[MRCA] On Patrol Cuttyhunk Island

[Peter Gottlieb]

Great fun to get out in the field for some portable operations with mil radios.  
I was out with a digital head PRC-515 as well as a Racal Syncal 2000.  The 515 
has a H-189 handset, the racal a Clansman RA-250.  Both have lithium ion packs I 
built out of A123 26650 M1B cells:  4.6 AH 26.4V for the 515 and 6.9 AH 13.2V 
for the 2000.  They powered the radios flawlessly and were very light.

Interesting lesson learned:  no matter how much you think you've tested a setup, 
it isn't truly tested until you've used it in actual field conditions.  I made a 
nice dipole setup using 300 ohm twinlead and a home-made 4:1 balun.  Tested the 
balun on the bench, not much can go wrong with the dipole itself, right?  On the 
balun I put a couple of 3-way terminal posts and at the last minute thought it 
would be neat to have a dual banana plug on the end of the twinlead.  Out to the 
field it all went.

Unfortunately, both my pack sets seemed deaf, also they wouldn't get out 
(although both autotuners tuned nicely).  Fortunately I was with others who had 
set up another antenna and had other parts like a balun.  After some testing, 
both radios worked on the other antenna and a different balun gave the same 
results on my dipole.  We were all scratching our heads then I thought to 
measure continuity of my setup.  Lo and behold, the dual banana plug was 
shorted!  I had picked up a few at Dayton from someone in the flea area and 
thought them to be standard dual plugs and they looked like them but in fact 
they were shorting plugs!

In the field this was an easy fix; using my Leatherman I cut off the plug and 
stripped the twinlead and connected to the binding posts on the balun.  All of a 
sudden everything was different, I could hear distant stations rock solid and 
they could hear me.  Both radios got good reports.

I also need a better spooling method to stow and deploy the dipole and lead-in, 
so I'll work on that next.  I also didn't really like the ALICE packs I have for 
the radios.  The straps are unwieldy and long when moving in and out of vehicles 
and the packs are hard to carry when not on your back.  I'm open to other 
ideas.  I have the special backpack for the PRC-515 which I find very 
comfortable on my back but it's unwieldy to carry off-back as well.  I have a 
Racal pack but it needs slight modification to carry the Syncal and I realized 
that the night before the trip so didn't have time to do it.  That one is 
smaller so might be decent.

Good things to have on this outing:
      Leatherman
      Multimeter
      Supply of 1/8" rope
      Ty-raps
      Coax adapters
      RF cables

I tried using a whip on one of the rigs.  Even with a 4 wire decent length 
counterpoise the performance was nowhere near the dipole. Too weak for the 
distances we were working.  Our dipoles weren't very high off the ground so we 
got good results as could be expected in the NVIS distance ranges.

Living in a residential area it was nice to be remote and only have one source 
of noise, the generator the others were using.  Much less noise than I am used to.

BTW, I didn't bring it but I have a few of those folding special forces solar 
panels.  The print on them says 16V 0.8 amps.  I found that they do a pretty 
decent job just directly connected with banana leads to the Racal batteries 
(which both the panels and the batteries accept).  Over 600 mA charge, not at 
all bad considering no MPPT controller.  Enough to be adding significant energy 
to a spare battery, more than 50% charge in 6 hours of sunlight and the panel is 
light and easily fits in with other gear.  Seems useful if out in the field for 
an extended period.

Peter
KB2VTL


On 9/23/2016 3:12 PM, Radio Station KW1I wrote:
> 5357 USB until 4:00
>
>
> /Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE Droid/
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Radio Station KW1I <kw1i at earthlink.net>
> Date: Sep 23, 2016 2:46 PM
> Subject: On Patrol Cuttyhunk Island
> To: mrca at mailman.qth.ner
> Cc:
>
>     5357 USB until about 4:00.
>
>
>     /Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE Droid/
>     ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>     From: Radio Station KW1I <kw1i at earthlink.net>
>     Date: Sep 23, 2016 2:39 PM
>     Subject: On Patrol Cuttyhunk Island
>     To: Glenn Miller <cgmiller55 at verizon.net>,Douglas McFarren
>     <mcfarren610 at gmail.com>,Glenn Miller <cgmiller55 at verizon.net>,Jim Miller
>     <jhm49 at hotmail.com>,jeff messier <jeffw1aea at gmail.com>
>     Cc:
>
>         On 5357 USB until 4:00
>
>         /Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE Droid/
>
>
>
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