For those of you that live in, or frequent, Florida, you already know this, but for the rest of you out there, Alligator Alley is the nickname that is given to the stretch of Route 75 that runs through the Everglades and Big Cypress Nature Preserve.  So why name a blog post after a highway?  The simple answer is - because I activated it!

      From January 30th - February 2nd, I had to make a work trip to Ft. Myers FL.  When I started doing my standard search for parks nearby to activate, I started coming up with a lot of duds - the parks that were close ended up being a weird mix of places that close at sunset (which doesn't work out well for after-work activations), or places that you need a boat to access!  Since I don't travel with a boat, those were out of the question.  I was about to give up and just stick to activating the Holiday Inn, but instead I reached out the community on the POTA Facebook group and wasn't disappointed!  Bob, KA9JAC, jumped in and said if you're willing to travel about an hour, Big Cypress is open 24 hours.  That's all I needed to hear!

     I packed up my backs (I did a a photo-journal style post a while back to show how I travel with my gear) and headed off to work!  My plane landed pretty late Monday night, so I didn't really have time to operate but I did head out to the location that I had scoped out on Google Maps.  At least that's what I tried to do....apparently I Googled wrong, and ended up somewhere else entirely, but I'm glad I did!  Inside Big Cypress Nature Preserve is also the country's smallest post office (and yes, it is an actual, operating post office!)

     I didn't set up here at all, but for anyone planning a future activation this would be a cool place to set up - it has a decent little parking area, after-hours there's not much traffic so you shouldn't be pestered too much, and it isn't too far off the beaten path.  Just gas up before you start, because the closest gas stations close early in the evening!

     So, Tuesday night, I managed to head to the location I initially planned.  Right on Alligator Alley (Route 75) there are a couple trailhead parking area's and rest stops.  I set up at one of the trailhead parking areas.  This was a decent place to operate, but not the most scenic in the world.  For me it was decent though - I set up my buddipole mast for a center support, and ran my 40 meter wire dipole parallel to the fence along the parking area, and tied the ends off to fence posts.  As far as ham radio goes, it worked well, but a word of caution - bring bug spray!  Right around dusk the swarms come out for a feeding frenzy.  It doesn't last long but it's awful while it lasts!  

     During my first evening I managed 30 or so contacts from this location, on 40 meters.  The highlight the first night was a digital contact with Venezuela!  For the second night I found a much more scenic location in the preserve to operate.  I even had visitors come and check out my antenna!

     In addition to this visitor, one of the other visitors was an actual person - another tourist that stopped by and asked about my set up and what I was doing - he thought it was pretty cool, and even said "That's awesome!" when I told him I was making contacts with the Pacific Northwest, Canada, and Puerto Rico.  We may have a new convert to the hobby!
     The location I chose for the second night was actually just down the road a little bit from the tiny post office.  There is a roadside park called "HP Williams Roadside Park" that has a decent parking area, some benches, a small boardwalk for viewing, and even restroom facilities (but no running water, so no promises on what they might smell like in the heat of the summer!)  
     For night 2 I wised up and set up my station inside the back of the rental car (A jeep compass) and ran the wires through one of the windows, open just enough to let the wires through.  I stuffed the opening with a spare t-shirt for good measure.  I then spent the early evening operating from behind the vehicle with the tailgate up, and then when the swarm started coming I just jumped in and closed the tailgate, and kept operating until the feeding frenzy ended.
     My only disappointment from this activation was that I didn't get into any CW like I had planned.  Cell phone reception at this location was in and out, and I had to pack up and leave so that I could be back into an area with cell coverage before my nightly FaceTime call with my kiddo's at home (this is a tradition when I'm traveling - we do our bedtime stories and everything just like we would if I was home.)  
     With that, I'll wrap it up and leave you with a couple tid-bits, and some pictures:

Till next time!

The big day is here! It even started snowing this morning, just to make it a proper winter field day. My backyard, with the snow falling (hard to see snow in pictures though...) is waiting patiently for a tent and antenna's to be erected.

Setup can't start till later this morning, so until then here's my final checklist:

• ​Get my little helper to Dance class and home again
  
• Fill up the gas can (for the generator)
  
• ​Fill up the propane bottle (for heat!)
  

Hope to hear you on the air!

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     A wise person (my YL) once quoted another wise person (not sure whom) and told me "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of then good." Along those lines, I hadn't really gotten around to putting together a decent wire antenna that I could use independent of my Buddipole on my portable operations.
     There are times where a wire would have been nice for the speed, or where I had tall trees available. My hang up (no pun intended...) was that I wanted the "right" balun to put at then feedpoint. Buying one just didn't feel right because I know I'm capable of making one, but I hadn't gotten around to making one either because I wanted the "right" parts.
     With that thought simmering away in my head, and Winter Field Day fast approaching, it dawned on me that I had stumbled on one of those small project boxes while cleaning some stuff up in the garage. I decided to get over my paralysis of wanting to make it perfect, and just put together something that was good. I had some hardware, and a quick trip to the hardware store got me some more. I didn't have anything to wind a balun but I figured what the heck, why not make a basic feedpoint now, and I can always wind up a ferrite core for a proper balun in the future.
     If you hung on through all that, congrats! Here's the nitty gritty of my feedpoint/future balun:

First, I drilled some holes in the bottom, and installed a panel mount BNC connector (why BNC? Because it's what I had!)

​Next, I soldered a bit of wire to the center pin, and used a ring terminal to attach another bit to then shell of then connector.

Also, because I like to at least try to make sure things are straight, I always put painters tape on things, and then measure and mark where to drill:

     So here's the shortcut, and why I call this quick and dirty.  Ultimately, I'd like to actually make this into a proper balun, but since I don't have any ferrite beads/rings/rods available, for now it is just a generic feedpoint.  The thought here though, is why let not having a ferrite hold up the whole works?  This will work just as well as the typical coax spliced directly to dipole feedpoint that is so common, but gives me the ability to upgrade.  I'll just make sure that I keep it in the back of my mind so that the next time I'm ordering stuff from a place that would have it, or the next time I'm wandering the rows at a hamfest, I can pick up what I need.

     All that was left for now however, was to put the lid on, add the wire connection hardware on the outside, and put a couple small holes in the bottom to allow any accumulated condensation to drain.

  
     So, looking at this final picture, it doesn't look so dirty after all...maybe I should have called this post "Quick, Upgradable Feedpoint" instead.

     Whats you're favorite feedpoint construction method?  Leave a comment and let me know!

     Sometimes things just work out.  In some cases it just seems like patience is the key, and in some cases it is just a combination of good timing and the camaraderie of ham radio.  While this is by no means a technical post, good fortune struck twice in one day in my little corner of the world, so I figured I would share!

     First, in my post about my built-from-junk antenna mast that I am working on, I mentioned that where that project currently stands, I am looking for some HDPE plastic (the same stuff cutting boards are made from) in about 1/2" thickness. Since it is a goal to make that mast from mostly re-purposed, junk, or free stuff, I figured I would sit on it, put out a request to the universe at large, and at some point I figured I'd come across an old beat up cutting board or something similar. Well, my waiting paid off and I found 2 pieces of HDPE plastic that are just big enough to be able to use.  Guess where I found them.......in my basement!  I thought I had thrown out my scraps from the last project I used this material on, but apparently I had actually put them in the re-purpose pile, and had just forgotten about them!  For you that means you'll soon get to read about my next steps in that project.

     The second item of good fortune that happened today, actually worked the other way around.  I had a few moments this evening, so I was working on programming the radio's that were part of my future operator #1's christmas gift (more on that to come in future posts, but for christmas I got a GMRS license and a couple rigs in need of some love for us to work on together.)  Anyway, the programming was done, so I wanted to test the antenna she built, and put one of the radio's on the air to see how the audio sounded etc.  While looking for the connectors and some other tidbits in the garage I came across one of the small metal pieces that connects the whip for a hamstick to the bottom fiberglass part.  I remember where it came from....I had sacrificed a 10 meter hamstick to a low bridge early on in my HF mobile experiments, and this was one of the only surviving bits. 
     Regardless, as I held it, I looked at it and asked myself "why am I keeping this?"  After all, it's one of those things that can quickly make for a full junk drawer, and we've been going through an effort to de-clutter in our house.  Not wanting to delay progress however, I tossed it back in the box, and moved on.
     Now, here is the interesting part of the story - I rarely turn on my VHF/UHF or HT radio's at night.  Most of the time I don't want to wake a sleeping child, and when that's not a concern, I usually gravitate toward HF at this time of night.  Since I was working on a little UHF radio though, I turned on my HT, figuring I'd use it to receive what I was transmitting, so that I could hear how my TX audio sounded on the rig for my little helper.  When I turned the HT on, it was still on the local repeater frequency, and I just happened to hear one of the local hams - W3CWE, mention that he was working on piecing together something for 10 meters, and he had the base of a hamstick, and a whip, but he didn't have the piece to connect them together.....what are the odds of that?!  I quickly jumped into the conversation and told him that I'd drop off just the part he was looking for.
     It seems like all I had to do was ask the universe "why am I keeping this?" out loud.  The vibrations of stuff that holds the universe together must have propagated the question quite well this evening, because less than 5 minutes later the universe answered - or it was just lucky timing.  Either way you choose to look at it, this boils down to hams helping hams, which I feel is one of the most important parts of our hobby.  Hows that for good vibrations?

     First things first - I'd like to thank all of you (you know who you are!) for helping me accumulate 60 contacts over a couple of evenings while operating portable from Grand Haven State Park in Michigan!
​     A few weeks back someone asked me what kinds of things I'd be up to when NPOTA ended (last I checked I ended up in a multi-way tie for 90th out of over 1,400 activators - I'll wear being in the top 100 with a badge of honor!)  Well, even though NPOTA is over now that we're into 2017, I still have to travel for work, and I wanted to keep playing radio while I traveled.  Enter "World Wide Flora and Fauna" or WWFF for short.  For those of you not in the know, this is an international program that is very similar to NPOTA, but it is on-going, kind of like SOTA or IOTA.

     My work was taking me to Grand Rapids, MI so I did my standard "park hunt" to decide where to operate (I wrote about how I pick a place to activate a while back.)  I ended up deciding on Grand Haven State Park (Unit KFF-1499) which sits right on Lake Michigan.  I stayed in what they call the "Modern Lodge" which is really just a ranch style house that sits on the edge of their property:

     This was an awesome place to stay, because it was in the park, it was comfortable, and for goodness sake, you can rent an entire house for the same nightly cost as staying in a chain hotel!  The only catch is that you have to clean up after yourself (vacuum, strip beds, etc.) when you leave.  If I had gone in the summer, I would probably have camped in the park, but because the view of the park's lighthouse sometimes looks like this in the winter:

I decided that staying inside a heated building was just fine by me!  I did get lucky, and the weather was fairly nice.  For antenna's, I used my Buddipole, in various configurations.  On 20 meters I set it up as a V antenna (should I have called the opposite of an inverted V a verted V?) and I also set it up as an elevated vertical using some of my wire as 2 elevated, quarter wave radials.  On 40 meters I used the Buddipole mast and it's feedpoint, but used my wire dipole (I gave some details on that in this post.)  On 80 meters I did a hodgepodge arrangement - on each side I used an antenna arm, a coil, and my 40 meter wire, and I tuned it by adjusting taps on the coils.  My biggest antenna takeaways from this trip:

• Sand gets everywhere
• It's nice to have a portable mast when there arn't trees within the range your coax can reach
• I need more coax in my portable kit so that I can reach further to be able to use "that big tree" that's just out of reach
• Sand gets everywhere
• Frozen ground can be hard to drive stakes etc. into, but it can also help make sand hard enough to actually hammer stakes into
• Sand gets everywhere

     Even though the sand outside was a little messy to work in (did I mention that sand gets everywhere?) when I wasn't fiddling with the antenna, I had a very nice temporary "shack" set up in the back bedroom, complete with a cushioned adirondak chair to lounge in while I operated.

     I operated mostly voice (46 contacts over the 2 evenings when I got to operate) but also did some digital modes (14 contacts).  I had 2 highlights here - My very first THOR contact was the first highlight.  My second highlight was way cooler, even though it wasn't even something that most would consider a success:
     I "almost" had my first ever CW contact thanks to W6LEN!  Whenever I have posted on the book of faces that I was going to be doing an activation, W6LEN always asks "are you doing any CW?" and I have always answered "Maybe, if I get up the nerve - I've been practicing but haven't made any contacts on the air."  Well, this time peer pressure finally got me, and I attempted to make a CW contact on the air.  Once I got past the technical hurdle of figuring out how to send CW with the microphone of my 857d (hint: e-mail me if you want to try this, it's not as intuitive as it seems it should be) I made the call, at a very shaky 5wpm:
W6LEN de N3VEM
....and.....I heard code coming back, nice and slow!!!  I copied W6 and then it got wiped out by someone sending right on top really loud, and much faster than I could copy.  I hope it was a mistake, and not someone being a LID and purposefully interfering with a newbie attempt at CW.....
     Anyway, I made the call again, and this time I copied the W, then the loud interrupter broke in again (seeming less like a mistake now...), and I managed to copy an E and a W in between the interrupting dits and dahs.  At one point I also hear my own call coming back to me, but couldn't copy who was sending it thanks to these kind interruptions (how grand...) - I'm sure it was W6LEN, but I didn't log it because it didn't "feel" right since I couldn't technically be sure, because I didn't copy the whole call sign at any point.

     So, with all that said, I now have a mission before my next trip:  practice copying a bunch, grow some stones, get my hands on a key and officially include CW in my next activation!  I have some bits of metal, and I'm sure some bits of spring in my garage somewhere.  I also know for a fact I have some quarter inch plugs and wire....hmmm...maybe another project and related blog post is in order....

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