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Fall 2003 Issue |
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A Summertime 6-Meter
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Although you may not be able to operate from
some far-off, exotic land on the HF bands, traveling to a rare grid square
and operating on 6 meters can be a fun and rewarding experience. WB2AMU
did just that this past summer. |
 This photo was taken in Rochester, New York after a meeting of hams who operate on 6 meters. In this photo Mark Hoffman, K2AXX, is holding the portable two-element Yagi (nicknamed the “tree beam”) that Ken used for much of his trip. Jeff Luce, K2EHF, is in the background. (Photos by Ken, WB2AMU) |
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A trip to a rare grid to operate on 6 meters is a poor man’s version of a DXpedition on the HF bands. One of the exercises I often conduct during the slow months of the winter is to scout potential sites for trips to rare grids for the upcoming summer season. This exercise involves the use of the Internet to look for various state parks, along with calculating the mileage and time needed to reach these spots. I am sure that a lot of 6-meter operators do the same thing from time to time. One of the areas of interest to me during this past winter was Pennsylvania, which has a number of moderately rare grids. Two of the grids that jumped out at me were FN01 and EN92. FN01 is a moderately rare grid for many on 6 meters, because it is a low-population area with no major cities. EN92 has only a small sliver of land on the U.S. side, Lake Erie, and a moderate amount of land on the Canadian side. There are some resident operators in these two grids, but the demand seems to overwhelm the supply. For most of my portable operations I use a homemade two-element Yagi, which has been described in previous issues of CQ VHF magazine. Basically, it is built using a broomstick handle and removable telescoping elements. This is lightweight, compared to a commercially made three-element Yagi that is made of metal, and it is easy enough to suspended from a tree (using Teflon® wire line); hence the nickname “tree beam.”
Another antenna that was to be used while
driving is my quarter-vertical mag-mount antenna. This antenna is suitable
for many of my sporadic-E contacts. There is little cross-polarization
effects loss because the signals are rotated during reflection. The main
loss is due to the lack of gain of the vertical in comparison to a
directional antenna. However, I was able to make several QSOs with local
stations using the vertical even with the cross-polarization loss (they
were using horizontal antennas) by using moderate amounts of power, in the
area of 65 watts, from my FT-100 radio.
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highlights Click here to subscribe to VHF and read more about A Summertime 6-Meter Grid-Square Expedition _________________ © Copyright 2003, CQ Communications, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced or republished, including posting to a website, in part or in whole, by any means, without the express written permission of the publisher, CQ Communications, Inc. Hyperlinks to this page are permitted.
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