VE6AB Mobile Ops
Radio On The Rocks
Needing to clear the cobwebs from my mind after spending several days in my workshop completing a project that I have been working on most of the winter, I decided I needed a break from it all, and with that I loaded my manpack into my mobile and headed out to a location where I would leave my mobile at the trailhead, and strike out with the gear I needed to play radio from a remote location several kilometers away.
The day was quite pleasant with the temperature perfect for hiking without working up a sweat, although my manpack all up weighs in at approximately 18 pounds depending on what extras that I have along with me on the day, making for a reasonably light load to carry on my back.
Today, beside my HF 10-60 meter vertical antenna, I had my take-down yagi along with me, as I wanted to check out how it performed while connected up to the all-mode FT-897D, as I had never tried this combination before.
Interestingly enough I was able to easily work a number of stations in the distance from my distant location on this day.
This was good to know, as there are times where having my take-down yagi along could prove beneficial, and besides it weighs very little, and when it is dismantled for travel, the take-down yagi stores nicely in a pocked on my pack as seen in the above photo.
Since I last described this new portable manpack that I recently put together, and I described on my blog recently, I have made a number of modifications to the overall system.
The tweaks that I made were quite minor, although they made a already nice system even better, and today this outing was to check out how these modifications would work on the trail and once set up to operate.
Click on the photo for a closer look.....
You may want to read how the manpack came about in the blog post that I wrote describing it.....
http://ve6ab.blogspot.ca/2017/03/manpack-communications-system.html
The May Issue of Digital QST featuring my article "Get In Gear With Portable Operations" is now available for ARRL members on the ARRL website.
If you are not an ARRL member, you can still read a reprint of my article here.....
http://www.jerryclement.ca/HamRadio/VE6AB-Articles-and-Mentions/i-DQmDbKR
