Camping – K7JLX's blog

Camping in the Tillamook State Forest (1/21-23/2022)

It’s been a while and this will be a big post! My partner and I were able to go camping over the weekend, and if you’ve read any of my blog posts you won’t be surprised that I took the opportunity to practice some comms and off grid operating. I wanted to work HF, do some shortwave listening, and see if I could do any UHF/VHF communications. Additionally I wanted to run off of the 100AH battery box for a couple days to see how well it held up under constant use. This is also the first camping trip I brought the speaker stand antenna mast setup on.

On the way out I ran APRS with the Kenwood TM-D710G and the COMET-NCG CA-2X4SR antenna that mounts on the hood of the 4Runner. I noticed that on the way out that I had APRS coverage nearly the whole way out.

The first night we arrived late so I did a bit of SWL. I mostly got Radio Havana Cuba, Radio Nikkei, a distant station broadcasting in Mandarin, and Radio New Zealand International.

The next day I set the antenna up following a fun walk in the woods below the camp site. Most of my work on HF was done using the usual Endfedz Trail friendly 10/20/40m antenna. I strung it between the 4Runner and my portable antenna mast. I also added a 6m end fed dipole to the setup to see if I could reach Kevin, K7AJK from my camp site on the Lab599 TX-500. We had no luck. I wasn’t actually able to make any voice contacts on 20m with this setup even running at 10W, but there was a contest on the band so it was both congested and I suspect folks were running at fairly high power levels to make contacts. As you’ll be able to see from photographs I did a little hack with a stick I found to push the antenna higher off the ground on the truck side. It was especially helpful in preventing the hatch back from striking the antenna.

View of an antenna mast guyed to the ground and a line with an antenna running to a SUV in the background — Guyed antenna mast with two antennas added

View of an SUV with a piece of wood lashed to the roof rack holding some paracord off of the top of the vehicle. — Found piece of wood used to push the antenna higher off of the roof of the 4Runner

An antenna tied to paracord running from the upper-right corner of the photo to a mast several feet away on the edge of a hill. The transformer for the antenna is visible with feed line hanging down. Forest in the background. — The Trail Friendly Endfedz is strung along some paracord to prevent damage to the antenna if the mast blew over.

After a few hours of having no success running phone I decided to switch to packet. Moving the radio into the vehicle reduced the SWR and allowed me to run the entire setup from the 100AH battery since I had used the 4.5AH battery quite a bit for SWL already. I had also been simultaneously been running my 2m rig and APRSDroid on the tablet connected via Bluetooth to the mobile radio with a Mobilinkd TNC3+. I was able to send a number of text messages back and forth between friends using SMSGTE, which was nice given the complete lack of cell service. At this point I was still using the antenna on the truck.

A Raspberry Pi connected with a Lab599 TX-500 radio via two cables sitting in the back of a 4Runner. — Lab599 TX-500 connected to the off grid Raspberry Pi

A tablet sitting on a metal camping table running the JS8Call application. — Tablet running JS8Call

A toolbox with power connections running from it sitting in the front seat of a vehicle. — 100AH battery box connected to the Kenwood TM-D710GA in the vehicle, the Lab599 TX-500, and some lighting.

After quite some time operating on digital I decided to test some configuration changes I made to js8cli to increase the accuracy of maidenhead coordinates I was submitting to APRS-IS via Internet-connected stations running JS8Call. I had some pretty good luck as my position was accurately reported.

A photograph of the screen of a tablet showing the JS8Call application running. A callsign, timestamp, and 10-digit maidenhead coordinate are displayed prominently in the photo along with a screen showing contacts with other stations. — JS8Call screen shot showing a 5-level maidenhead position set via js8cli running an daemon mode

A screenshot of the website aprs.fi showing a Google satellite map with a rectangular marker for K7JLX placed in a clearing. — My position as displayed on aprs.fi

Apart from all the fun I had on HF, and walking around the forest with my HT (where I was reliably digipeated at 5w) I also figured I’d try to see if I could hit some of the repeaters in the Portland area, so I swapped the vertical antenna on the vehicle for my collapsable J-pole and speaker stand antenna mast. Much to my surprise I was actually able to get into the repeaters in the Portland area at 5w, but it was a bit sketchy as sometimes they wouldn’t key up. Apart form that I could get a bunch of APRS stations and digipeaters as well as some folks on the 2m calling frequency. I actually ended up having much better luck on 2m than on HF this time around.

The head unit of a Kenwood TM-D710GA radio placed on the dash of a vehicle. — Kenwood TM-D710GA on the dash of the 4Runner

A 4Runner with an antenna mast tied to the front bumper and connected to the vehicle with feedline. There's a camping table and chairs to one side and in the background are trees, a valley and a mountain on the other side of the valley. — The 4Runner antenna hood antenna swapped for an elevated J-Pole on the speaker stand mast.

Close-up of paracord tying the the antenna mast to steel tubing on an offroading bumper. — Using paracord to lash the antenna to the bumper of the truck

As you might have noticed from the pictures above I ended up moving the antenna because winds were getting higher and I was afraid the antenna might move side-to-side on the bumper’s tubing. I ended up shifting it toward the driver’s side where I could secure it to both the tube running horizontally and to the spot where the tube split, meaning the mast wouldn’t shift from side to size because it was secured with the paracord on both axes. since the antenna mount on the vehicle uses the same connector as most of my coax and the J-pole I was able to just connect the J-pole directly to the existing cabling in the 4Runner. Easy!

For the entire trip apart from doing some SWL with the TX-599 on its 4.5AH battery away from the truck and by the fire ring I ran all the lighting and radios from the 100AH battery box. We charged the tablet, my partner’s phone, and my phone from the battery box as well. We only drew down to 96% in two days. One day had a lot of heavy radio usage as well so that’s all a good sign.

Yellow witch's butter growing from the top of a tree stump with diamond cut patterns.

Some witch’s butter we found on a stump near our camp site

Exploring the Tillamook State Forest and doing nets

Camping, Operating

This post has been a long time coming, and was delayed by the post about the battery box as well as some sudden health issues my partner and I’s furry companion was dealing with. Unfortunately this would be one of his last trips he took with us but it was extremely enjoyable and we had a wonderful time exploring / sniffing everything depending on who you were. Loki was an incredible companion who visibly cared about not just the humans he lived with but all humans, especially folks that were sad or distressed. He is deeply missed by many around him. Rest in peace Old Man.

As we have been exploring with our vehicle I’ve also been testing various scenarios operating the radio. I wanted to see if I could hit the K7LJ repeater on Mt. Tabor in Portland from this camp site so I set up my portable antenna mast, connected my radio to the newly-constructed 100Ah battery box. I messed up connecting the radio at first, but later saw my current draw while the radio was idling was higher than expected and fixed the issue. More on that later.

The net went fine and I had a decent signal report, but my audio was a bit low due to the headset I was using. Increasing the sensitivity resolved that issue after the net had concluded. I’ve noticed that specific Heil headset tends to require more preamplification to produce quality audio for recieving stations on most of my radios. This specific site was somewhere around CN85ho17.

I was able to reach the repeater with little issue and a decent signal report. Being this far out and in the mountains that was a pleasesent surprise.

View of the battery connected to the radio

View on the table with the radio’s head unit and headphones extended from the vehicle

At this point it’s worth pointing out a mistake I made when connecting the radio to the battery. I saw about 1.5A of current draw when I was expecting to see about 0.6A. It’s important to make sure you connect the battery to the radio and to make sure you’re not energizing your vehicle’s electrical system with the battery. You can easily damage things and burn fuses out if you do that. I noticed the current draw was higher than it should be if I were just powering the Kenwood TM-D710G and investigated the electrical setup. I had disconnected the wrong end of a “Y” cable that splits between the Kenwood radio and the CB radio I use for offroading/trails. I had accidently energized the vehicle’s electrical system when it had some accessories powered on. Lesson learned.

Extender connected to the Kenwood radio base unit and to the headphone adapter / radio display

Operating while camping on Mt. Hood 7/31/2021

Camping, Operating, Stories

Hello all, it’s about time I wrote a post about my camping trip my partner and I took a couple weeks ago. I took my trusty Lab599 TX-500 kit, a couple 20W GoalZero Nomad solar panels, headset, and table/chair combo up camping with our “new” 4×4. I wanted to do some HF QRP and some handheld UHF/VHF operation while I was out. I brought some of the same portable furniture that I used at the beach last post since it worked out so well.

The view was pretty sweet for this one. The smoke from the wildfires made everything a bit more hazy but pretty great none-the-less.

View of a heavily forested valley from a high vantage point. In the foreground a radio is sitting on a gray metal camping table. — View while operating

While operating HF I made a number of contacts, and the solar panels kept the 4.5Ah Bioenno LiFePO4 battery built into the HF QRP radio kit charged the whole day. The first HF contact I made was with Stefan, AF6SA who was working POTA in Eldorado Natoinal Forest (K-4455). His signal was 5/6 on at about 450 miles away on 20m. I also made a contact with VA3AAA, Stanley in Ontario, Canada. I was pretty excited to reach Ontario with a low power radio. That contact was also logged on 20m. I also made a contact with the K0GQ radio club in MO on 20m. All of these contacts were made between 5 and 10w using the Trail-friendly EndFedz EFT-10/20/40 antenna strung between a couple trees about 50′ apart and about 25′ above the ground.

I switched radios and bands to see if I could get into some of the repeaters in the Portland area (I could) with my Yaesu FT3DR and a Signal Stick antenna. I ended up on 2m and caught two hams on 146.520Mhz doing a SOTA activation: K7AHR and K7IW. I think they were on Lookout Mountain, but I can’t remember and didn’t properly log it. I was running 5W for those contacts.

Tour of the radio setup at the camp site

Mt. Hood National Forest vehicle camping trip and comms

Camping, Stories

Hello all! It’s been a hot minute since I sat down and wrote about something! Today I’m writing about a car camping trip I took last weekend to Mt. Hood National Forest and some experiments with communications I did. Some of this is actually about cellular comms and some is about amateur radio fails. We spent the night at two spots – one at about 1,100 ft. and another around 3,500 ft. This becomes relevant mostly because of cell coverage, but also to some extent regarding stations I was able to receive doing SWL (shortwave listening).

High gain antenna mounted to cargo basket on the top of the car

The first night we spent I didn’t get a chance to set the portable HF radio up, but I did test my new WeBoost Reach Drive RV. I had no cell service with Verizon at that location and decided to mount the WeBoost high gain antenna on the the cargo basket. I then attached the small low gain antenna and connected the setup to my 40AH Bioenno LiFePO₄ battery. After cycling my phone into and out of airplane mode I had 1X and enough service for voice calls. I did a couple tests and was able to reach a couple people via telephone as a test. Not bad! The cell booster drew approximately 1A at 14v using the DC hardwire power supply which I fitted with Anderson PowerPole connectors in a “right hand red” configuration to match my off grid power setup.

We found the second spot much earlier and had some daylight to set up. This spot was much higher in altitude than the first spot and was much colder. The weather was pretty rainy so we erected a shelter using a synthetic tarp, tarp poles, and some paracord that we keep around just for such an occasion. I intended to do some HF radio work but I couldn’t tune my hybrid Superantenna / Chameleon Mil Whip 2.0 setup to save my life so instead I figured I’d do some SWL later at night. In the mean time I decided to test the WeBoost again since the setup was fairly easy. I set it up again and cycled my phone into and out of airplane mode. I was getting a 3G signal at first with occasional bursts of 4G before I fired the system up, and after it was all said and done I had fairly solid 4G service with a decent speed test of 7Mbps. Even though I wasn’t able to tune my antenna on 20 or 40m I was able to do some excellent shortwave listening with the Lab599 TX-500. I was able to get the BBC World Service shortwave broadcast discussing the current COVID-19 situation in India on 6005KHz out of Ascension Island. I heard another station broadcasting in Arabic and playing music that I couldn’t find in listings. Both stations had some QSB, but the station in Arabic was significantly more faint with more significant QSB (irregular signal fading that occurs as a signal reflects off of the ionosphere). I suspect the higher elevation I was at helped me get stations much further away than I’d normally be able to in the metro Portland area. I’ve been able to pick up Radio Havana, Radio New Zealand Int’l, occasional Japanese stations, and lots of Chinese stations (if I’m up at 4 AM) in Portland. A good resource for finding shortwave stations is https://short-wave.info. I’ve also been able to reliably pick up a Russian numbers station designated M12 as well which broadcasts from Khabarovsk Russia.

Car camping for the weekend

Camping, Operating, Stories

So, we decided to go car camping this weekend and naturally I decided I’d bring my QRP rig and HT (handheld transceiver). The goal was to sleep in the back of our car and cook using a propane camp stove while not paying for a camping spot. I also wanted to see how well my QRP setup worked with fewer resources including charging and little space to store the setup and supporting equipment. For this I picked my Superantenna/Chameleon Mil Whip 2.0 kit and Lab599 TX-500 kit. Neither kit includes feed line. Keep that in mind while reading…

A burning camp stove sitting in the back of a vehicle with its hatch back open in the dark. The stove has a pot on one burner with an avacado and knife roll near it. A woman stands to the left with a head lamp helping prepare food. — Cooking after we arrived at our chosen spot.

On a Friday after work we packed the car and left. A couple hours later we made it to our spot on the Oregon coast with some decent moonlight between spurts of rain. We made dinner in a fairly heavy wind out of the back of the car. We could hear the relaxing sound of crashing waves against rocks that we could barely see. After having some dinner we set up the folding mattress in the car and settled in for the night.

Waves on the Pacific ocean are visible beyond a chainlink fence with wooden posts with a gray sky. A bird can be seen flying by and the inside of an out-of-focus and open car door is visible on the left side of the frame. The sky is gray and cloudy. — View waking up from the car

After waking up and getting ready we made some breakfast and coffee on a nearby park table. We had to wait till the rain stopped to make food but I was able to make some coffee in the rain without issue. I was half way through my coffee and food when I realized I didn’t pack any feed line! Fortunately we were close to a town that happened to have a store open that morning which had a box of left over parts labeled “CB Radio Parts”. There was a small RG-58 coax cable with PL-239 ends and thus my problem was solved! I purchased the cable and got underway for our hike.

A radio sitting on top of an ammo can attached by cable to a duplexer and, Raspberry Pi 4 in a case. A small travel router is also attached by power cable to the ammo can. A number of small bags and a backpack are visible in and partially in frame. The ground is a forest floor with branches, sticks, lichens, and leaves on the ground. — Radios set up with a duplexer for VHF and HF operation

We did a short hike and as we neared the end of the hike we found a small but well worn trail leading off the main path, so we took it in search of a spot where my partner could water color and I could set up and operate. Not too far down the offshoot trail we found a fairly open patch of moss with a fallen tree that I could use as a bench. I set up the Superantenna using the ground spike for simultaneous HF and 2m operation using the Superantenna MC2 and MP1C, topping the loading coils with my Chameleon Mil Whip 2.0 for increased SWR bandwidth over the titanium whip that comes with the Superantenna kit. Unfortunately the photo I took of the deployed antenna was corrupted by the time I got to uploading it. The UHF/VHF side of the Comet CF-706 duplexer was connected to my Yaesu FT3D so I could attempt contacts on the 2m calling frequency (146.520Mhz) and monitor/send 2m APRS packets.

I tuned the antenna using my NanoVNA for 20m and started working SSB phone. I attempted to respond to a number of calls and tried calling to no avail. After 40 minutes of trying between 5 and 8.5W I decided to switch to JS8Call. I have yet to make a phone contact on my Lab599 TX-500 on any band. I’m hoping I can just chalk this up to being run over by higher power stations. As I was setting my station up for digital comms I noticed something unexpected – the maidenhead coordinates in JS8Call hadn’t been updated automatically as js8cli would normally do, and I also noticed the time on the Pi varied by a minute from my cellphone. That’s highly unusual as the GPS unit typically corrects any RTC drift that might occur. The next step was to check my GPS unit’s LED through the vent holes in the case. It’s flashing one second on, and one off. For the specific Adafruit Ultimate GPS board I run that means the GPS hasn’t acquired a lock. I waited a few more minutes and found that it still hadn’t acquired a lock and decided to check the board for any broken or loose connections. Since the entire setup allows me to disassemble it without tools I did to inspect it. I found no loose connections or other apparent issues. It was time to reboot by fully removing power as had worked sometimes in the past. Still no luck following a full power down / power up sequence! I then leveraged my phone and tablet GPS units to get a position. My phone eventually got a location and grid square using the HamGPS application, but my phone had been on and tracking satellites for the entire hike. My Pi and tablet had been off. This is interesting because I had an OK view of the sky despite the very tall trees surrounding the patch. I hoped my GPS unit wasn’t damaged or malfunctioning and decided to manually set my JS8Call location from my phone, automatically acquire a timing offset from other stations in JS8Call and move on. I had a couple stations hear my heartbeats but couldn’t make contact with any operators directly. I also attempted to send an SMS message to a friend but alas no one was hearing my transmissions as the band seemed to have closed. Overall not the best luck, but it was time to head back to the trail head so we had daylight to drive out and make camp.

An open hatch back of a vehicle loaded with bags. There is a Raspberry Pi in a case and travel wireless router attached to a battery in a bag. — Hooking the Raspberry Pi and wireless access point up for testing after the hike

Successful test of the GPS from the car without the trees overhead

I decided to hook the gear up in the back of the car as my partner got the dog ready to head out in order to determine if my GPS unit was actually broken. I hooked everything up to the big battery that was in the trunk and after a minute or so the GPS lock LED flashed once every several seconds. This indicated a lock, so I fired the tablet up, logged into the Pi, and checked the reports with cgps, a test GPS client provided by the gpsd-clients package. They lined up with where we were. Even though I could see sky clearly through gaps in the canopy the GPS unit wasn’t able to acquire satellites in the time we spent in the clearing.

A soft-sided cooler, LED lantern, water bottle, beverage in a can, and a radio attached to an ammo can by a power cable and a duplexer sitting on top of a wooden park bench. — TX-500 set up for shortwave listening (SWL) and for 2m operation with my Yeasu FT3D

After arriving at camp and rigging the car for sleeping I set the radio up for shortwave listening and got my Yaesu FT3D connected to the duplexer after this photo was taken. It was a windy and chilly but great day. It was time for a beverage and some relaxing SWL and taking in the scenery before turning in for the night. I used the same setup as I did on the hike, except with a tripod for the antenna and no radials since I was receiving only. We were able to hear a number of stations, but settled on Radio Havana English (6.0MHz if I recall correctly) since they were playing music instead of the typical religious content with creepy-sounding voices you typically hear on US shortwave stations like WRMI in this part of the US.

An antenna is mounted on a tripod in the foreground. Directly behind it is a park bench with someone sitting on it and some radio equipment with a cooler. The background is a fenced-in green area and the Pacific ocean and steep rocks in the background. — View of the setup on the park bench

Lessons learned:
– Don’t forget your feed line. I got lucky enough that I could acquire some, but if this was a disaster or if I were on a hike/camping in a remote location I would have been unable to operate.
– Even though you can see a lot of sky in an area, it doesn’t mean your GPS can acquire satellites. Be prepared with some mechanism to acquire and set your location and time for something like JS8Call.
– When documenting something take a couple pictures in case one of them gets corrupted.

Sunday funday in the Tilamook State Forest

Camping, Stories

This is just a quick post about some light operating I did out in the forest today while getting some target practice in since I’m not really a sports person. The weather was fairly cold, between 35 and 40 degrees F with alternating rain and snow. This post is mostly about what running QRP in decent conditions can do. I set my Lab599 TX-500 up with my Superantenna / Chameleon Mil Whip 2.0 antenna combo and my offgrid Raspberry Pi and access point this morning to see how far I got out from the outdoor “range” we were at. I powered the whole setup with my Bioenno 40Ah LiFePO₄ battery and threw my GoalZero Nomad 20 folding solar panel on just to take some of the load from the battery as it’s just a standard practice I engage in.

Map showing connections from my station to others in the continental US and AK. — Screenshot of my signal reports from https://pskreporter.info

Map showing distance between my station in OR and an east coast US station. — Map showing distance between my station and KC1GTU. Generated by https://www.karhukoti.com/Maidenhead-Grid-Square-Locator

The idea was that I was going to try to run JS8Call at QRP on 20m for a few hours. The power levels I ran were 1w, 5w, and 7.5w (for a couple minutes) throughout the day. I generally settled on 5w as I was heard from the southwest, south, along the east coast, midwest, and AK. Bumping the power to 7.5w didn’t really yield any additional responses to my heartbeats so I reduced power to 5w and stayed there for most of the day. My furthest contact via heartbeat and “QTH?” commands was KC1GTU at FN41 (about 2,250NM away at 5w).

Setup photos:

Collage of photos showing my antenna on the left. On the top right is a table covered by a tarp extended from the open hatch back of a Prius to two poles covering a table with a center support extended up from the table top. Various firearms are sitting on the table. On the bottom right is a view inside the open back of the vehicle with disorganized cases, and a radio setup with a tablet. — Very messy setup

Lessons learned:

Make sure you set your grid locator correctly in JS8Call. Anyone seeing my station would see me at CN85qm, about 45 miles away from where I really was at CN85hs. (Update: JS8CLI solves this problem.)
I could probably run this setup for a whole day on my 12Ah Bioenno LiFePO4 battery.
The Lab599 TX-500 continues to prove itself to be a great rig off grid!
Don’t bring too much gear even if you’re in a car.
The gear performed well below 40F.