Garden Portable

I’ve just made a major upgrade to my ham radio gear, going from having only a handheld transceiver to a 100 W mobile HF rig with a portable antenna system. For now I’m setting this up near the garden. There is a group called HFPack that specializes in portable radio systems; what I’m doing is hardly as adventurous as most of their efforts but I’m calling this my garden portable setup.

Until I take my general license exam (not until I finish learning Morse code), I can’t get on HF bands, but I can now play on 6 meters (between 50 and 54 Mhz in frequency). This is exciting because if the ionosphere is cooperative, there is the chance to work some pretty distant stations, and the period around the solstices is the best time to do this. No such luck today though.