Seaside portable HF and bicycle mobile VHF work

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We've been to Hayling Island, walked around, and then set up an HF station.

First I made the mistake of leaving the radio on USB instead of Digi. That wasted half an hour. 

Then we switched to the right setting and immediately did a QSO but our luck dried after that. We tried some FT4, no luck. Antenna tuned onto 17m band as well but it was empty. 

14MHz was VERY busy and we really couldn't cut through with 2.5W so I brought the big battery from the car and still with 5W we suffered. We could see that we were being heard on the PSK Reporter but no one was answering. People don't want to work with low signals, which is weird since FT8 is inherently a weak signal mode. We should seek for those with lower signal values. 

Regardless, we had fun. Finally we were too cold so we packed up.


Then I switched to pushbike mobile. That's a very cheap 2/70cm antenna attached to the bike. I cycled around and tried to have contacts back to the car. The FT65 couldn't make a contact with the rubber duck clearly but with this it was crystal clear. Still the other end did suffer so we should have switched antennas at the top of the car but giving instructions over the bad link was too cumbersome so I cycled back.


This is the antenna, 14MHz end-fed with a 49:1 UnUn. Works very well.


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