Big Fish! …on my balcony. Caught with the Alpha Military (MIL 2.0) Antenna

Exchanging emails without Internet was the plan,

but so much more happened.

I decided to examine my luck in fishing on my balcony! You bet, ‘fishing’ stations in my preferred data modes: pactor, packet, APRS, and so on. As I wanted to replicate some situation in the field -where I would probably use my old camera tripod, I did here the same: I put the tripod near the balcony rail, mounted Alpha Military Antenna (MIL 2.0) match on top of it, and the whip on top of the match. There was no place for extending the 25’ wire (NVIS element) so I did not use it. Furthermore, there was no good grounding point on the balcony, so I just placed the 8’ wire’s stake on the balcony floor.

As you can see, my ‘fishing pole’ was fixed at some 45° down, and its 5 (of 7) parts were fully outside the balcony area. Two guying ropes, attached at some 2/3 of the whip, ensured its stability. So far – so good. Steve N0TES shall be puzzled on whether to change the name of Alpha military antenna, MIL 2.0 … HI HI.

The other end of the ten-meter RG-58U with PL259 plugs (coax option) went into the MFJ-904H antenna tuner. Now to listen: I did expect lots of urban noise and did not make it bellow S6-7 on 20m. However, I was pleased to hear some voice and CW traffic, although barely over the noise level. At first, I did not hear much of my preferred data modes (except few FT8 ‘big guns’), so I used the microphone to check for SWR. My method was to set FM, push the PTT, and tweak for lowest SWR. The radio was set to 10W output power. After some practicing, I was pleased to achieve SWR at 1.5:1 or less. Then I attached the computer, the SCS pactor controller, and RIGblaster Advantage sound-card interface for the HF packet. Soon after starting the main software, two APRS beacons were transmitted: The first one in ‘robust packet’ at some 6W, followed by the second one in ‘old packet’ at 10W. (Later I discovered that my node/BBS/RMS station YU7BPQ appeared on aprs.fi thankfully to a Portuguese digipeater.)

Then I started actively ‘fishing’ (i.e. initiating outgoing connections to my forwarding partners across Europe). Soon after I made the first pactor exchange with F3KT, followed by IK0MIL, etc. Great! Alpha military antenna, MIL 2.0 performed surprisingly well on my balcony despite the absence of the horizontal wire element, and improper ground. The other day I switched from the BPQ software to Airmail in order to check for other RMS gateway stations: Full success! LZ3CB, R2DWL, F5ZFX were approachable almost daily, while LA9K and HB9AK were connectable sporadically. Now I plan to extend the tests ‘in the field’ as soon as the friend’s car is ready. The plan is to go to some public place, a park, or a similar greenery, and promote exchanging emails without Internet.

Thank you, Alpha Antenna!

YT7MPB

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