Maybury XMAS

 This year is on a roll. Unusually warm temperatures continue! So when the sun peeked out today on Christmas day, I decided to do a quick POTA activation of K-1518 [ Maybury State Park]. I go into my garage and load up the radio and antenna on to my motorcycle. After gearing up and trying to roll the motorcycle out of the garage, notice it is very sluggish and hard to do. Sure enough, the front tire had deflated. I checked the tire for any obvious punctures or foreign objects and do not find any. So, I pull my compressor out and start it to get the tire reinflated. I notice that the compressor never kicks out. Eventually I find that there is a big gash on the high pressure hose causing the tank never to fill up. Determined to make it to the park, I finally pull out the emergency inflator in my car and get the tire inflated. 

After a quick ride through crisp, cold afternoon, I arrived at the park and found it to be pretty active. A lot of people had the idea to enjoy the outdoors on this warm day. I manage to find a secluded spot and set up for activation. Since this was going to be a quick one, I decided to set it up on the motorcycle itself.

Motorcycle XMAS activation of K-1518

The bands seemed to be good. But after trying about 10 minutes of calling CQ on 40m, I am getting no response. POTA also indicates no other activators on 40m. So I made the decision to go to better fishing grounds on 20m. As usual, 20m did not disappoint and I had a successful activation within 15 minutes. I then lingered on a little while more to grab a few contacts on 30m. I was surprised that there were quite a few activators and hunters active on X-mas day!

Solstice Sinisterness

It is not uncommon when activating POTA to get response from calls that are adjacent or a few letters apart. These are usually multi-op stations with spouses or siblings that got their tickets together and hence very closely spaced call signs.

Today (winter solstice of 2023) I was activating Belle Isle Park K-1487 in Michigan and encountered the following calls in sequence. I first worked W8CAR out of OH. 

As soon as I was done with the call, I got a call from W8CA.

Initially I thought the caller was trying to correct me. However, when I went back to the second call, both reported different QTH states. This was confirmed by lookin up QRZ after I came back home from the activation. What are the chances? Have you run into situations like these?

Maybe I should go and buy the lottery!

Furrry Friends on Activation

During most of my summer activations, I ride to the park, which means I have to leave our furry family member behind. On almost all my activations, I try to combine other errands so that I minimize fuel expenses and wear and tear on the automobiles. Today, I had to pick up family members near Ann Arbor area; I decided to set out a little early and get an activation of K-1513 done. The idea was to take our dog along and walk along the trail for a bit and then get a quick activation done before completing the errand.

However, we were a little late in getting out of the QTH. So when we arrived at the park I had about 40 minutes before having to pick up the family members. So I decided to go ahead with the activation while my wife walked the dog. However, while I set up and worked the activation, our dog did not want to leave me behind. 

C'mon. Wrap it up and let's go for a walk!

She ended up waiting for me by my activation spot. With the dog staring at me during the entire activation, I was under pressure to get it wrapped up quickly and get on with the walk! I wonder how many of you take your furry family members for an activation and do they pressure you into wrapping it up soon.

JPC-12 Redux

 Yesterday, I wrote about using the JPC-12 antenna for the first time. I had indicated that I had used the antenna on 40m and 30m. I did not bother to tune the coil for the absolute minimum, but instead relied on the KX-3 tuner to touch it up to achieve minimal SWR. It did work very well.

Today, I wanted to try and use this antenna without the internal tuner. I set up the antenna with the coil in the center, between the fixed length elements and the telescopic whip.  So I went off to K-1495 for another activation. I forgot to take the nano-VNA with me. So I had to rely on the KX-3 SWR meter to establish tuning. The tuning was performed at 0.5W. The JPC-12 comes with two marks on the coil one each for 20m and 40m. They are good starting points and I was able to get about 1.3:1 match on both these bands within a few clicks of these marks. With the coil slider somewhere in the middle, got a similar match for 30m band as well. This was the first time I had used this antenna on 20m and got contacts with decent reports from both the coasts. 

Finally, for 17m I had to remove one of the fixed length sections and got a very good match. I was able to work an European station to boot at about 5W. 

To be fair, it was a rainy day and I decided to stick the antenna in a copse of conifers to prevent the antenna from getting wet. Despite, this the antenna performed exceedingly well.

So is this THE POTA antenna? I am increasingly convinced that if it is not THE antenna, it is exceedingly close to being one. 

Update 04 DEC 2023: I took the antenna out again today for activation of K-1522. I used the loading coil and tuned to 20m. The KX-3 read an SWR of about 1.5. Running 5W QRP had a successful activation with decent reports from responding stations. One of these days, I want to do an A/B test of my usual wire antennas against this one. The more I use it the more I like the JPC-12. 

JPC-12 set for 20m

Sidenote: Yes, the parking lot for K-1522 may look a little drab, but this is a park just a few blocks away from downtown Detroit. The GM headquarters is visible toward the left of the image in the background. However, the park it is situated on the beautiful Detroit Riverwalk, voted to be among the top 10 riverwalks in the country. The walk along the river offers views of Windsor, ON, Canada.

If you turn around and look the other way the city and the drabness magically disappear and lush nature beckons along the path!

Park Marker on the Detroit River Walk

 I love activating from this park and Belle Isle State Park, which is about a mile from this location; during peak seasons, it is fun to watch people enjoying themselves here...

Update: 2024/01/10 - I experienced the first failure of the antenna component. The extensible whip fell apart. It is to be noted that I have been using the whip for about 30 activations. I also left the whip stored in my car with temperatures well below freezing.  I have also been extending the whip in icy and windy conditions with temperatures in the 20F range (-7 C). I am not sure if that is a contributory factor. I have a replacement whip on order from a Chinese website. I still believe that this is a great antenna; it may not be built for extreme conditions but with proper care, it should last a long time. 

JPC-12 First spin

This is my first year of POTA, I started early spring and settled on using a random wire antenna for my activations. This served me well for all these months. But, with winter approaching, the Michigan parks are moving all the picnic tables into storage. With snowfalls imminent, all I may have access to is the parking lots. This makes finding a convenient tree and getting the wire up on it a little cumbersome. I used to have a Eurocom vertical, but setting it up involved cinching multiple hose clamps. Further, it is also much heavier and the sections did not reliably stay up. Getting the antenna into the same configuration multiple times was also proving to be difficult. After a quick survey, I found that many activators were using the JPC-12 vertical successfully. It had the right form factor and weight, which meant, I could use this antenna on the trails during summer and during my motorcycle based activations. 

I got the antenna a few weeks ago, but work meant, I could not get out to a park to test it out. I did testing with nano VNA and found the approximate detents for various frequencies. I did not require the lowest match. I wanted to get it pretty close and let the KX-3 antenna tuner touch it up. I finally got to take it out for a spin today. However, I can confirm you can get close to 1:1 to 1:1.2 match on at least the 40m, 30m, and 20m bands. 

The antenna comes with four fixed length sections that screw together, a telescopic whip, a tuning coil , SO-239 connector section, some radials (long ribbon data cables that can be split if needed) and a ground spike. All the screw connectors are M-10 which makes other mounting options possible. I went with the standard configuration of having the coil in the middle between the fixed length elements and the telescoping whip. I was concerned that it might take a little longer to set up and tear down compared to the wire up the tree, but I think with a little practice, I can easily put this antenna up in about the same time. 

JPC-12 in a functional carry bag.

JPC-12 debut at K-1518

So how does it perform? Exceedingly well. I worked 40m and 30m this morning and found the reception exceedingly good. The noise was pretty low. I made about 45 contacts running about 5W; the contacts gave me decent signal reports . I was surprised with the number of close contacts I worked; I was expecting a low take-off angle might prevent that. I could not try other bands as they did not seem to be open in the early morning hours when I was activating. 

The advantages

• Quality construction
• Light weight
• Quick setup
• Resonant on 40m, 30m, and 20m without a configuration change (except for tuning coil adjustment)
• Power handling up to 100W
• Can be used as a mast in a pinch.

The disadvantages: 

• Bands other than above will need removal of elements or adjusting whip height
• No guying solution provided; may not need one unless extremely windy.

This antenna gets this POTA activator seal of approval!

Update: 2024/01/10 - I experienced the first failure of the antenna component. The extensible whip fell apart. It is to be noted that I have been using the whip for about 30 activations. I also left the whip stored in my car with temperatures well below freezing.  I have also been extending the whip in icy and windy conditions with temperatures in the 20F range (-7 C). I am not sure if that is a contributory factor. I have a replacement whip on order from a Chinese website. I still believe that this is a great antenna; it may not be built for extreme conditions but with proper care, it should last a long time.