Portable Ham Radio Setup

Here is a description of my current portable ham radio setup.

Living in a city has it's conveniences, sometimes that means making sacrifices. One sacrifice I am making is not having a permanent antenna setup. Going portable gets me out of the apartment and adds a little challenge to the hobby.

I have a ways to go in making it more portable and easier to pack up. Like every good setup it is evolving into something more efficient.

My setup includes the following gear:

Yaesu FT-450AT 100 watt Transceiver

Buddipole Mini Portable HF Antenna

6ft - 12ft Painter's Pole Antenna Mast

Deep Cycle Marine Battery (106ah)

Paper Logbook

Various Accessories (bungie cords, guy lines, cables etc...)

Here is a YouTube video I made of the portable setup:
Youtube: Portable Ham Radio Setup

My results with this setup were decent. I took it a nearby park to give it a test. The park I went to isn't my first choice for radio work just because of it's low elevation. It's basically a low creek bed surrounded by hills and trees. However it's close to my place and served it's purpose.

I found a parking spot with a picnic table nearby, this was perfect so I wouldn't have to lug my giant battery far. I bungied the painter's pole to the table leg and assembled the antenna. I followed the instructions that it came with setting it up for the 10 meter band as a center fed dipole. It was a little chilly and windy so I ran the coax back to the car and operated out of the front seat of the car.

The FT-450AT has a built-in auto tuner, I wasn't able to use this feature. I'm not sure what the problem was, but when I would try to engage the tuner it would error out presumably because of high SWR. When I would try to transmit even low power without the tuner engage, the SWR would go through the roof. I made some adjustments to the antenna, lengthening and shortening the whips slightly, and moving the coil clips, but nothing seemed to work. With the tuner engaged, but not running the auto tune function, the SWR was fairly low. I saw 1.1:1 - 1.3:1 using 100 watts. I dropped the radio down to  12 and 15 meter just to test the tuner. Putting the antenna back to the manual suggested configuration, I ran the auto tuner and it worked.

That tells me the antenna is capable of 10 meter, but it's not really the most efficient on that band. I still have some experimenting to do to get it to work on 10 meters efficiently. I need an analyzer to really set it up properly, but it's not 100% necessary. I would be curious to see someone use an antenna analyzer on the Buddipole in the 10 meter band.

The antenna seems to be very dependent on it's surroundings. Meaning antenna height, nearby objects, band conditions, and power output all need to be taken into consideration when setting it up. I think you can definitely get in the ball park by following the manual, but if you want to get all the "steam into the beam" you need to experiment a little.

The 10 meter band condition were favorable and I made my first HF contact with this set up. From Maryland to Colorado. Not too shabby for the first time out. I heard lots of Colorado stations coming in strong.

I'll continue posting updates to my set up and what results I get until as I learn more about the Buddipole and how to set it up more efficiently. So far I really like the antenna It's made well and allows me to be portable on several different bands with one antenna package.

Here are a couple of links to the equipment I'm using:

Yaesu FT-450 (mine is the 450AT which was replaced by the 450D)

Mini Buddipole