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