3-June-2022 - Reading time: 3 minutes

Even though it's nice and cozy to sit in my office chair in my shack when sending my wiggleys out on the air, one of the many things I was looking forward to before I got licenced was /P operations. I can imagine this comes from how I was introduced to the hobby - by attending a Field Day. I joined LA1FDG on a couple of field days, really enjoying everything from setting up camp, antennas, radios and operating on the bands. 

Well, now the time has come to do this myself! What would be the best way to test my potential /P setup? Well, take my equipment out in my garden and operate from there... 

Unfortunately I don't have a separate radio for operating /P, but the IC-7300 is a big radio in a small disguise as it's quite portable. As of now I have no ambitions climbing the highest peaks, doing the longest hikes or the most remote DXpeditions, so the rig will be just fine for my /P activities. The batteries I'm using now will force me to operate more from the back of my car in parking spaces or parks anyways, being lead-acid batteries. 

Unless I get a real /P-friendly rig I am not going to invest in /P batteries (you know, the sweet LiFePo stuff..). The batteries I have now I get for free from work. They have been used as engine ECU backup batteries in aircraft, so they are changed every year. Still plenty of life left on these. 

Back to my garden. My local club usually host a net on 10m band every tuesday evening. I don't have a permanent 10m antenna in my back yard, so this would be an excellent chance to practice my own first /P operation with equipment I have. I bought a MFJ-1899T many years ago that I was using for listening. This would be perfect to zip-tie on top of my 6m fibre glass pole for this project. 

Before the net I rigged my stuff out in my garden, hooking everything up and got into work setting up some counterpoises for the antenna. After some cutting, fitting cable shoes etc, I had radials for 10m and 20m.

Some nice SWRs on this antenna actually. This will be no problem for the internal tuner in the IC-7300. Too bad I can only push 25W into the antenna, but I can have a lot fun with that as well. 

During the net I we exchange signal reports between each other and I can conclude that my setup works just fine. It was fun to actually can take part in the net, get the vertical antenna going on top of the pole etc. 

My working conditions. One Pelicase for the radio, cables and antenna - the other Pelicase for the batteries (about 86Ah). 

Even though I'm a fan of logging stuff right on the computer, I felt it was necessary to paper-log during the net. ;-)

I had a blast putting this together and test out my /P setup for the first time. Can't wait to put the stuff in my car and go somewhere else than home to enjoy the wiggleys!

73 de LB3CJ