Hi, I’m a new ham and yet to try a SOTA activation. I have purchased a Baofeng handheld. I know handhelds are quite good radios, in the hills, especially if I change the antenna. I would like a linear that I can run from a battery to give me 10w of power. My thinking behind this is that I can travel light and have relatively inexpensive gear with me if the weather is questionable. I’m currently constructing a Yagi to use on 2m and that bit of extra power may come in very handy.
I would like to home brew a linear for the building experience.
Going from 5W (most HH will do this) to 10W is not worth the battery
power.
Better antennas are always the first thing to do.
Plus 1 for that advice
From your QRZ.com entry I can see you are in Sunderland. My experience with a 5W handheld is that with the right antenna and a hill with just moderate propagation into north of England population centres will get good results.
This weekend I was on Glyder Fawr (GW/NW-003), which admittedly is a very high hill (for the UK). I had contacts into South Lakeland and Leeds, as well as all over the North West of England and North Wales. This was just with a 2m vertical dipole at about 1.5m above ground. It was so windy I couldn’t use anything else or get it any higher.
Try a reasonable antenna and the right hill and you will be fine without adding to your power.
In fact it is actually fun trying to see how far you can get with just this simple set up.
Just one final bit of advice. Switch off the squelch so you can pick up incoming weak signals. I didn’t used to do this and missed contacts as a result.
Finally, just check your licence conditions regarding what you can and can’t build for yourself as a Foundation Licence holder.
Recall from the Foundation licence - best way to get distance when using vhf fm was to get your antenna as high as possible (tick, sota!). If you are also building a yagi, you will increase the effective radiated power. When you are set up and start making contacts try reducing the power by half, I imagine the callsign at the other end will hardly notice the difference. If you turn the yagi from vertical to horizontal, that’s a different story.
To cut a long story short, I wouldn’t bother with an amp for the handy, save the energy (yours and the battery’s) for the yagi you mentioned.
I entirely agree with the other comments. With a larger antenna, you also get an improvement on receive as well as transmit. In terms of practicality, I would suggest maybe 3 elements, with up to 5 or 6 elements probably being the maximum complexity you should consider. Beyond that the law of diminishing returns in terms of gain and the narrower beamwidth comes into play.
If at some future date you move to SSB by purchasing something like an FT-817, you may consider adding a small amp (mine produces around 22W output) with an integral low noise receive pre-amp. Certainly I find this to be a useful aid to making the longer distances that are possible with the enhanced small signal performance of SSB.
In reply to M6VID:
If at some future date you move to SSB by purchasing something like an
FT-817, you may consider adding a small amp (mine produces around 22W
output) with an integral low noise receive pre-amp. Certainly I find
this to be a useful aid to making the longer distances that are
possible with the enhanced small signal performance of SSB.
73, Gerald G4OIG
That would go with upgrading to Intermediate. At present his limit is ten watts, and doubling his output to ten watts would give him an additional 3 dB of signal strength, about half an S-point of improvement. Like yourself and others I recommend a better antenna. Just buying or making a little HB9CV two-element beam would give the same improvement on transmit as a 20 watt linear and as you say, a worthwhile improvement on reception.
I actually agree with the comments about a better antenna. Didn’t realise that doubling my power would only give me 1/2 a point difference. I’m building a 3 element yagi to start with but I have been looking at some more ambitious designs for the future. Going to the lake district soon and that trip is going to be more about just trying different kit and looking at how well things work. I actually have a ft 857 to enable me to work hf and 2m ssb and of course 10w if I want. However, I won’t want to carry all that kit every day. Just thought a little amp in addition to the yagi may give me a nice advantage over the Hand held’s power alone. But point taken.