Today saw me out on Winsford Hill a couple of miles from home with my icom IC-705 and HB9CV portable antenna. This is quite a popular spot for walkers, picnickers and park the car and look at the view types of folk. It’s also a pretty good location for 2M portable radio operation, the top of the hill is about 430m ASL but surrounding hills mean not quite a clear view all round. We found somewhere not quite at the top to park and I set up not too far from the car as I had only planned to be here a couple of hours.
Conditions were nothing special and the band very quiet so maybe not so many operators on 2M as yesterday so I didn’t get the 10 contacts for a POTA activation.
I did make a few contacts using both FM at 145.500 and SSB at 144.300 using the HB9CV horizontally and vertically polorized.
Today I decided I would run the IC-705 using its own battery mainly because I didn’t recharge my Powerfilm Solar Lightsaver Max after yesterday so I left that in the sun to recharge itself while I used the IC-705 set to it’s maximum power of 5W with internal battery.
The combination of the all mode IC-705 and HB9CV antenna seems to be a very good one, with excellent signal reports from all of my contacts. Most notably one I made with a station in St Ives just over 100 miles away, he was using 5w from his FT817 and a homemade moxon antenna – I think, my notes were brief and I have never been too good at deciphering my handwriting 😉
Very happy with my IC-705 I was able to have a good conversation with everyone I had a QSO with today, I switched to the Icom VS3 Bluetooth headset for the last QSO and that proved to work great meaning that I could get up and stretch my legs while still being able to control PTT and hear the radio 🙂
I will try again next weekend, but will set up for HF and see how that goes.
Thanks for reading, I hope to talk to some of you on the air soon!
73
Mark
M0IAX