It’s Saturday, and while the rest of my family sleeps, I’m off to Port Royal State Park (US-2969). It’s a beautiful, well-maintained park, and it looks like there have been some updates since my last POTA activation there. I scouted the picnic area the night before and was pleasantly surprised to find that the three old wooden picnic tables on one side of the field had been replaced with about a dozen metal tables, each coated in a rubber-like material.
The radio of choice for this trip was the Yaesu FT-891, paired with a kit-built ATU-100 antenna tuner. I brought along two antennas to test—one with a new mount, and the other a completely new configuration for me. Is there a better way to test antennas than by heading out somewhere away from home, setting up the system, and seeing how many contacts you can make?
Antenna number One:
The GRA-7350T, without the 80m coil, was mounted using a custom clamp. It performed reasonably well. With all the radials positioned to the south side of the antenna, it seemed to exhibit some directionality, as reflected in the log below. The contact with N5MCY was the only one made using Antenna Two, and as you can see, the signal report wasn’t as strong as those from Antenna One.
Antenna Two:
The Coffee and Ham Radios Poseidon kit, which I assembled with a few personal modifications. The heart of the setup is the 4:1 UNUN (found here). If I built it correctly, it should tune 40m through 10m and handle up to 50 watts digital or 100 watts SSB. I still need to double-check the wire lengths and inspect the toroid—if everything was assembled properly, it should have performed better, especially considering the positive reviews from other amateur radio operators using the same antenna. The 3/3 signal report I received from Louisiana made me suspect something wasn’t quite right.
All in all, a successful first deployment of the antenna tuner I built from a kit, and my first activation using the FT-891. Next time, I’ll try FT8.
73 de W3DMJ