The QRPer Board

Thomas's last field report and video motivated me to take my TX-500 Discovery out in the woods over the weekend. I paired it with a linked 40m EFHW wire antenna set up as an inverted V with the apex at 40' (12m). A 6 Ah Bioenno LiFePO4 battery powered 5 hours of CW activation at 5 watts, with no sign of running out of juice. I made 106 contacts from K-1345, Cook Forest State Park during that 5 hours of operation across 3 Zulu days. I used 15' (4.5m) RG316 feedline with no other counterpoise, CW Morse pocket paddles, and earbuds connected to the speaker-mic with a 3.5mm stereo female to 3.5mm mono male adapter. Logging was strictly old-school using a Pentel 0.9mm writing stick and a Rite in the Rain notebook.

40m was the most productive band, with a few contacts on 30m, and much fewer than expected on 20m. I am grateful to all of the hunters who made this fun possible.

All-in-all, a great weekend with a great radio!

73 de Brian - K3ES

Thanks for the report Brian.

Sounds like you had fun and that is the most important part of the puzzle.

Great job Brian! I also have the TX-500 and am looking forward to doing my very first POTA activation sometime this summer.