With Veterans Day weekend being a long weekend, it was a great opportunity to take the setup out and operating. I have a M101 trailer that came with the truck, but it is in the garage for bumper number painting and services to the hand brakes. The M37 held everything I needed, although the trailer is nice to have for bulk items like firewood and fuel cans, for this trip I had to get creative with the load plan.

Summarized inventory was Honda 2200i generator, 2 70ah Duracel Gel batteries, power distribution case, Icom IC7200 radio, DX Commander antenna, Raspberry Pi, and old Surface 3 for display.

I arrived in the afternoon and set up the tent with daylight, but by the time I got to the antenna it was dark. The DX commander is easy enough to deal with that I was able to get it set up in moonlight. I did modify it a bit, the longer elements, 80m and 40m, have clips attached to them so I don’t have to run them through the spacer plates. This isn’t perfected yet, but the basic idea is shock cord, shrink tubing, and a little glue to hold the clip in place. I set them to low so the elements move around too much, but improving the placement will make these nearly as good as intended design while greatly speeding setup and teardowwn. I also intend to add shock cord on the bottom of the element to reduce stress on the spade clips at the feed point. Once I get a final arrangement, I will detail this.

After getting setup, it was dark, so I listened to shortwave for a bit then got some sleep. In the morning, it was very cloudy so I had no solar. I decided to try a concept where I run the generator and connect a battery charger to the batteries and operate the radio. This did not work at all, at least with the charger I have. I do have an AC power supply, but having never needed it before, I generally don’t bring it. My daughter rescued my trip by delivering this power supply to my campsite. I have avoided using a generator previously as I have seen generators create interference on the radio set. Having no choice, I started the Honda 2200i and was pleasantly surprised to find it did not interfere at all. While I prefer using the solar when conditions are right, its nice to have an alternative for cloudy days and night operations. I have run this generator briefly before, but this is the first time I have used it for extended periods. It takes about a gallon of fuel for an 8 hour run, and appears to be very steady. It is also exceptionally quiet audibly. The generator was not specifically purchased for camping, but to power critical items during power outages at our home, but since it works well ill make this a regular item along with the AC power supply. I ended up using the generator for the entire trip.

I used a program called HAMRS (https://www.hamrs.app/) for logging this trip. Previous trips I have used paper logs and transferred these to a log format to submit, but this is very tedious. I also likely did not format the logs correctly as it did not capture some elements like park to park contacts in these manual attempts. HAMRS was easy to use and I think I will keep using it. One thing I will change is where I am using it, I set it up on my Raspberry Pi and it could not keep up, which slowed the rate I could make contacts. When clicking ‘save’, it took about 20-30 seconds before I could type a new contact. In testing, using HAMRS on the display computer, a Surface 3, it responded right away so that is where I will run it in the future.

The M1950 stove is great, but is fussy with wood fires. I have to wake up every couple hours to feed it or the fire gets too low to restart easily. I have had problems with overheating, since the door of the stove does not seal well, but I have found that moving the fuel to the rear of the stove helps slow the fire down enough to be manageable. It is easy to cook on, however, this trip I had 15 bean soup, powdered eggs, and sausages for main meals, as well as a constant supply of coffee and tea. It is supposed to burn coal according to the TM, but anthracite coal wont burn in it as it is, so at some point I’ll have to see if I can get bitumen coal and try that.

I am very happy with my setup, the truck is fun to drive and my setup is, or nearly, complete. I think Lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4) batteries would still be very nice as they cycle (discharge/charge) much better than lead acid, and being lighter would be nice. With winter nearing, I should be heading out more often for POTA trips and getting more contracts with my setup. This trip I made about 220 total contacts, much higher than my previous attempts.