Working Portable Today, So Much Fun.

I'm lucky to live in the sticks, so in this time of lockdown I can go walking or take the car and go for a nice drive but today I decided to take the radio for a drive

It was absolutely bitter cold, 7 degrees leaving the house and it was 5 degrees at the location which was a tiny place called Tomard in Co. Carlow, elevation 280 Meters it felt close to freezing or below with the wind chill but luckily I could operate from the car, the temperature dropped to 4 Degrees by the time I left.

I took my trusty Super Antenna MP1 and the Yaesu FT-891, found a quiet location and gate to a field and clamped the Antenna to the gate, set out the radials and adjusted for lowest SWR with the Analyser and got talking. Normally I use the tripod but it was too windy.

I went on 17m as contests leave all other bands unusable, and that's all nice except for night time when there is no propagation for 17m and so if you're not in a contest you can pretty much forget getting on. I would like to see restrictions brought in to leave 80m contest free or at least past 8 PM UTC.

Anyway, I had fun, called CQ a couple of times and got talking to some People, there was some crazy QSB at times but I heard a station from Indonesia and he was clear as a bell and I called him and bang, just like that he was gone. Shame.

I heard the States come in, a station in Florida and a few others but they hadn't the frequency so I couldn't talk to them and I didn't hear anyone stateside call CQ.

Anyway, I got out and enjoyed the afternoon, my little 4S 8.4 Ah LiFeP04 battery was still going strong when I shut down, I had used around 5ah, it's a lot easier than carrying around a 45 Ah car battery but the little 8.4 Ah Lithium pack kept me going a couple of hrs at 100 watts with a good bit more operating time left.

The Little Yaesu FT-891 is a really great radio and the noise reduction is great, way way better than on the Icom IC-7300.

The Super Antenna MP1 is really easy and quick to set up, I use an analyser, you adjust the slider for lowest swr. It's 7 foot tall and I am really impressed with it, got to Canada once last Summer from my Back garden, he gave me a 33 and his antenna was large but I got there and was able to have a qso, I used the 80m Coil one night last week and got a contact 1000 miles away I was shocked, I expected the 7 foot long antenna to be nothing more than a Dummy load on 80m but it works, obviously a compromise but it's not a base antenna and not intended to be.

Anyway I will post a few pics below and hope that it encourages people to get out and get portable and hopefully encourage more People to this wonderful and exciting hobby.

This is the entire portable station, Antenna is in the bag on the left



This is the Whole Antenna in the bag, it breaks down into an incredibly small package



This is the 4S 8.4 Ah LiFeP04 battery I got from HobbyKing

patspost

100 W would draw approx 22 amps I believe. good to know the battery is up to it.

I was thinking of getting a similar battery for portable opes.
Would the battery be able to power ATU as well if needed along with the radio?
Can an extra connector be made onto the battery pack.

What analyser do you use.
Ta

patspost

patspost wrote: »

100 W would draw approx 22 amps I believe. good to know the battery is up to it.

I was thinking of getting a similar battery for portable opes.
Would the battery be able to power ATU as well if needed along with the radio?
Can an extra connector be made onto the battery pack.

What analyser do you use.
Ta

The battery could easily handle continuous 160 amps current draw but Obviously would drain quickly. A good Modern LiPo battery these days should easily handle 900 amps continuous from a 10 ah pack, obviously the wiring and connectors would have to be up to the Job.

The little 8.4 Ah LiFeP04 battery I have up in the pic above can charge at 15 amps and not even get warm, it's great to be able to charge that fast.

SSB Voice will see roughly 8-10 amps current draw for 100 Watts out.

Sure you can use 30 amp cable and get some Anderson 30 Amp connectors or get the 50 amp version and you should be able to crimp 30 amp cable + tuner wire in also, having said that you might be able to fit the thin tuner wire in with the 30 amp wire for the radio.

Just be careful the tuner can handle the voltage, fully charged the 4S LiFeP04 battery voltage is 14.4 volts.

These batteries have no BMS so you got to monitor the voltages yourself and don't go below the minimum. I use a RC type battery charger + External 15 amp PSU, this way the charger monitors the battery cell voltages and never over charges it but you have to watch the discharge yourself. Get a voltage monitor which monitors AH used also, so if you have an 8.4 Ah battery and the meter says 7 amps used then you know you're near the end.

You can also parallel 2 batteries together or just have 2 charged and swap them over.

Whatever you do, do "not" under any circumstances short the battery leads, you could cause a short causing thermal runaway and the battery will smoke or if it's LiPo burst into a ball of fire and battery fires are very difficult to put out.

LiFeP04 is far safer.

The analyser I use is the Rigexpert AA-35 Zoom.

https://rigexpert.com/products/antenna-analyzers/aa-35-zoom/

Regarding the tuner. Just yesterday I got the MFJ-939 and the lead to connect it to the tuner port on the FT-891 and this powers the tuner, no external power needed, quite handy and a bloody fantastic tuner, it tunes incredibly fast and can match 30:1, the LDG tuners I read about are much slower and can handle around 10:1 max.

You can get the MFJ-939 Y "Y" being Yaesu, MFJ-939 I "I" I for Icom etc. This will have the correct cable in the box to connect to the radio and I can just use the radio tuner button and it tunes automatically.

patspost

Mad lad, thanks for taking the time to give me a detailed reply.
I looked on hobby king Site and the chargers are expensive, e114.

73

patspost

patspost wrote: »

Mad lad, thanks for taking the time to give me a detailed reply.
I looked on hobby king Site and the chargers are expensive, e114.

73

Send me a link to the charger you were looking at, remember the RC chargers usually Require a separate power supply too, but send me a link to what you were looking at and I'll see if I can find something cheaper.

https://hobbyking.com/en_us/turnigy-accucell-c150-ac-dc-10a-150w-touch-button-smart-balance-charger-eu-plug.html?queryID=&objectID=79276&indexName=hbk_live_magento_en_us_products

10 amp charger there for 45 quid ex shipping, that's pretty good, that would charge the 8.5 Ah pack in roughly 1 hr because the charge current ramps down towards the end but if the battery isn't completely flat when you charge it it will take under 1 hr.

The charger in the link above works off the mains too and is E.U stock so no surprises with customs, I don't think the battery is E.U stock so you will get caught with 20 Quid extra I think it was but it was well worth it because I take and use this battery mostly and in the sitting room it lasts me several hours on Digital and SSB Phone.

I can charge that battery I linked to above at 15 amps from my charger, pretty cool, most batteries you buy can't charge at anything near those speeds due to cheap battery cells and cheap BMS + the cheap supplied charger.

At the end of the day you can get a 12 v Car battery and it will run a 100 watt rig for many hrs but you shouldn't really take lead acid below 50% charge, or you could get a deep cycle battery which would tolerate lower levels of discharge.

With the LiFeP04 you're probably talking 1500 charge/discharge cycles to 80% if you don't take it below 20% charge or roughly 1000 cycles for 100% charge/discharge cycles. With Lead Acid you might get 300 cycles at 50 % charge/discharge cycles + it's heavy but when I'm working portable I'm not usually operating far from the car or sometimes in the car so it's no big deal to carry a lead acid but with the 8.5 Ah LiFeP04 pack I can easily put the radio and battery on the dash of the car, sit it on the radio when I use it in the sitting room etc.

LiFeP04 batteries are better suited to Ham radio because a 4 S battery voltage fully charged and at the end is still in the happy zone for a ham radio, a 3S LiPO pack for instance is not.

A 4S LiFeP04 battery fully charged is 14.6 volts, at 9% charge it's 12 volts so there's not much point going below 12v 10v is empty and likely a 100 watt rig wouldn't operate at this anyway.

a 3 S LiPo pack fully charged is 12.6 volts fully charged and at 10% the voltage is 11.06 volts and a little on the low side. There are some newer rigs like the Xiegu G90 20 Watt SDR which will output full power down to 10 volts but for a 100 watt rig I would stick to 4 S LiFeP04.

Get a voltage monitor like this, it will show AH used, so if your battery has 8.4 Ah and you use 7.5 then you know it's time to wind down. Or with 45 Ah Lead Acid, you use 22.5 Ah then you know it's a good time to head home but 22.5 Ah of operating will be likely a whole day. You could also get a 100 watt role up solar panel and charge controller and work all day and into the night on battery :-) many options these days.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/4-8V-60V-Precision-Voltage-Analyzer-Backlight/dp/B07H7F2L43/ref=sr_1_46?dchild=1&keywords=voltage+monitor&qid=1588501432&sr=8-46

patspost

https://hobbyking.com/en_us/turnigy-reaktor-d6-pro-duo-ac-dc-6s-balance-charger-discharger-w-smartphone-wireless-charging-dc325w-x-2-us-plug.html


This is the one for e114, it seems to be the unit recommended for your battery. The charger you linked to wuld be a lot cheaper. I wouldn't need dual charging

Thanks for the great Info

The dual charger would be fine if you need to charge say, a 3S and 4S battery.

If you get 2 of those 8.4 Ah batteries all you got to do is make a parallel lead and connect the + - of the 2 batteries together then to the charger, but you also need to connect the 2 balance leads together, this is essential so the charger knows the voltage of the cells on each battery.

Also, if you get one of the watt meters, be sure to note the Ah taken from the pack and disconnect the watt meter after use, so if you use say, 3 Ah of the 8.4 ah pack and you are finished using it and don't need to charge it then note that there is 3 Ah taken, the watt meter draws some power that left connected all the time will use some Mah from the pack.

If you get 2 of those 4S batteries here's what you will need to charge the two together.

https://hobbyking.com/en_us/jst-xh-parallel-balance-lead-4s-250mm-2xjst-xh-2.html?wrh_pdp=7

The battery comes with an XT90 connector so you could get an XT90 parallel lead for charging like in the link below, which can also be used to connect 2 batteries together for use in the field for 16.8 Ah total or just use them separate.

https://hobbyking.com/en_us/xt90-battery-harness-10awg-for-2-packs-in-parallel.html?queryID=&objectID=4028&indexName=hbk_live_magento_en_us_products

The charger I linked to comes with an XT60 plug so you'll need to cut that off and put on a XT90 connector. Here's a pack of 5 Male/Female so you can make your own leads.

https://hobbyking.com/en_us/nylonxt90connectorsmale-female-5pairs.html

Don't forget your wire, HK do great quality Silicone cable which is very flexible or get any cable capable of handling 20-30 amps will do.

Some stuff on HobbyKing is out of stock and can take weeks to come back in, you could try local RC stores in Dublin, I checked some sites and so much stuff is also out of stock no doubt the virus isn't helping.