Well, this weekend is “Field Day”: one of the big contest weekends for amateur radio. Basically hams go off grid, travel to campgrounds and the like, and operate from there. It was perhaps supposed to indicate some kind of emergency preparedness, but really, it’s just an excuse for a contest and a bit of public outreach, trying to encourage people to start in amateur radio.

Anywhoo, I went down to Cesar Chavez park in the Berkeley Marina on Saturday, and snapped a few pictures of the EBARC club station operating there. I wore my Pacificon QRP T-shirt, which served as an ice breaker to a bunch of people, including KE6RS, Ron Smith who is part of the Norcal QRP group. He seemed really nice, and suggested that I get in contact with their group and maybe attend some of their meetings. The Norcal group is probably the most famous of the QRP groups in the U.S., and what’s cool is they make some pretty nifty kits, including the FCC-1 frequency counter I built for my Tentec direct conversion receiver.

Some pictures:

When I got home, I decided to tune around. I was hoping to find some activity on 6m, just for laughs, but was dismayed to hear my usual “nuthin but static” on the little FT-817. I’ve just been using my 20m dipole, which is hardly the right antenna. So, in a fit of boredom, I fished out a 15 foot piece of scrap RG-58, screw connected a BNC connector on one end, and then made a dipole ala this technique, namely by stripping the outer insulation from the coax for about 55 inches, then opening a hole in the copper shield, and pulling the inner insulated core out. Took me about five minutes.

And, it works! I hung it vertically outside (probably not optimal, but it was already dark) and easily copied the K6FV/B beacon which is probably 35 miles away, and which I could only hear a hint of with previous antenna. Here’s the nifty spectrogram (click on it to see it bigger):

If you look really carefully, you might be convinced there is another beacon signal just a tiny bit lower. I haven’t been able to figure out what that one is, but it’s a good benchmark for further improvements to my 6m antenna.