Foundations of Amateur Radio

Much of the operation that I've done as a radio amateur is conducted in the field. That is, I tend to either drive my car to a location, or go out with friends and set-up camp to play. After you do this for a while you start to notice the things that you look for in an operating position.

The very first one is accessibility. That is, how easy is it to get there? It's fine coming up with the ultimate location, but if it's an hour's drive away and you've only got an hour to play, you'll spend all your time getting there and you'll be home late.

By contrast, for field days lasting several nights, I've regularly driven more than a hundred kilometres to find the spot, sometime much more than that. The point is that the accessibility changes depending on your available time. The journey to the location can be just as much fun as the destination itself.

How long you plan to be there will determine what antennas you might want to set-up. If you're there for an hour, you'll likely use a vertical on your car. If you're there for the weekend, your antenna farm will be determined by how much wire you brought and what you can hang it off.

Hanging antennas is the next thing. You can bring your own poles, but for height, nothing beats a solid tree. The taller the better. More taller, more better. If you have several to choose from, you get to play with all manner of fun stuff. For one antenna contraption we had three trees that we ran a wire between. They were roughly spaced in a triangle about 200 meters apart from each other. As I recall, the antenna we built, a massive V-beam managed to talk to Europe for most of the weekend.

For another adventure a simple G5RV dipole was hoisted high into the trees. Another was accomplished by strapping a pole to a fence and setting up an inverted-V antenna. Recently we set-up an antenna that was nothing more than a wire running over the ground.

So, generally speaking height is good. You can cheat by having a low tree and a hill. Or a fence and a pole, or a gazebo and tent-pegs. What ever you can do to attach an antenna to will work to some degree. Which reminds me, if your hill is tall enough, it's likely to have a communications tower on it for someone, if not everyone. They're not the end of the world, but they can cause havoc with noise. Depends entirely on what the communication structure is used for. Bear in mind, some of these sites have noisy solar panel inverters or generators, so that too needs to be taken into consideration.

Another factor in picking a location involves water. Setting up a vertical on a jetty is gold. I've made many long-distance contacts using a vertical with a ground wire running into the ocean. Note that you don't have to actually get wet. Being near the ocean is often enough. I've had plenty of success from a beach car-park from a vertical on my car.

In general, man-made objects such as houses, factories, other cars, power lines, generators, boats, camping grounds with solar panels and plenty more are often bad news for HF communications. The biggest disappointment happens when you take the time to go to a site, set up camp, build your antennas, turn on the radio and all you hear is the noise from a nearby source of interference.

That said, you don't need to travel to the ends of the earth either. 15 minutes from my house is a lake with a park. There's a car park which on occasion attracts a motor home with a solar panel, but by enlarge it's a local park with people going for a walk. From a radio perspective, despite homes, businesses, schools and cars nearby, the place is heaven. It's quiet, it has shade, running water, fence posts and I regularly make contacts from there, right in the middle of the city.

That brings me to another aspect. Creature comforts.

Setting up near a busy road isn't fun. Neither is sitting in your car without shade. Having amenities within reasonable distance helps. For example, recently for a field day we set-up within 10 minutes drive from a regional centre. Didn't even notice it was there, happily dropped in for shopping and a meal. Some beers might have been consumed.

That same site also had high voltage power lines near our location. The only difference was that our site was above the power lines at the top of a hill, so we never even noticed them.

Finally, some of this is all about picking a camp-site that's suitable for radio, rather than a radio site that will handle camping. You get better at it the more you do it. If you check back after the adventure, you'll learn some stuff as well, so don't be shy to discuss your experience with your friends.

What ever you do, practice makes perfect.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB