North Dakota Ø Terrible Snow
After four months, I finally received the battery I ordered on October 7, 2021. I am currently running it through it paces and recording everything that I find.
I have connected the battery to my FT-991A at my QTH, and am treating it like an off-grid power source. So far, everything looks great, and it seems like it will work pretty closely to the way I predicted.
One of my next steps it to also build a “box” to put the battery into, and make it more versatile.
Updates will be coming, shortly.
There’s really not a whole lot to update at this time, since I did not actually receive the battery before Field Day. In fact, at this time, I am still waiting.
Apparently, Dakota Lithium has been overwhelmed with orders, and they are trying to fill those orders as fast as they can. Meanwhile, I am still waiting for the chance to test the battery out.
I will still post an update once that happens, but I can’t say that it will be a 24 hour test.
In the previous post, I gave the reasons “why” I wanted to go with LiFePO. In this post, I will try to give the details on the calculations that I’ve done, before reaching the decision to buy what I bought.
I ordered a 12V 54Ah Deep Cycle LiFePO4 Battery, a Folding Fast-Charge 12V Solar Panel, and a USB Phone Charger, Voltmeter, & Terminal Adapter Wiring Kit from Dakota Lithium on May 24th. As of May 29th, I have not had all of the items shipped to me, so what follows has not been tested in the real world. These are just my calculations.
Of course, before I start, I will say that I do understand that there are a lot of different factors that will effect these calculations, some of which I may have not even considered. Things like available sunlight, transmit power, transmit frequency (how often… not MHz), other devices connected, are all variable factors that I am aware of.
I will just do the calculations for the battery and the radio, without the solar panel connected. The solar panel can be connected while the battery is being used, so I will just be using it as a way to keep the battery “up” for as long as possible. Without any load on the battery, the solar panel will charge the battery in about 19 1/2 hours. Not a lot of input, but enough to help make it through the night, I think. I may end up upgrading the solar part of this in the future, but we’ll see how it works out this way, for now.
Based on a 100 watt output (which is the full power of the radio), here is what I came up with:
Standby only battery run time = 24.54 Hours
Transmit only battery run time = 2.34 Hours – This is obviously an unreasonable number, since there is absolutely no way to transmit at 100 watts for that long. Even if I were to run FT8 or FT4 at a full 100 watts, the duty cycle would be 50%, meaning that I would be transmitting half the time and listening the other half. That would bring it to 4.68 Hours.
When operating portable and on Field Day, I normally use SSB (voice or phone). The duty cycle for SSB is actually much lower than 50%, since the radio is only transmitting while you’re talking. The calculations for this are a little trickier. Simply pressing the push-to-talk (PTT) button, without any talking, the radio consumes about 5 amps. Any time you talk, the radio will draw between 15 to 22 amps at 100 watts. For the sake of my calculations, I based the amperage draw at 20 amps at 100 watts.
Since I am a “search & pounce” type of operator, normally, I also based my transmit time to 20% (the other 80% of the time, I would be listening). I might be wrong on this, but if my “transmit only battery run time”, above, is correct (at 2.34 hours) then only transmitting 20% of the time would work out to about 5 times longer, or 11.7 Hours.
Of course, the other factors that are even harder to calculate (for me, anyway). The 80% of the time that I would be listening. The amount of power that the solar panel will put back into the battery. Any other devices that I connect to the battery (I’m going to try to stay away from doing that, this year). The voltage curve stays pretty flat until about 80% on the battery, too. Does that mean that all of my calculations are off by that much?
Another big thing that I have not figured in, at all is that I can just turn down the power on my radio. If I go to 75 watts, will the battery last 25% longer? If I run at 50 watts, will it last 50% longer? If that’s the case (which I actually doubt), I should be able to run 17.54 hours at 50 watts, even without the solar panel.
Since one of the main reasons for wanting this battery was for Field Day, since it is a 24 hour event, I wanted to have a battery that would last that long, by itself. I could have went with the 100 Ah battery, but for the price difference, I decided that the 54 Ah battery supplemented with solar would work just fine.
After I test all of this out in the real world, I will post an update.
For quite a while, now, I had been thinking about getting a LiFePO battery for the van. There’s a few different reasons that I’ve wanted to, but the main reason is radio noise. The battery will have almost no interference, compared to the gas powered generator that I had been using. The one thing that really pushed my decision, recently, was when Jason and I went up to the fly-in car show at the airport on May 1, 2021. Jason set up his hambulance and I set up my big ear antenna and generator.
Because of the way the show was set up, I was not able to get the separation between the antenna and generator that I would normally get at a portable operation or Field Day. The generator was set up just in front of the vehicle, toward the driver’s side, and the antenna was set up just behind the passenger’s door. Normally, I set them up as far away from each other as possible (at least 100′ away from each other) to avoid as much noise from the generator getting into the antenna. Normally it works pretty good, but I still get noise (whether grounded or not).
What happened at the airport event was that I was able to operate on 40 meters, but 20 meters was mostly unusable. Since the timing of the event was during the day, it would have been great to be able to get on 20 meters. There were multiple QSO parties happening (7th Area, DE, IN, and New England), so I’m sure there was plenty of signals out there. I just couldn’t hear them on 20 meters (except for a few high powered stations).
On May 24th, I decided, with Field Day coming up, I wanted to get a different power setup, so I finally pulled out the CC and bought a few items from Dakota Lithium. As I write this on May 29th, I have not received everything that I ordered, but I just wanted to go through some of the calculations that I did, before deciding on what I wanted, and making the purchases.
First of all, I will point out that I have never been one for “running a frequency”. I am more of a “search and pounce” operator when it comes to any sort of contest or QSO party. The reason that I am throwing this out there is that depending on how much you transmit, you will use more or less power. I have done all sorts of calculations, and will include those in the next post. Secondly, I will add that they are just my calculations, and I have not yet put any of it to the test, in the real world. I will do an update after I’m able to spend some time testing things out.
I will definitely be getting more things to complete the project, but here is what I purchased, so far, from Dakota Lithium. I ordered a 12V 54Ah Deep Cycle LiFePO4 Battery, a Folding Fast-Charge 12V Solar Panel, and a USB Phone Charger, Voltmeter, & Terminal Adapter Wiring Kit.
In the next post, I will try to detail my calculations.
I’m not sure what’s going on, exactly, but for the past few weeks, I have been having major trouble with propagation on HF. I know that there’s nothing wrong with my antenna, because I have made some good contacts, but they are very sporadic. QSB (the fading in and out of signals) has been really bad.
I’ve been trying to (at least) get involved in all of the QSO Parties that have come along, without a whole lot of luck. Even in the North Dakota QSO Party I only made two contacts. Part of that was because after I tried for 2 or 3 hours, I finally just gave up and went out to clean my garage. There wasn’t a whole lot of BIC time that Saturday.
As I write this, the Florida QSO Party is happening. It’s 2pm, and I have only been able to hear one station (N4K) on 20 meters. I still haven’t made the contact, but with the QSB the way it is, I’m just waiting until he pops up out of the noise, again.
… and just after I typed that, he popped up and I made the contact. Now, I can’t hear him at all, again. Urgh!
I am completely aware that nothing makes more of a difference in making contacts on HF than the conditions. As long as you have a decent antenna, you really can talk around the world with 5 watts. There are so many factors that go into having the right conditions, though, I really think that it’s more of an art than a science. Beyond that, depending on what the conditions are like on any given day (or hour, for that matter) I actually feel like it’s more of a gamble than anything.
The key (in my opinion) is persistence. Spinning the dial, rather than watching the spotting networks. Having a good set of headphones. Trying different bands at different times of day (sometimes, even when you don’t think it should work).
Another helpful thing that I have found is that when propagation really “is” bad at your location, is to just take a break from it. There is no good that can come from being frustrated. There’s always next time.
Recently, Jason (ND0JL) put up a UHF repeater in town. The repeater is on 443.900MHz with a +5MHz offset. It’s not located too far from me, and the whole system is actually still a work in progress. He would like to upgrade the antenna and raise it’s elevation, a bit.
The nice thing about it, is that a couple months ago, I bought a UHF 12 element yagi. It has been on the roof since a couple days after I got it, and right after he got the repeater going, I swung it around to point directly at it. I could probably get into the repeater with a half-a-watt, but my radio will only go down to 5 watts.
When he installed the repeater, he also connected it to Wires-X, which is a digital mode, proprietary to Yaesu. There is a room associated with the repeater, called “WHITE-CLOUD”. It is normally left in the room, unless somebody switches to another room for a net, or to make a contact, or something.
I’m very new to this digital mode, and I’ve been learning a lot, since he installed it.
Feel free to jump into the room, whenever you’d like. I am usually monitoring it when I’m not doing anything on HF (since the only radio I have that will connect to it is also my HF rig). Down the road, we hope to get more people in the area (and elsewhere) on there.
UPDATE: This year, I was able to get a total of 216 contacts for a total of 29,808 points. The log has been submitted, and I will be waiting for the results.
Once again, this year, I will be trying my luck on the SSB November Sweepstakes. Last year, I had a total score of 5,694. I hope to top that, this year. The contest begins on November 16th at 2100 UTC Saturday (3pm Central time) and runs through 0259 UTC Monday (9pm Sunday, Central time).
I will be mainly operating on 20m & 40m. I will also give 80m, 15m, and possibly 10m a try, depending on the conditions.
There is quite a long exchange for this particular contest, but once you get a rhythm, it’s not too much of a mouthful. It consists of a Serial, Precedence, Callsign, Check, and Section. All of that is explained on the ARRL website.
This year, I have also decided to set up a second antenna, which I will be using on 20 & 40 meters. The antenna is the one that I normally use for portable operations. It actually has a much lower noise floor than my OCFD. It is also set up “north/south”, whereas my OCFD is set up “east/west”. I will use an antenna switch that I borrowed from Jason (ND0JL) to alternate between the two.
I have never been very good at (or had much luck with) sitting on a frequency and calling CQ, but I will, once again, attempt it. I think that the main reason for this is that my normal set up at my QTH talks a lot better than it hears. Although I have become pretty good at listening to and being able to copy stations that are “in the noise”, doing that in a contest seems much more difficult.
I will be Single-Op Unlimited Low Power. Basically, this just means that I will be making all contacts, myself, with 100 watts or less, and I will be using spotting networks. I will have three of my four computer monitors up and running, while I’m operating. The more information that I can pull in during the contest, the better.
You can watch the Contest Online Scoreboard and see how many contacts are being made. I will be listed at the bottom of that page, in the “SO-ALL LP (A) PHONE” section. Although that page may list me with the club information (Jamestown Amateur Radio Club), I will be using my personal call in the contest, and not submitting any logs for the club.
If you’re reading this before or during the contest, I hope to make contact with you, somewhere. If we’ve already had a QSO during the contest, thank you very much!
As I write this on Oct. 12, 2019 (my 50th birthday), the accumulation total for us is at 17″. The snow is still coming down and the wind is still in full force.
The snow is not expected to stop until about 8:00pm, tonight. The wind will remain, but taper off sometime on Sunday.
I tried to work 40m and 80m, last night, without a lot of luck. Pretty sure it wasn’t the storm causing the bad propagation, since the same was reported for most everybody that I was able to hear. I don’t think I’ll be running a portable station, this weekend.
While I was simply looking for information about the “Happy 150!” Hiram Percy Maxim Birthday Celebration, I came across this. I didn’t even realize.
I remember trying hard, that weekend, last November. I never thought I would place that high, though.