|
Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge, Oklahoma
Another radar class has me living in Oklahoma
City for a few weeks and, while it's good to be back in 5-land,
cabin fever builds quickly when living in a corporate apartment
away from my family and my own house. I've made numerous trips
to OKC over the years and have used the opportunities to explore
the state and see what lies beyond the city. There are still
large parts of the state  that
I plan to explore but I keep going back to Wichita to hike,
photograph and plan my next trip. One of these days I'll get
to the other parts of the state.
The Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge in located
in southwestern Oklahoma near the town of Lawton. I found this
area on a weekend drive a few years ago and filed it away as
a place to come back to for camping and a little QRP operating.
The purpose of the Refuge is to conserve part of the country's
wildlife heritage. Among the pastures and rock outcroppings
are numerous buffalo, elk, prarie dogs and Texas longhorn cattle.
Lakes, of a shade of blue not commonly seen, dot the landscape
as well. The combination of wildlife and geographic beauty have
drawn me to this area several times over the years with my medium
format camera gear but this time the camera bag contained my
Norcal 40A and all the trimmings.
A 6-Foot Dipole & QRP?
My main interest in this outing was to test
the effectiveness of a low-to-the-ground dipole on 40 meters.
My hopes were to be able to find a lightweight antenna that
would be reliable for "local" communications via NVIS
propagation on this band during backpacking trips. Past experience
has shown me that backpacking trips are not the venue for experimentation
- better to develop the plan and prove it or disprove it on
a daytrip rather than on a backpacking trip where I'm forced
to continue carrying an idea that didn't pan out. Been there,
done that. Packed along with the Norcal 40A were my ZM-2 tuner,
Oak Hills wattmeter, 8 AA batteries, phones, 70 feet of wire
and paddles. On a real overnighter, I would not carry the wattmeter
or the paddles shown in the photo. The plan was to use the tuner
as if it were the center insulator of a dipole and then just
walk out 35 feet on each side of the tuner, hanging the wire
on tree limbs about six feet above the ground. It was more like
hanging tinsel on a Christmas tree than installing an antenna.
After completing this 5 minute job I attached the other doodads
to the rig, turned it on and tuned it to a 1:1 SWR with no problem
at all. Not many stations were on, and those that were on were
hanging out on 7040 kHz. I listened to a few QSOs and got myself
as comfortable as possible in the 88 degree weather as I could.
Strong Signals From Familiar Calls
 I
called CQ at 1950Z and was answered by Jerry, K5PSH in Bryan,
Texas. Jerry was also QRP and we exchanged 569 reports. We chatted
for about 15 minutes and had solid copy the entire time. A few
minutes later I was called by Dave, W0CH in Seneca, MO. Dave
was using a K1 and a vertical antenna. We had a rather long
QSO during which time the Oklahoma sun started heating up my
NC40 to the point that I lost the sidetone. I had to ask Dave
to standby while I removed the cover of the rig and turned on
the KC1 sidetone function. After our QSO, I moved the overheated
rig and the overheating operator to another table and continued.
I think a cold cerveza may have also been involved in this cooling-down
process. Over the next hour I worked Don, K5KW in Fort Gibson,
OK; Doc, W5TB in Dallas; Chuck, W5USJ near Point, TX and Clif,
N5UW near Shawnee, OK. Every station I worked was also QRP and
there was very little QSB.
Conclusion
All in all, I'm happy with the performance
of 1.5 watts into a dipole at six feet. The contacts I made
were easy - almost effortless. I know that I could never hope
to work DX with such a low dipole but the object of today's
test was to see if I can make a backpacking trip with a no-feedline
(lightweight) antenna that's easy to put up and take down (5
minutes) and have consistent communications with the local area
out to, say, 250 miles. I doubt such an antenna would work on
the higher bands as the RF would most likely penetrate the ionosphere
rather than being reflected back to Earth. But that's an experiment
for another day. I had a good time today with the operating
and I got to do it in a beautiful area. Thank you to the guys
I worked for your helpful comments and honest signal reports.
.
|
