very different from many other
radios that struggle to produce the 100W they are advertised as being capable
of producing.
This morning I used it for the full 1 hour CWT session on
40m and I loved it, I can see that I will never wish I had a "decent" radio
again when I am in the bush. After the initial test running on a power supply
in the shack I connected the radio to one of the new Lithium battery packs I
ordered for POTA and SOTA activities. The batteries are great, they are really
compact and far lighter than expected. I now need to do a few tests to see how
much operating time I can get out of them but after running the very busy 1
hour CWT session this morning rough calculations tell me that I will get more
than 6 hours of operating time (on high power) on a charge, and that is
when I spend a lot of time transmitting.
The advertised capacity of
the batteries are 22Ah, I must say I am a bit suspicious of that due to the
light weight but I will run one down to its cut-off limit as set by the BMS,
this is at 75% discharge, and then charge it with my Victron charger that will
show me how much it put back into the battery.
A nice feature I have
noticed on the Lithium packs are that they hold their voltage far better under
load than the older lead acid batteries I used in the past when I needed more
capacity than what my (model aircraft) LiPo packs could provide. Lead acid
batteries dip below 12V under load very quickly but with the same load the
Lithium packs sit at over 13V for hours.
Fun times! I am also expecting
a light, portable composite 12m mast to be delivered over the next few days.
It is both taller and much lighter than the 8m Comet mast I have been using so
it should be far easier to carry on the longer hikes.
(c)R Venter 1996-2024
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