FYBO fun

FYBO was fun today.  No big effort as there were way too many other things going on that vied for my attention.  In between chores and duties, I was able to get out to the driveway, where I had the PFR3A on a battery in the back of my Jeep.  The antenna was the Buddistick on the magmount on the top of the roof.  Kudos to Bob W3BBO for suggesting this setup - it worked great!  The car body acts as a much better counterpoise/ground plane than the single wire and using the magmount eliminates the need for mast and guying.  So if you're not hiking - this is a great way to use a Buddistick.

It ends up being much taller than a standard Hamstick (definitely not drivable), but the SWR was very nice and I was able to use the PFR3As internal tuner to even get that ironed out flat.

Ham at work - excuse the mess!

First QSO of the day was with Hank N8XX operating as "Amigo" with the WQ8RP callsign.  In all, I made 11 contacts in between grocery shopping, baking some bread for my daughter's choir bake sale, etc, etc, etc.

Here's a better look at the antenna.

On 40 Meters, I undid the tap and extended the whip all the way.  That gave me about a 1.4:1 SWR.  I only made one contact on 40 Meters and that was with Mark NK8Q in Pennsylvania.  He was using only 1 Watt and almost blew the ear buds out of my ears.  I don't think I have ever heard 1 Watt as a 599 Plus before today.

The temperature was 45F when I started, so for simplicity sake, I used that throughout, even though I think it started dropping for my last couple of QSOs.  I think the lowest temperature that was reported to me was 32F and the highest was 76F.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP - When you care to send the very least!