Winter Field Day
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Winter Field Day 2021
Mark, AD6TG, conducted his first Winter Field Day. The event is conducted on the last weekend in January and runs from 1900 hours UTC on Saturday to 1900 hours UTC on Sunday. One continuous 24-hour period. Amateurs all around the country participate and some from tents in a snowy forest. While the temperatures were chilly it was a beautiful sunny day.
Saturday morning setup started with the sling shot. Using fishing line, I shot a 1/4" nut attached to the line over the top of an available palm tree. It took three attempts, but the line finally made it over the highest part of the tree. The line was used to hoist up the end fed antenna.
The other end of the antenna connects to the QRP Guys 10-40 meter 9:1 UNUN. This was a kit that included everything but the antenna wire. There were only a few parts, but it did require that you wind the transformer and solder it to the board. All in it took about one hour to assemble. The lead on the left is the end fed wire and the lead on the right is the counterpoise.
A closer view of the end fed antenna. The transformer is wound on a ferrite core and provides transformation of a high impedance end fed antenna to a closer match to 50-ohm coax. This antenna does require a tuner which is built into the KX2.
As installed, you can see the end fed wire heading off to the palm tree on the left, the coax dropping to the operating position, and the counterpoise wire heading off on the right.
The Elecraft KX2 can operate from internal batteries but for more endurance I opted for an external battery solution. This is a lithium iron phosphate and when fully charged provides over 13 volts to the radio and is rated at 6.5Ah It also has a handy USB port for charging a phone or running a USB device. In testing, I found it would run the transceiver for about two days.
The operating position included the KX2 QRP transceiver, the battery, and the laptop used for logging. I used the N3FJP Logging software for Winter Field day making contact logging very easy. Contacts were made on 40 and 20 meters and there was one station heard on 15 meters. No activity was heard on 10 meters.