National Parks Activations!

Well, So far we haven't made it over to Rhodes Ferry Park to activate TR12 - The Trail of Tears but that's OK, we are going to activate two other parks this coming weekend.  This weekend, we are going to head out early and drive over to DeKalb County and activate Russell Cave National Monument - MN64.  Our plan is to be there by 10:30 AM local time (15:30 UTC) and get setup and operate for a couple of hours.  While we are there, we are planning to walk through the Visitor Center, have a picnic lunch, and maybe take a walk down to the cave shelter. Once we are done there, we will be heading over to Little River Canyon - PV12.  Hopefully, we will be there by 15:00 local time (20:00 UTC) and get setup and operate a couple of hours or so. 



My plans are to take my Yaesu FT-847, MFJ-949E Tuner, a laptop, coax, some miscellaneous stuff and my home-brew end-fed antenna.  I am also taking a 12 deep-cycle battery, a solar panel, and a solar charge controller.  Hopefully, I can operate the amount of time I have planned with this setup.  Even though I only have a 10 watt solar panel, my hopes are that it will provide enough oomph to keep the battery going.  I had really hoped to test all of this at Rhodes Ferry park which is close to home but everyone else thought it would be more interesting to go somewhere new.

More on the antenna...   Basically, the antenna is an end-fed wire with a 9-to-1 matching transformer to match the impedance to 50 ohms.  Because of the likelihood of restrictions of hanging antenna wires in trees and keeping my setup footprint as small as possible, I am using a 24.5 ft wire.  I'm not sure exactly how I'll have all of it setup but we'll figure something out when we get there.  I am also taking a tripod that extends up to seven or eight feet.  If all else fails, I can do a sloper from ground level to the top of the tripod.  I need to go by Lowes and see if I can find a fiberglass painter's pole cheap.  I could use that with the tripod to setup the antenna as a vertical, or at least close to vertical.  Again, we'll just have to see.  I actually have a 51 ft wire in my go-box but I really doubt it will see any use.  I'm sure the performance would be better but it would require a good bit of room to setup.

The picture on the left is a view of the inside of the balun box for my portable antenna.  The picture on the right is on view of the finished product.




Hopefully I'll make lots of contacts and the family will have fun as well.  I'll be sure to get lots of pics of the setup and even the parks themselves.  Look for some of the pics to show up here in the next post.

73 for now,

Jamey - WR4JW