So, my YL has this thing she says about "putting things out there in the universe" and then being patient.  This week I got started on a project because of something I had left hanging out there in the universe, so maybe there is something to it after all....

     Those of you who follow along with my posts know that I have a Buddipole Mast/Antenna system that I use fairly often during portable operations.  It's great, especially when I'm flying somewhere for work, because it packs up pretty small.  There are times though when I'm driving somewhere that I'd like a taller mast.  I've spent a lot of time surfing around the web, and had kind of decided on a certain model of fiberglass mast that I liked because it seemed sturdy, had strong looking clamps to hold the sections, and depending on the model, had a top section that I could fit one of the pieces of my buddipole stuff onto, in order to use it with my buddipole parts if I wanted.  The drawback was the price.  It wasn't that expensive, but I just hadn't been able to get myself to pull the trigger.

     Cue the universe....

     I was in the Hudson Valley for work, and while on one of our jobsites I saw a pole standing in the corner with our guys equipment that looked strikingly like the masts I had been eyeballing, so I asked what it was.  They said they used to use it reach high stuff, but that the end was busted up, and they didn't use it anymore, and that they just hadn't gotten around to throwing it away.  I quickly offered to take it off their hands.

 
     It wasn't as tall as the one I was looking at, and was a bit rough in a couple spots, but is was free!  I figured I could try it out, and if I really liked it maybe I would buy the same thing, but taller.  To start, they were right about the end being busted up.  The fiberglass on the top was split, but only about 3 inches down.  My miter saw made quick work of that, so even though it was now 3" shorter, I had a good solid top.   I also noticed that the bottom section had a largish hole drilled in it for some reason (you can see that in the picture above).  I figured I would think up something to do about that along the way.  ​

     Since this was a free thing, I wasn't sure exactly how I was going to peice this together, but I decided to just let this one kind of "fall together" and see what happened.  The top section was 1.25" in diamater, so I didn't really have anything that would fit around that to adapt to my buddipole stuff, so at first I was thinking I'd just put an eye bolt through the top and use it to support the center of dipole, or wire etc.  Suddenly however, I remembered that in the scrap metal pile in the garage I had a broom handle from a no longer used broom, that had the same thread on the end as a painters pole:

     My Buddipole stuff does have an adapter to mount it's parts onto a painters pole, so I decided to try to re-purpose this, and make it so that this would be on the top of my mast, and then maybe I could give myself options - this to thread stuff onto, an eye bolt or 2 in order to hold it and also act as accessory places to hook wires or guys to, etc.  With that thought in mind I quickly chopped the top 18" or so off this handle, so that I had the business end available.

     Unfortunately, this handle didn't really fit snug in any manner that was convenient right away:

     What I needed was some way to hold this pole centered inside the top of the mast, while I figured out some way to permanently attach it so that it wouldn't move.  Step 1, center the handle in the mast, with just the thread sticking out the top.  That problem was easily solved with several wraps of electrical tape - just enough to make the fit snug:

     With the pole then inside, and the threads sticking out, I could see that I was getting somewhere:

     To start filling the gap, I grabbed two tubes of this stuff (Loctite Epoxy), and figured I could use it to fill the void, which would help to lock the handle in place and make the top part stiffer, giving me the option to clamp things around the mast as well, without fear of crushing the fiberglass:

     The thought is that once the epoxy cures, I would drill through the fiberglass mast, epoxy, and handle in 2 spots, and put eye bolts through.  I haven't gotten that done yet because it turns out that two tubes wasn't enough to completely fill the gap, so i'll need to grab more.  The thought here is that this will give me 2 spots to hook things too, and will also prevent the handle inside the mast from rotating.  

     My mind next turned to that hole in the bottom section.  More than just the ugliness of it, I worried that it would make a weak spot where the mast would potentially break.  The bottom section of the mast is 2" in diameter, so pretty quickly I thought that a sleeve of 2" PVC (PVC is sized by inside diameter) would be nice to slide over it and act like a splint.  Queue the universe again.  While I was debating purchasing a whole section of 2" PVC just to get a few inches of it, my work took me to the basements of some old buildings, that had piles of junk laying around in them.  What do you suppose just happened to be lying in one of those junk piles?  That right - a short section of 2" PVC!  

     I haven't cut it to length or permanently attached it yet, but here you can see how nicely it slides over that bottom section:

     So what comes next?  Well, I need to attach the PVC, and finish filling in the top at a minimum.  Before I do that though, I'd like to make a couple guy rings to attach guy ropes to.  The bottom one I want to slide on before I attach the PVC, as it will end up floating between the top of the PVC and the bottom of the first clamp.  The second one I plan on putting on the top section, so that it floats between the top clamp, and the eye hooks.  I had some HDPE flying around here from other projects, which would have been a perfect material to cut these out of, but apparently I used it all up, so here's my next request universe.....I could really use a couple old beat-up plastic cutting boards......

     I'll update everyone once I finish this, but so far I'm only into it for about $11.  since this is an 18' mast, that makes it about 61 cents per foot.  Not bad considering the commerial option I was looking at, while much taller, worked out to be $4.27 per foot....

     Hello 2017!

     Many people make New Year's Resolutions part of the their annual rountine this time of year.  I've never been one for doing that, and most years haven't even considered making "resolutions."  I think the practice tends to mostly just set people up for failure.  So this year, in spite of the title of this post, I'm once again not going to make any resolutions!
     With that out of my system however, I think I will make some radio "goals" for the year.  The difference between a goal and a resolution is this - a resultion has a definate pass/fail connotation.  A goal is simply something we strive for - if we don't meet it, we still did a lot along the way that we wouldn't have otherwise, so met or no, you usually accomplish more than if you had done nothing!

     So, without any additional fanfair, here are my 2017 Ham Radio Goals:

     We'll (hopefully!) remember to revisit this list at the end of 2017 to see how I did!  What are some of your 2017 Radio Goals?  Leave a comment and let us all know!

     It's one week till Christmas!  Most of the podcasts, blogs, and YouTube channels have given you their suggested Christmas shopping lists already, but rather than write up list of products that I think you should want, I want all of you to tell me the top 5 ham radio things you want for Christmas - and remember, if Old Saint Nick is making it in his workshop, cost is no objective!

     I have written quite a bit in the last year about my NPOTA activations and portable operations.  I get the opportunity to do a decent amount of these because I travel a fair bit for my work.  As we move into 2017, I will continue to operate mobile and portable quite often due to my work travels.  With the impending end of NPOTA I figured that I would just go back to operating from hotel rooms and truck stop parking lots during my travels.  As it turns out though, there is another way I can continue to operate portable and do some award seeking at that same time, that I learned about thanks to an interview I heard on 100 Watts and a Wire (if you don't listen to this podcast, you need to start.  Like now.)  What's this amazing, portable operations, award program I speak of?  WWFF, otherwise known as World Wide Flora and Fauna.
     This program works very similar to NPOTA, but has been going on for years and is quite popular internationally (it wasn't big in the US before now, but W3AAX is hoping to change that!)  Each country has it's own sub-group so there are rewards and scoring both in the US group, and internationally.  The international program is known simply as WWFF and the US sub-program is known as KFF, or in US slang, simply Parks on the Air.

     With that bit of introduction, let me get to the point....My travels for 2017 start up again in the first week of the year, so I will be doing my first "pure" KFF activation almost right away (all my KFF activations prior where combo NPOTA/KFF, as nearly all the National Parks are also KFF sites.)  I thought it might be fun to let you in on how I "plan" my activations.  With that thought - here it goes!

     For me, step 1 is the easiest step, because my work schedule dictates the city I'm going to be traveling to.  The offices I support in my job are basically everything the company has east of the Mississippi (I have a co-worker that covers the west.)  Based on business needs, I just scheduled a 3 day visit with our office in the Hudson Valley.  The office is in the town of Harriman, New York, so step 1 is complete - look out Harriman, here I come!  
​     In 2017 I'll be making roughly 2 trips per month, so I'm making it a personal goal to do 30 activations in 2017 because I think I'll be able to hit 1 or 2 parks on each trip.

     For NPOTA there weren't many parks, so at the beginning of the year I had saved every National Park in the states I travel to as a favorite location in Google Maps (Just in case!)  WWFF includes most National Parks, and many State Parks, Nature Reserves, and other "Green Spaces."  Because of the number of sites, I havn't had time to save them all.  I do still start with Google Maps though, just to look and see where the office is.  After I have that pulled up, I open another browser tab and go to wwff-kff.com and scroll down to the map.  I then zoom into the same area of the country, to see what parks are close:

So, In this case the closest parks, and my potential options are:

• KFF-2137 Schunnemunk Mountain
• KFF-2064 Goose Pond Mountain
• KFF-2081 Iona Island
• KFF-2010 Bear Mountain
• KFF-2069 Harriman
• ​KFF-2144 Sterling Forest

     Something I just recently started, with an activation in Cuyahoga Valley, was to try and find lodging inside of a park.  In 2017 I've made it a personal goal to do as much camping as possible on these work trips, instead of doing the standard hotel chains.  With that being said, many state parks close for camping in the winter, but some do have Lodges, Cottages, Cabins, etc.  Knowing that I'm looking for either a camp site (during warm weather) or some kind of indoor lodging (during cold weather) I browse the websites for the parks that I turned up in Step 2.  In this case, Bear Mountain State Park has some Stone Cottages that, based on the website, look pretty neat, so I'll give it a try!

     So, addmittedly, this is the step I skip most often.  Because I'm traveling for work, it's hard to be able to know exactly when I'll be on the air.  Sometimes I even end up working long hours because I only have a limited time in town, so there are cases where I have planned to operate, but then didnt' get to after all. I have vowed to do better this year, and to make sure I post my plans to the Agenda page on the WWFF web site and also on the Facebook groups for KFF and WWFF.  Even when I fail in doing this though, once I'm up and running a quick blast out on social media, or even a self-spot on the cluster, usually gets things rolling.  Even when I don't have cell signal, I've found that once I finally get a bite or two then the calls start to come in as I start to get spotted, etc.  Based on reviews, cell signal in Bear Mountain can be spotty, so I might be relying on good old fashioned luck to find someone to answer my CQ's during this one.

     This is the part of the planning that stays in flux the longest (often right up until I arrive at, and evaluate the site!)  if I'm not staying in the park for whatever reason, I'll use google maps and the terrain feature to try to pick a good spot in the park to stop my car and operate.  If I had to fly into town and I'm not staying in the park, I'll take along equipment and set up they way I did for my activations at Santa Monica Mountains, the Taft Site, and Mt. Rainier.  If I can find a place in the park to stay, I'll set up the way I did during my trip to Cuyahoga Valley.  Lastly, for 2017, I plan on setting up similar to what I did during Winter Field Day last year (and will do again for Winter Field Day this year) but I'll probably use less batteries...
     There is a LOT of other stuff I could write here, like how to decide what equipment to take, how to pack it, etc. but that's a whole post on it's own.  Oh wait....I wrote that post already....

     At the end of the day, this is what it's all about!  For me this is even more important, because Ham Radio is my leisure time activity when I travel for work.  If I can't be with my family I at least want to have something fun to do, rather than just rot my brain by staring at the TV in some random hotel!

     Okay...so you can definately skip this step if you want, but for me, writing about an experience helps to swish everything around in the brain a little bit, and give me some time to reflect.  Sometimes it's so that I can reconcile some problem I had and brainstorm solutions for next time.  Sometimes I do it because for some reason I can't actaully get on the air, so reading and writing about ham radio is the next best thing.  Most often though, I write about the experience because I had so much fun I just want share it!

     So, now that you know my top secret trip planning method, listen for me on the air from Bear Mountain State Park, unit KFF-2010 on January 3rd and 4th (and maybe 5th, if I wake up early enough to get some operating in before I have to leave...)  I hope to hear you on the air!

     A couple posts ago I tacked a short survey onto the end, asking what the strangest thing you.ve ever used as an antenna was.  For me, it's my downspout/gutter inverted L that I wrote about previously.  Some of you really had some doozies though!  Before I get to those, here's the survey results:

1. Other 65% (I guess it doesn't surprise me to see this as the top choice - the strangest antenna's are things you wouldn't think to put on a survey form!)
2. Flagpole 24%
3. Rain gutters 12%

     So, ignoring the fact that these numbers add up to more than 100% (thank you rounding errors!) here are some of the more interesting "Other" antenna's that popped up in this informal survey.  Thanks to those that shared them!

So, after reading some of these, my rain gutters don't sound so unusual after all......

73!