This post is for all the campers, RVers, park-goers, and park Rangers who can't quite figure out what is going on in the park, or at that neighboring camp site. Most of my posts are written for an audience that knows exactly what I'm up to, but with this one I wanted to try and reach out to some new people. (PS - to all my usual readers, stick around - there's a fun little video at the end!)

I wanted to write this post because for every person that has stopped and asked about what I was doing, I have noticed about 3 who looked long and hard out of curiosity but walked on by. So what is it that I do, that generates all the confused looks? This:

The tent is pretty self explanatory - I do all the things in there that one normally does in a tent, plus one extra thing that involves that giant yellow pole (I call it a mast.) That one additional thing is Ham Radio, and the mast (giant yellow pole) is holding up some wire that I use for a portable antenna.

Do people still do that you say? The answer is yes, and lots of them! When you think of Ham Radio you might think of old guys in their basements, with huge equipment and giant towers, making small talk via 2-way radio across the globe, but there is much more to the hobby than that (and we're not all old! Some of us are teenagers, and some of us are dads in our 30's with only the beginnings of a bald spot😱) The easiest way to understand what Ham Radio is, and how extensive it can be, would be by comparing it to something else, so I'll give you two examples:

We might compare it to the hobby of "Hunting" because within the hobby there are people that do archery, people that use rifles, people that are into muzzle-loading, and some that are into trapping.

Additionally, we might also compare it to "Camping" as a hobby, because within camping, some people are into car-camping, some are into RVing, some are into back-country, and some are into over-landing.

If you have any familiarity with the depths that these other hobbies can go to, you also have a basic understanding of what Ham Radio can be. Rather than tell you about all the corners of Ham Radio that obtaining a license opens up for you, I just wanted to introduce you to the one you might come across in State and National Parks, on Mountains, and even on some remote Islands - Portable Operating!

Portable operating is just what it sounds like - we take small (relatively) equipment out with us, and set up. The folks doing the portable set-up are often called activators because we are "activating" or "putting on the air" a park, a mountain summit, an island, or some similar location. Other people who are at home then try to contact those of us who have set up our portable operation so that they can "collect" those parks/islands/mountains as places they have contacted. We usually call these folks "chasers". On any given day you might be either one, or even both at the same time!

To take this a step forward, we have created our own "awards" programs (they're just for fun - mostly😜) and when we do an activation we send our logs (the list of people we contacted) to the group that organizes the programs (there are several.) Our logs get dumped into a database, compared for some basic validation, and then we can get fancy awards, like our name on a website, or a pretty certificate to hang on the wall (remember, it's just for fun and bragging rights!)

The portable operating I do most often is part of an international program called "World Wide Flora and Fauna" which focuses on operating from a specific list of natural spaces. The places on the list for the US devision of the program are mostly state and national parks, so we often refer to it as "Parks on the Air." So the next time you see someone setting up an odd campsite, like you can see me doing in the short video below, stop by and say hi! Most of us love to chat, and if you are curious most of us are even willing to put you on the air so that you can try and make some contacts yourself (we call that 3rd party traffic, and we can help you do that as long as you have us helping as your "control operator".)

If you're at all curious about ham radio, a great place to start is the American Radio Relay League Website.  If you're into any type of outdoor activity, ham radio is an awesome compliment to that.  Not sure how?  Drop me a line and we can chat more!

In preparation for my KFF (the US division of WWFF) activation in Darien Lakes State Park I wanted a better way to support my Mast-From-Junk while I extended it and staked the guys. I had a basic idea of something many of us have seen before in my head, but rather then shell out my hard-earned cash I decided to "shop" in the scrap bins in my garage and basement.

​In photo-journal style, here's what I came up with:

So there you have it - probably less then 2 hours of work, and about $10 spent. Your cost may vary depending on what junk you have available. If you're a metal worker you could probably make something longer-lasting with your scraps, but with the thick clear-coat on the wood, I should get a lot of mileage out of this!

Did you ever have a project with that one little detail you just didn't get around to? In ham radio, sometimes I think that it is required that you always have at least one unfinished project at any given time!

For me, one of those projects is my Mast-From-Junk (if you want to read about this project from start to current, go back to part 1.) When I made this, I put an end on it that had painters-pole thread, so that I could easily attach things at the top.

While this was a great idea, it went until now before I got anything that could actually be used on this! My intention all along was to make this work with my Buddipole parts, so I finally ordered the adapter they sell to attach their components to this type of thread.

Strange how time can slip away during the busyness of life, and make it take 5 months to get around to ordering a $6 part! Now that I finally have it, my mast feels much more complete, and I have a whole additional range of antenna tricks available to me on my portable operations!

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     No, I don't mean manage your guys as in coach your baseball team. I mean manage your guys as in keep your antenna mast supports organized.

     A few months ago I wrote about my "Mast From Junk" which I made primarily from an extending pole that was bound for the trash.  I have used the mast several times now - on Winter Field Day 2017 (You can check out myshort YouTube video to see some shots of it in action) and on a couple of other portable operations.  The last time I used it I had to pack up in a hurry because I started to get rained on.  I tried to be organized about it, but I admit to not being as careful as I should.

     Since I am planning on using this mast during my WWFF Activation of Darien Lakes State Park next week, I pulled it out of the corner of the garage.  After an hour of working, my guy ropes still looked like this:

     Why am I sharing my horrible mess that I brought on myself?  Because this is how we learn!  Sometimes in ham radio we feel like we should know everything just because we passed a test.  The truth is, whether you learned something by reading, or by other people telling you, sometimes it just doesn't sink in until you experience it yourself.  This is the case even if it is something simple like organization, or something more challenging, like graphing complex impedance.  I've read about methods for neatly wrapping rope and cable, I've seen the little plastic kite winders that some people use, I've even seen ways to support masts without guy ropes at all, but I just didn't get around to any of these!  Now I'm paying for it, but I learned a valuable lesson first hand - take the time to neatly pack your gear!

     So, pardon me while I dust off my pride, and go back to my mess of rope in the garage.  For now I'm going to re-wrap this with the "over-under" method that someone in one of the ham radio Face Book groups recommended (Google it, you should be able to find a tutorial.)  While I do that, I'll be brainstorming some type of device to wrap my rope around - simply buying something isn't my style, so I'll let everyone know what I come up with using the scraps of stuff I have in my garage...

Bye for now!

P.S.  Those things on the end of my guy ropes are actually clothesline tensioners.  They work great for quick adjustments and keeping guys tight in portable setups! 

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     So, for the very observant among you, you may have realized that I finished my "Mast-from-junk" but didn't fill you in on all the details!  So how would you know this?  The giveaway would probably be that if you happened to read my post on Winter Field Day this year or happened to watch my video about Winter Field Day you would have realized that I used it!
     With that being said, if you want to read about how my junk-mast project got started, check out Part 1 of the story before continuing on here.  If you already read Part 1, or if you just like to shoot from the hip and decided you'll figure it out as you go - read on!

     For a quick refresher (or for those that don't want to go back and read) here's the quick summary - I had been eyeballing fiberglass masts, and while deciding what to buy, I stumbled upon a telescoping fiberglass pole that was bound for a dumpster in one of the many commercial buildings that my work takes me to.  From there, I decided to start piecing together other bits of junk, or at least cheap stuff, to make myself a functional mast.
     At the point I left off, I had the mast, and I had inserted a piece of broom handle that had painter's pole thread on the end, and I had started fixing that all together.  Sometime shortly after that post I also stumbled onto a short section of scrap PVC that I needed to make a "splint" over a hole that had been drilled in the bottom section of the pole.  Now that you're caught up, here we go!

     One of the next things I added to the mast was an eye-hook.  Since I had filled the gap around the pole in the middle with epoxy (I used the loctite stuff you can get from amazon or a local supplier because it flows nicely to fill the gap, but cures nice and hard), I drilled a hole through the mast, epoxy, and center pole, and added this eye-hook that I dug out of the hardware drawer in my garage.  This means that the top of this mast can now accept a buddi-pole thread adapter, anything that I can clip into the eye-hook, or anything that I can clamp around the mast (since the top is pretty solidly filled with epoxy.)

     I had some of this that was white, and some that was black, but for making guy rings, I figured it doesn't matter if they match or not!

     I let the guy rings "float" so that they can rotate around their section of the pole which makes putting things up easier.  The top guy ring stays on the mast because it can't slide down past the section below it, and it can't slide up past the eye hook.  The bottom section is trapped between between the fitting for the next section up, and the "splint" that I made to span the hole that someone drilled through the pole in the past.  As a note - I didn't permanently attach the splint till the guy ring was in place - otherwise I would have run into a small problem....

     All that was left to do at this point was to add guy ropes. Thanks to life being busy, I didn't actually get around to that until we were actually setting up for Winter Field Day!  If you watch the video some of what we're doing when you see us with the tape measure stretched out is actually measuring and cutting the guy ropes.  The worked out well...below is close-up of the guy ropes attached to the pole, and a picture from Winter Field Day with the mast standing at full height, in all of its saved-from-the-trash glory. 

     All in, since most of the parts I used were junk or scraps, this mast cost me about 60 cents per foot of height.  Compare that to the $4.00 plus per foot of height for a commercially made mast, and I think I did alright - don't you?