For sometime now I have wanted to take the QO-100 setup portable to activate some different squares, not because they haven’t been activated before (I believe all squares to 4 digits have been activated in the UK) but because I love /P Portable operations / activations. Getting out in Nature in all seasons to play Radio is very enjoyable and whether its an “activation” or just a good old “Ham Radio Social” you cant beat it.
Last year I put together a QO-100 setup in the shack . Since then I have swapped out the Yaesu FT991A for a FlexRadio Systems Flex-1500 Software Defined Radio which is controlled with PowerSDR.
To enable me to take this setup portable I needed a Laptop another Offset Dish, LNB, and Helix Antenna. As this was for portable use I decided to go with a smaller 60cm offset dish which I mounted on an old bicycle stand tripod, along with this I purchased another DX Patrol LNB and Helix Antenna. As with the shack setup I fed the LNB with some good quality 75 Ohm cables and Ultraflex 10 for the helix feed, all cables were around 5 metres in length.
The initial setup was on the drive just to prove the everything worked and then a couple of days later I met up with fellow Ham Steve M9SPC at Hill Head on the Meon Shore. It was a warm calm morning by the sea and Steve had a HF station on the go so I proceeded to setup the QO-100 station. As per usual I set the kit up on the tailgate of the truck. I had a couple of different things that I wanted to try with regards to powering the kit, the first was the good old LiPo 30 Ah battery that I use for /P operations and secondly a Jackery Explorer 1000 Power Station.
I created a split power lead to connect both the Flex and the Ground Station 2 to the power source from one power pole connection. The battery of course worked as expected and would have had no issues with powering the two bits of kit for hours but I was keen to try the Jackery which would power not only the Flex and the ground station but also the laptop over longer periods. I want to see if there was any QRM created by the Jackery to which there was none.
Prior to any QSO’s I had to align the dish with the satellite so I mounted the dish on the tripod and stood this on the bed cover of the truck. Using and app called DishPointer I aligned the dish in the general direction of the satellite. Next the fine adjustments to the Azimuth and Elevation were made, for this I selected one of the beacons on the satellite and monitored this on the waterfall until the max SNR was achieved.
A cup of Coffee later and I was ready to put out some DX calls. For general radio logging I normally use Station Master Pro but for QO-100 operations I have found that Log4OM with its QO-100 DX Club integration and satellite settings works really well and has thus become my logging software of choice when it comes to working the satellite both in the shack and portable.
All in all a good test of the setup with 10 in the Log.
All this topped off with a Bacon Roll (Thanks Steve), sunshine, outdoors and Radio….
