The first radio Uetli adventure...

...with some delay  (3 days) I write about my Uetliberg adventure... I would like to write: "about my first Uetliberg adventure" as want to repeat this more often...

We try to visit Uetli twice a week - so far Tuesdays on bicycles and Thursdays on our own foots. Last Thursday we started from my home around 6p.m. with Oliver and Eduardo (friends).

Weather was oook in that moment but was raining before and some rain was expected later in the night. Well, one of the good things I had learned in this country is that "there is no bad weather, only inappropriate clothing" I had appropriate rain coat in my backpack so I seemd to be prepared. If that would be the only contents of my bagpack - that would be easy... No, together with the rain coat there were: KX3, power amplifier Midland 747B, MFJ antenna tunner, two Lipo batteries (3S, 2.2Ah) and buddipole antenna with 2.5m mast. This time no tripod which is nice and light as long as you didnt have to carry it on your own back 8 km (constantly up)...







this time climbing was harder than usual..







We reached "top of Zuerich" around 8pm. The view from there was spectacular as usual...

click to see full

I mentioned last time that one of aims to go there is to spend some time with friends and - as everybody knows - the time is even nicer when some beer(s) are involved - we couldn't resist also this time. So beer was involved and finally I started my radio activities some time later...

I also mentioned that I had spent some time the day before checking that I don't miss any important cable, element etc. Yeeees. I checked all the cables that I usually forget (connecting radio with amplifier or changer PL/BNC). This time I had everything except ... central element of Buddipole.

Without this element Buddipole antenna just doesn't exist. At the beginning I wanted to build any antenna from some piece of wire but I didnt have any... Finally I managed to connect both arms of Buddipole directly with the cable. That definitely was not perfect as both arms touched the bench however such built antenna could be tuned and I did even some QSO.

The propagation was not exciting this day or just my new antenna was just deaf... I did one nice QSO with Marco HB9ZAG. Maybe it was not DX (abt 20km) but at least I had opportunity to test this specific setup - power amplifier powered by Lipo battery. Definitely such setup works - the only problem is for how long Lipo battery can last. It is only 2.2Ah and amp returns something abt 100w... The good side of such batteries is high possible current (in this case - 2.2Ah - 20C - 12.6V - even 40A !!!). The bad side is that they explode sometimes.. (never happened to me but if anyone wants to use them please read about them before!!!).

We did some tests - how to drive the power amplifier to get more power but without distorions. It seems that (at least on 14MHz) I should use no more than 1W output to drive the amp. I need to find some power meter to check what the power is in such setup (from the gauge in tuner looked like around 100W).

Finally around 23:00 I decided to leave - around 5 minutes after I had packed everything it started to rain... I went down by train..

Next 2 days my muscles didn't let me to forget about this interesting adventure...

I'm thinking about some wire antenna which should be smaller and lighter than Bud...

73!

hb9ega/p, op: Marcin, QTH: Üetliberg... @22.05.2014 20:00 CET

...one of the biggest turist attractions in Zürich is Üetliberg - the hill just next to the city with stunning view to city, Zurich lake, Alps and countryside on the other side. Uetliberg has about 950m over sea level (I live at abt 430m) and is very popular place for trips by foot, bicycle or train (no car access). 

With some friends we visit it regularly (if possible twice a week - once by velo (bicycle) and once on own transport (foots)). It about 18km going there and back (unfortunately the first 9km "going there" is also "going up"...).

Tomorrow (Thursday) is walking day but this time instead of having beer on the top (and now the secret - why we do it - was revealed...) I'm going to have some QSO(s). As the hill is already quite high I will not take the 15m mast with me (yes, nice 15m high and less nice 20kg...) but just basic buddipole mast (2.5m) which I will mount to something (fence..?). Radio - KX3 with portable power amplifier and very portable Lipo battery. These Lipo batteries have best capacity/weight ratio and therefore are used in flying planes models. Such battery maybe will not survive too long (2500mAh) but is able to deliver power for 100W operations (even more) for a few QSO(s). Maybe I will take two of them so I can have 2x a few QSO(s)...

I didnt check so far how heavy radio plus antenna and plus all this stuff is going to be.. In the worst case still there is the train...

So now the batteries are charging and I'm trying to collect all these necessary cables, microphones etc. It happened to me (luckily once) that after assembling huge antenna on even bigger mast I discovered that didn't take ...radio..

So stay tuned (somewhere around 14.275 tomorrow after 20:00 our time...) and hopefully see you tomorrow :) If anyone would like to join - tomorrow or every Thursday 8 p.m. @Üetlibrg...