pota_20250309

Equipment:

  • Yaesu FT-891
  • SOTA POTA 150 Antenna from Ham Radio Outlet
  • NanoVNA
  • Daiwa CN-501H2 SWR Meter
  • Bioenno Power BLF-1215A LiFePO4 Battery
  • Tripod
  • ABR Industries 218XATC-PL-40 40 ft Coax Jumper
  • ABR Industries 218XATC-PL-12 12 ft Coax Jumper

Tuning the Antenna

Last night, I tuned the antenna with NanoVNA. The result was very surprising. SWR is about 1.5 with a 12 ft coax jumper, but SWR goes up to more than 10 with a 40 ft coax jumper (unfortunately I didn’t save the SWR results). Maybe a 40 ft feedline is too long for 20-meter band?

But today I set up the antenna in the same way with a 40 ft coax jumper, and the SWR was good. I think it is possible that the jumpers were not connected well last night.

Parks on the Air!

After getting an acceptable SWR, I started hunting. RX was not very good in the backyard, it was much better when I operated in the parking lot of Los Trancos Open Space Preserve last week. I set the TX power to 10 watts at first, and made contact with AB0EZ from Washington State. And then I heard CQ from K7RDE in Arizona, but I couldn’t reach there with 10 watts of power. Then I transmitted with 20 watts, and got a signal report of 5-3.

Very good day. I have my first two entries in my hunter log on pota website. Nice!