Last weekend I participated in the in an emergency communications exercise called ILMI 2017, a video on that event is coming up. The event did make me wonder about portable operations for emergency communications. always deploy 50lbs of gear, so lightweight configurations are interesting for many operators.
During the event, I operated as a fixed station, supporting field operators, passing and relaying messages for them. After seeing many pictures of the portable stations around Finland, I wondered if it would be possible to set up a qrp winlink station, using a compromise antenna. So this video is a impromptu test to see if it’s actually possible for operators running low power & compromise antennas, to connect to distant RMS gateways as well. This is especially important in areas where RMS gateway or BBSLINK station density is quite low.
I connected with HB9AK on 20M, using the Yaesu FT-817ND @ 5W, WinLink Express on an Asus Eeepc. The ststiin was all powered with my 10ah LiFePO4 battery pack. I chose the Super Antenna MP1 and Chameleon F-LOOP 2.0 since I’d been testing and recording with them anyway. They were already tripod-mounted, and easy to place out on the patio for testing.
I’ll let you decide for yourself if these tests were successful or not. What is certain, I definitely need to get this gear up to Lapland for some real field testing.
I’ll follow-up this video with the ILMI 2017 video.
73
Julian oh8stn
