w6csn’s outdoor amateur radio

Today I went to my “home park” in the Presidio of San Francisco with the intention of trying out a couple of new elements in my POTA setup.

I’ve been wanting a free-standing, self-supporting antenna for those situations where there are no suitable trees for throwing a line and no place where I can secure my fiberglass mast. A tripod mounted vertical seemed like a promising option, no guy lines or ground spikes needed.

I decided to try the Gabil GRA-7350T HF+6M vertical and its companion tripod. The tripod folds up into a compact package and feels very well built. The antenna itself breaks down into three small sections, the telescopic whip, the adjustable loading coil, and the 80M extension coil which I did not use today.

A shortened vertical such as this requires radials if it’s going to tune up and radiate. Since I don’t intend to go lower than 10MHz, I assembled two sets of three 15 foot radials using banana plugs to attach them ring terminals which fit perfectly.

Today’s outing was pretty late in the day and while the weather was clear, the wind was howling through the Golden Gate in typical fashion, so I only measured the antenna on 20 meters before getting on with an activation attempt. Some other time, when it’s warmer I’ll adjust the antenna on the other bands and make notes of the coil positions for quick reference in the field.

The other new thing being tried out today was the SOTAmāt (pronounced SOTA-mate) system and mobile application for spotting via HF. In short, SOTAmāt works by transmitting a pre-arranged code over FT8 which the system uses to determine your frequency, mode, and park/peak then posts the spot to the appropriate system. You can also use SMS or email to communicate with SOTAmāt.

Even though I had a strong data signal on my phone and could have easily spotted myself directly on pota.app I wanted give this system a try . I used the companion Android app to play the FT8 tones into the hand mic on the FT-818, I was quickly picked up by PSKReporter and spotted by AB6D, the creator of the SOTAmāt system. This thing really works and I’m confident that I could spot myself using HF where no cell service is available.

I encourage you to checkout SOTAmāte for yourself and recommend watching the tutorial video by AB6D on YouTube, it’s a really innovative application and solves a common problem faced by POTA and SOTA activators.

Despite being a shortened vertical, the GRA-3750T brought in QSOs from as far east as Connecticut and Florida, and even North Pole, Alaska! I’m really impressed with this antenna so far and I’m sure with some elevation, like you might get on a SOTA peak, that it would perform even better.

After 45 minutes of hammering out CQ calls and working 14 hunters, the wind and cold got the better of me. I signed QRT and broke down the station in just a few minutes. All in all, it was a good outing with successful application of a new antenna and getting practice using SOTAmāt to spot myself via FT8.