Bill Jones - KD7S, portable gear


I spend a lot of time in the central California Sierra mountains. The trees are often well over one hundred feet tall and are excellent antenna supports.

The first photograph is one of my homebrew backpacking stations. The transceiver is a built-from-scratch NE-4040 packaged in a homebrew plastic enclosure. Notice the tuning control is a slide potentiometer instead of a more conventional rotary pot. The legs of a 40 meter dipole are wound on homebrew plastic forms. A tiny set of Whiterook paddles key the built-in TiCK keyer inside the transceiver. The whole station fits inside a zippered book bag and weight just over one pound.

The second photograph shows my ancient Heathkit HW-8 on an outing last summer. A QRP transmatch tunes a 40 meter dipole fed with 300 ohm twinlead on 40, 20 and 15 meters. The 7-Ah gel-cell battery is bigger than necessary but I never have to worry about running low on power. An internal TiCK keyer and a Whiterook paddle rounds out the station. Although not exactly a backpacking station, this set up is relatively easy to take almost anywhere in the mountains I chose to go.

Thanks to Bill for letting me have the photograph.

Frank G3YCC


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