Portland NET Amateur Radio Simplex Net - 19 May 2016

[Kenton NET Neighborhood Emergency Team]

This is the forum to check in with your call sign, location, equipment type, and any other pertinent data we can use to determine who can talk to whom and where.

[Pete Rok]

Pete Rok KG7MRZ
5/19/16 20:00 147.520 request any stations to identify.
20:01 contact AE7XP--KG7WXN
20:07 Hear KG7PPM
20:10 Hear KE7SCF Contact KG7JKN--KG7VGL
20:30 Move to 147.420 Contact KF7ZWX--W6CUJ
South East 136th & Mitchel elevation 282' Yaesu FT-60R 5 watt Yagi 3 element

[John Steup]

Here's my report from the NET Simplex Net. 

I was situated at Cascade Plaza IKEA off Airport Way with a 5w Baofeng UV-82 and two different antennas. Antenna one was my mag mount 1/4 wave comet and antenna two was the stock 6" stubb antenna.

My elevation was basically sea level, so getting a signal out had challenges. 

On the 147.520 I was able to talk to:

AE7XP

KE7SCF

KG7MRZ

With remarkable clarity. 

I was also able to hear many others, incuding:

KG7WXN

KG7PPM

Once switched over to 147.420 I was able to hear the conversations between W6CUJ and others

but was not able to reach any contacts. 

Notes on antennas:

While I am normally able to get much better coverage using the 1/4 wave, easily hitting Portland and Southern repeaters frm Vancouver and farther North, my reception was sparse in this situation with the 1/4 wave. The 6" stock antenna produced much better transmission and reception. This may be situational as the IKEA store has a LOT of metal on it and I did not move the 1/4 wave around to see if that could have been an issue as I was able to do with the radio mounted 6".

One more note on antennas: One of my best so far is a dual band "Ed Fong" J-pole, which is basically a roll up J-pole in a pvc sleeve. No ground plane needed and it works standing up in any corner of a room or on my deck with strong reception and transmission. Just make sure the pvc is the lighter Class 200 PVC or you will have issues with signal strength. Here's a link if you are curious.

Thanks for putting this on Michael C. and to Michael S., I definitely appreciate the net control on the mistakenly alternate frequency :-) 

Looking forward to the next one!

John KG7JKN

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[John Steup]

About that link :-)

http://edsantennas.weebly.com/about.html

[Cert Scott]

NET Simplex Test 5/19/16

Location: SE 52nd & Woodstock, elevation 300 ft. 

Equipment: Two Baofeng UV-82 handheld radios, one with a 16" dual band antenna and one using an N9TAX roll-up J-pole antenna setup inside the house on the second floor. I used only the latter radio/antenna combination to transmit (I have successfully used the J-pole inside the house in the past to reach repeaters in the Portland area)

Start: 7:57pm

About 8:12pm I heard a station respond to KI7EFR, but I did not hear KI7EFR. A moment later I heard KG7WXN (which was the station I heard earlier) speaking to AX7EP, stating he was using a Yeasu (did not catch the model number) 75 watts with a J-pole antenna on a balcony in the Goose Hollow area.

At approximately 8:16, I called KG7WXN and received a response from that station. The signal from this station was very clear and strong. I made three additional attempts to contact KG7WXN without success.

I then made two attempts to contact "any Neighborhood Emergency Team Station" on the simplex frequency, but had no success.

I transmitted that I was securing at 8:26pm.

Perhaps suggesting that participants use NET Form 6, Communications Log, during the test. This would give us a chance to get familiar with at least one NET form. Perhaps, also NET Form 8, General Message, which could be used when relaying to NET Control for another station

I was not aware of using 147.040 as a means to check in with participants.

I found this to be very valuable test/exercise and am looking forward to trying this again.

On Monday, May 16, 2016 at 10:02:39 PM UTC-7, Kenton NET Neighborhood Emergency Team wrote:

[Michael Colvin]

Thaanks for your suggestgions, Scott.  I like the idea of using NET Form 6 for logging. 

One of the things that Michael Schilmoeller realize from last night's exercise is that any real chance of communicating across Portland using an HT is greatly enhanced by using a handheld directional yagi antenna.  Those of us using base station equipment had a much better experience reaching people, unless Mt. Tabor or Rocky Butte was in the way.  Those would be good locations for ad hoc crossband repeaters.

We also discussed the possibility of having an anyenna construction workshop dedicated to making 2M yagis.

Like you, I thionk this first effort was very worthwhile, in spite of the confusion I created by posting two different frequencies!

Michael Colvin W6CUJ