Winter field day

Yesterday I took to the kids on a hike up a local hill to try setting up my new EFHW antenna on the Spiderbeam pole.  There was a lot of back and forth because I haven't set this pole up more than once or twice, and I'm still getting the hang of it.  Eventually managed it, but couldn't hear anything.  Not sure why it was so deaf - I managed to get *out* on it at home the other day on WSPR.

In any case, at the end I tried to throw up the little EFHW I had made in the past - just tied a string to the end and threw it over a 10ft high branch.  Managed to hear great on it.  However, didn't try contesting as the kids were pretty tired by that point.

Today I got up and tried again, this time in the backyard (far enough from my normal station to count as outdoors).  First I tried the DS1.  Managed to get one person on 40m after a lot of work.  

Then put up my 20m dipole on the painter's pole.  Managed to work three stations before I ran out of time.

For fun, tried putting the little EFHW up on the Spiderbeam as a somewhat-vertical (I'd need a 12M to make it completely vertical).  Seems to work, but after the contest was over everyone dropped off so I wasn't able to talk to anyone.  Almost broke the pole when it started to fall over - I hadn't put the guy lines at 120 degrees from each other, and it looked like it would hold, but no.  Managed to catch it.  Lesson learned.

All in all, a great morning though.

Proppy

 Found a new online propagation tool, Proppy.  It is very easy to use.

New Antenna Day

 I got a 10m Spiderbeam fiberglass pole and a TennTennas End Fed Half Wave EFHW Antenna.  Designed and printed some guy rings to hold it up, and ordered some super thin/silky wire from The Wireman.

I had ordered 70 feet of wire (to have room at the end to tie it off to insulators, have some space for when I mess something up, etc).  I just put it up without cutting it, just to see how it looked on the NanoVNA.  Was actually under 1.5:1 everywhere.  I could trim it some to get it lower (it was at like 1.17:1 at 6.5MHz or so), but it was close enough and I was running out of sunlight.

Fired up WSJT-X, and got a result!

RPI FT8 Success

Got a Pi4 for Christmas.  Got it working with the G90 today on FT8.

Couple of notes

• I tried using the  Build A Pi, but ran into an unrelated issue where the Pi would not show a display after reboot.
• Reinstalled from NOOBs (the cut-down os this time - was much faster).  But same issue.
• Did again, but this time didn't let it install any updates afterward, and that worked.
• I *think* the issue is this one.  So I might need to get a newer NOOBS or something in the future, but it is working for now.

My goal here is to run this headless, connected to my iPhone's hotspot, and also connect an iPad to the iPhone, then control the Pi from the iPad via VNC.  But am happy to have just got this working today.

For my future reference, this is a good guide for the settings on the G90 for this.  (In my case, I also need to set VOX, as I'm not using any CAT control.)