# The Hike

It has been a while since I went out on an activation on my own. We had a death in the family in the beginning of September, and my mental health took a noise dive. My weekends have been spent bed rotting and I haven’t had much energy to be radio active.

I finally got the itch to spend some time in the park, so I managed to drag myself out of bed for a 1pm brunch at Café Sophie with the family and then we parted ways for me to play radio at US-1589 Patuxent River State Park.

I parted ways with the fam, and made it to the park around 2:30pm. I started my activation with a 30 minute hike in the park.

We’re in the middle of fall, so the park was a little drab, but it was very nice to be back to Patuxent. It is one of my favorite parks even though I tend to have a lot of trouble getting out on radio.

I saw this tree that looked like fire among his fallen brethren.

# What’s in the bag?

After my walk in the park, I thought it would be a good time to take some photos of my QRP setup. I’m very happy of this setup, and I have been meaning to share the contents. I will provide product links. They are free of tracking links and affiliate codes. Rest assured that I’m not trying to convince you to buy anything for my own financial gain. This is just what I use and enjoy.

I love this setup and how minimal it is. I have it in an Osprey Daylite Plus pack. That pack is pretty minimal. It looks bulky because I brought a puffy jacket in case the temps dropped. All in all, it is only about 10lbs. Most of the weight is due to the gear needed to support the 17’ whip. It would be much lighter if I just brought an EFHW, but I like having options. Let’s start with the pouches I have inside the pack. On the top is an Amazon Basic packing cube with the gear for the whip (Amazon product page). These packing cubes are cheap, and they are great for organizing groups of gear together. I’ll show you its contents in a moment.

Below that is a Wandrd Large tech pouch I had lying around (product page). It ended up serving as a perfect pouch for the QMX. Inside that pouch is my entire station, including the EFHW. This pouch and my throw line is enough to get on the air.

It is a good pouch and is very padded. I know my QMX is protected in there, but if I didn’t already have it, I would have found a cheaper option.

Yeah, there’s a lot in that Wandrd pouch. Left to right we have the following

1. 20ft RG316 from DX Engineering
2. Some portable speaker that someone gave me
3. CW Morse Pocket Paddle
4. Cable Matters Retractable Aux Cable (Amazon Product Link)
5. K6ARK QMX SSB Mic (Printables Link)
6. YOJOCK USB C Power Meter (Amazon Product Link)
7. USB C Magnetic Adapter (Amazon Product Link)
8. GINTOOYUN USB C PD to DC 9V adapter (Amazon Product Link)
9. 10ft RG316 from DX Engineering
10. K6ARK QRP EFHW (Amazon Product Link)
11. BNTECHGO 24 Gauge Silicone Wire (Amazon Product Link)
12. QRPLabs QMX 60, 40, 30, 20, 17 and 15m version (Product Link)
13. USB C to 9v DC 5.5mm x 2.1mm Power Cord (Amazon Product Link)
14. Some random white USB-C cable I had
15. Koss KSC75 headphone. I really like these. They flat pack and can be shared unlike IEMs (Amazon Product Link)
16. Blaze Orange Rite in the Rain 3"x5" top spiral notepad for CW logging (Product Link)
17. Pentel GraphGear 1000 Mechanical Pencil (Amazon Product Link)

Next is the throw bag. It is a Weaver small storage bag (Amazon product link) with 25m of throw line and a 11oz Forrester throw bag.

The bag and the line came from the FORESTER Arborist Throw Line Kit (Amazon product link) that I bought in a pinch after I had to cut my old line in a previous activation. I ordered the kit because it was the only one that would come quick enough for October’s Coffee and POTA.

I’m not a huge fan of the line or the bag. The line is very plastic feeling and rough on the hands. The bag is also heavier than I like, but it is blaze orange and easy to see. The kit works, so I’m using it, but I don’t know if I’d buy it again.

My preferred setup is Notch Acculine 1.75mm Dyneema Throwline (Amazon product link). This stuff is thin and very slick. For a throw bag, I prefer the 8oz Weaver for the weight savings, but really anything 11oz or less is fine. I do like that the Forester bag is blaze orange.

The gloves are some random Mechanix gloves that I got from somewhere that I use to avoid rope burn. You can find these pretty much anywhere gloves are sold. They’re pretty ubiquitous.

The final pouch is my vertical whip gear. The whip is a MFJ-1979 from DX Engineering that is no longer available. The CHA-SS17 would be a comparable option (DX Engineering link).

From left to right, a Z Match manual tuner (Amazon product link). It works really well, but I don’t really use it. I am probably going to remove it from the kit. It is pretty light, so I just keep it in the kit just in case.

I bought the tuner to touch up my EFHW’s SWR (which is 1.5), but I’ve found that I don’t really need it. The coax is 1m of rg316 from for connecting the turner to the radio (Amazon product link).

Next is a large text portable clock set to UTC for logging purposes (Amazon product link). Below the clock is two hanks of paracord for whatever I might need paracord for.

The yellow wires are two sets of 4 17’ radials for the vertical. They have a banana plug on them and the clips are banana plug jacks that can clip to the side of the tripod. Here’s the parts list for them:

1. Yellow BNTECHGO 30 Gauge Silicone Wire (Amazon product link)
2. Banana Plugs (Amazon product link)
3. U Type Spade Plug to Female Banana Jack (Amazon product link)
4. Mueller BU-25 Automotive Clip (Amazon product link)

Below the tuner is a NanoVNA for measuring the tuning of the whip. The case is a really cool NanoVNA case that is on Etsy. There is space inside for all the calibration standards and adapters.

Finally, the best for last. The tripod. The tripod is very compact. It is essentially a Gabil GRA-ULT01 MK3 that I parted out myself. The GRA-ULT01 only comes with SO-239 to 3/8-24, and I wanted 3/8-24 to BNC.

I made the assumption that they were probably not manufacturing the tripod themselves, so I searched Aliexpress for it. It turns out that the tripod is called a XILETU FM5S Mini (Aliexpress link). So I bought it on Aliexpress and the BNC insert from Gabil (Amazon link). Sure enough, they worked together.

When I bought the tripod, it was only cost me $31.41 with shipping. That was a bargain. All together, I was able to build the tripod with the BNC for cheaper than they were selling the SO-239 tripod version.

Now with the tariffs, the price of the tripod alone is $70, pair that with the $40 BNC adapter and it is $110. Still cheaper than the SO-239 version, but I am sure you can find something cheaper.

I think if I was going to build a lightweight tripod again, I’d get one of these ebay spikes and use the 3/8 to 1/4 tripod adapter with a standard mini camera tripod. I have a SO239 version of that spike and I really like it.

# The activations

For FT8 I was using a Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 FE with FT8CN. That works great. FT8CN on Android is pretty plug and play. It just works. FT8CN is very automated. That is very nice in the park. I can turn it on, let it go, and I sit and watch the birds.

Although the automation is nice, it isn’t very engaging. For this activation I wanted to try using my laptop. I recently upgraded my laptop to a Framework 13 with the intention to do live streams of Gleam programming on Twitch, so I wanted to give that a go.

Patuxent is always a challenge for me. I think I am in a bowl surrounded by granite hills. I think that translates into a mostly NVIS propagation pattern. On 20m, I was only getting ranges similar to 40m. I had a rough time getting my 10 contacts. I started at 4pm and civil twilight was 5pm. So I needed to finish up by then because the park would be technically closed by about 5:30pm.

With an average QSO every 3 minutes, I was cooking. I’d have my 10 QSO in 30 minutes at that rate. Except, that rate did not help up. At 4:31pm, on my 8th contact, my contact rate stalled.

I didn’t make another contact until 4:49pm. The light was dimming. It was coming down to the wire. I needed to start packing up by 5pm. To make maters worst, I started to feel raindrops. I was getting nervous. I could have stayed later than 5pm, but not if it started raining. The gray line approaches. This was starting to remind me of PUBG. If border closes in, it is all over.

I called CW, and got a reply from KC1OWN. I sent them my report. No response. I tried again. No response. 4:50pm. Uh oh. I’m not going to make it. I hear raindrops hit the dried leaves behind me. So far, none on me, but this is getting risky. My new laptop might get rained on. I was ready to pull the plug and shove it in my bag if one drop hit it.

I gave up on KC1OWN and called CQ again. 4:55, KAØBOJ replies. We finish up our QSO at 4:57pm. Phew. I just made it. Time to pack it up.

Date	Time	Call	Mode	RST (S)	RST (R)	Band
11/09/25	21:57	KAØBOJ	FT8	+07	-07	20m
11/09/25	21:49	N4SEC	FT8	+17	-16	20m
11/09/25	21:31	KU4UK	FT8	+20	-14	20m
11/09/25	21:29	AFØG	FT8	+08	-15	20m
11/09/25	21:24	WB9UVJ	FT8	+07	-14	20m
11/09/25	21:18	AD9AR	FT8	+10	-12	20m
11/09/25	21:15	AD9AR	FT8	+10	-12	20m
11/09/25	21:10	WA4VOC	FT8	+00	-04	20m
11/09/25	20:56	N9SOR	FT8	+14	-08	20m

Looking back at the log, my RST reports were abysmal. They weren’t far from me, but I was in the red by double digits. All in all, it was a pretty exciting activation. The time crunch and the imposing clouds raised the stakes. I hope to have a chill day in the park, but the gray line and the gray clouds had other plans.

See you for the next one! POTA on!