HF Mobile in the woods

[Mashurst]

I just got a new Jeep commander and I am working on putting together a plan for all the antennas I will need. This will be my first vehicle with HF. This is a jeep and while it is a bit of a mall crawler model, I intend to use it like a Jeep should be used. Three kids just don’t fit in the XJ anymore.
Anyway, the Transceiver will be a Yaesu 857d so it is tempting to get an ATAS 120 for it. My concern there is that it just will not last being hit by the occasional low branch and when it does take a hit is will be very costly. Another option is to get two or three hamsticks that can be swapped out (20m 40m and maybe 80m) and also run a tuner so I can use the other bands if I need to. If I snap one on the trail it is not a big deal. With the tuner the upfront cost of is about the same as the ATAS but in the long run it could be much less. Another way to go is with a 102” whip tuned with a tuner and possibly a base loading coil of some kind.
The trade off is that the ATAS is convent and does it all. The hamsticks/whip are a more robust system with some redundancy. In any case I think everything will be spring mounted.
I welcome any thoughts.
PS I will also be running an FT-7900 for VHF and a 5w HT with an external antenna as a dedicated APRS beacon.

 

[gary in ohio]

I personally like the whip and tuner. Depending on the bands your want, the 102 might not be long enough for 80m. I have a 12ft whip and a SGC tuner behind my icom 706 mobile and it works ok.
For true mobile work that would work, if your stopped or camping the tuner route also allows you to toss up a long wire over a tree and extend your whip with little work. You can fold the whip over when in the trees and still have a usable antenna.

 

[DaveInDenver]

The tuner + whip will cover everything an ATAS-120 would. However, one handy thing about going with a ATAS-120 is it requires an SO-239 mount. When you take it off you have a very convenient place to connect a coax to when setting up a stationary antenna. When I had one it was on a fabricated bracket on my bull bar.

The downside of all these solutions is you are stuck with a radio mounted in your truck. I prefer to pack the radio and operate from camp on a nice table rather than sitting inside the truck. Mobile HF is just beyond my scope of talents and ends up being too distracting on the road (I'm not a particularly good driver though). Plus the inside of an old Hilux with no A/C is loud and sort of pointless to try and work anyone who is not S9+ anyway.

 

[1911]

I prefer to pack the radio and operate from camp on a nice table rather than sitting inside the truck. Mobile HF is just beyond my scope of talents and ends up being too distracting on the road.

Me too, for the same exact reasons. I'm curious how folks who operate HF mobile keep a log of contacts.

Plus the inside of an old Hilux with no A/C is loud and sort of pointless to try and work anyone who is not S9+ anyway.

I have the same problem with VHF mobile in my FJ40; have to turn the radio volume up all the way and sometimes that is not enough. I have an amplified speaker that I will have to install one day.

As an attempt at anything remotely useful for the O.P., you might consider the Kenwood TS-480SAT radio, as it has a built-in tuner. That's what I use for portable HF and I like it quite well.

 

[Mashurst]

Thanks Guys. Lots of good ideas. I like the whip with tuner but I got thinking about how much better a longer whip would work. I found this thread where they are talking about military whips. Some of them look very cool with sections that can be added or subtracted to suit the present need. Anybody running something like these?
To the guys saying they are happy running portable once stationary, I am with you. I have been carrying a TS-450 with a built in tuner and a Ventenna HFp + a wire dipole for the last few years. It works great but the radio is bulky and time consuming to set up.
What I am looking for here is:
A) to be able to work HF while rolling. I generally have a co pilot that is a HAM. At times moving is "mission critical". Also being able to listen while underway seems like it would be great at times... like when crossing Nevada on long stretches.
B) once stopped, often other things take top priority like setting up camp and feeding kids. If an emergency or a brief opportunity to listen to the bands arises having the option to not set up would be great. I can always still set up better antennas once in camp and use the vehicle radio or a separate portable one if I brought it.
Thanks again guys

 

[DaveInDenver]

Not sure what you're after that's mission critical, but having a mobile station is better than not having one for sure. I suppose if you have the resources there is no reason not to. LOL!

To that end, a few things pop to mind. Monitoring would be handy, but even if you don't TX you will need to tune. This is particularly true of screwdrivers, they exhibit more sensitivity from untuned to tuned than would a whip and tuner. IOW, your RX S-level will come up quite a bit more when the screwdriver is tuned, which takes more fumbling around while underway. Most screwdrivers should not be tuned while moving, they are mechanically vulnerable.

As you probably know, band openings come and go quickly so the chance of having a go-to reliable band is pretty slight. Like Lee mentions, keeping logs for QSOs, especially ones you want to confirm, would be tough. One could do like satellite contacts, just record the contact and go back later to digest the info.

I assume most people who do operate mobile often have a few frequencies where they rag chew beyond local V/UHF. I could see a lot of 40m mobile there, region-wide skeds that don't rely on repeaters. Nothing wrong with that, it's all about the fun. You'll probably end up working most contacts on 20m, I think trying to chase 10m and 6m mobile is too much distraction.

I just don't think you're gonna get much of an 80m antenna mobile, anything that will fit under highway overpasses is going to be mostly dummy load coils that leak some RF.

My M.O. is to pull into camp, set up the camper, crack a barley pop and set up the radio and antenna. Worst case is it just plays music or I listen to AM BC or SW. If the mood strikes, I key up and see what I can shake loose. I have a Ventenna HFp, handy sucker backpacking for sure. Most of the time I take an ATAS-120 placed on about 16 feet of PVC mast in an old surveyor's tripod, lay out some radials (been experimenting with sloping radials that double as guy lines lately, which work well but are frequency sensitive) and hook up the FT-857. Doesn't take but maybe 15 minutes to get on the air.

 

[Mashurst]

Kind of off track here but maybe not... Most of the time Mission Critical is a buddy will be meeting up with us some time today and I need to be able to monitor so we can arrange rendezvous and the area/distance involved precludes solid VHF. On occasion however it could include keeping in contact with medical professionals while transporting an injured person or something like that. Logging a QSO is not the high priority for me and certainly will not be while mobile. I like to get on the air as much as the next guy. It is the fun part of ham, but in the end I justify all of my ham related activity (read: time and money) by its emergency capability. I travel outside the range of cell and often outside the range of repeaters as I know many of you do. Thus I ask these kinds of questions here, rather than say on QRZ because this is a group that understands back country travel. I see all the enjoyable parts of ham radio, from the quick QSO, to nets, to field day, to the occasional contest, as practice for the real thing... may it never come. I have a few stories from the last few years since I got licensed where ham has been a big help in dealing with what would otherwise have been an uncomfortable situation. Each has made an impact on me and highlighted the fact that things could have been much worse by being only slightly different. Adding HF mobile to my capability is just an attempt to tip the balance in my favor... and have some fun along the way.
Thanks for being here to engage in this line of thought with me.

 

[DaveInDenver]

Do we have an equivalent of the Australian flying doctors HF network? I wasn't aware that many people other than hams, the military and the Red Cross still used HF regularly. Cool. Wondering aloud, does the medical use you're considering anticipate using amateur bands or are you talking beyond our allocation?

 

[Mashurst]

Dave assume you are joking... if not I am really struggling to figure out where you are getting flying doctors out of my post.

 

[Jr_Explorer]

Do we have an equivalent of the Australian flying doctors HF network? I wasn't aware that many people other than hams, the military and the Red Cross still used HF regularly. Cool. Wondering aloud, does the medical use you're considering anticipate using amateur bands or are you talking beyond our allocation?

Dave assume you are joking... if not I am really struggling to figure out where you are getting flying doctors out of my post.

I think Dave was wondering if there is any way to directly contact any emergency service via HF.

I THINK the answer is "No". But one would hope to contact a HAM operator on HF and then that person would act as a relay via more conventional/modern communication methods/equipment. Did I get your question summed up DaveInDenver?

 

[DaveInDenver]

Yes, Jr Ex, that was my question and it is (semi-) serious. Down Under they have medical pros that help in the outback, called the Royal Flying Doctor Service.

http://www.flyingdoctor.net

They use HF for communications. I believe you do not need a ham license to use the service or the radios, though.

http://www.flyingdoctor.org.au/Communications/HF-Radio-Communications/

 

[HillbillyfromAL]

That's something we need here in the US. Emergency services that are reachable via the ham bands. I have been able to get 2 people help using the radio to reach a fellow Ham, who then made a phone call. There are some repeaters that link to Emergency services through Autopatch though. I know in CO there was a local repeater that would contact the Sheriffs office through an open Autopatch.

 

[Mashurst]

...keeping in contact with medical professionals while transporting an injured person or something like that.

To clarify, the afore-quoted text is a generic reference to an imagined possible scenario in which Mobile HF would be able to provide capability that Portable HF would not by simultaneously transporting the victim of a back country accident and maintaining contact with distant medical professionals that may be able to provide near real time advice/coaching. Further the term "keeping in contact with" does not necessarily mean the medical professional referenced is the amateur operator on the other end. In most cases this scenario would require the service of another amateur relay station.

 

[robgendreau]

Oh...those kind of flying doctors. I was visualizing flapping white lab coats, stethoscopes dangling in the air, kinda like the flying nun. Disappointed to hear it's MDs in airplanes. Although that would definitely be nice here in the States; I think we need a sort of voice 406 or the equivalent of UHF/marine 16, which commercials have to monitor. But even a lot of the professional public safety folks can't talk to other public safety folk; it's a mess here. Someday.

Meanwhile, and sort of semi on topic, I was wondering if anyone just tried to monitor HF on the move. Reason I ask is that I'm wondering about setting up a software defined radio, which can be done with a small computer or netbook and a $20 dongle these days. And not much of an antenna. I've never used say GNU Radio, but it might be fun to just listen in like the scanner guys, or monitor a particular band. If you needed to then you could stop and take the time to get set up for using your regular transmitter. I don't do HF right now, but I sometimes just listen to 2 meter, and it lets me know by the chatter when I've got into range of a repeater.