I activated this summit again today for zero points but I had a lot of fun dealing with a very nice and long stream of chasers.
I operated with my MTR-2B and this EFHW antenna with counterpoise to the minituner I recently bought to QRPguys in kit and assembled a few days later.
The endfed wire was as a sloper from the top of my fishing rod and the MTR-2B was powered with my LiFePo4 (13V) so it should have put about 5W output.
The antenna length was 9.6m, so for the 20m band and the minituner easily matched the impedance to a perfect SWR 1:1
It worked beautifully on 20m, and it let me log 55 QSOs in a bit less than an hour in an almost continuous running. The highlights of the day in the form of DX were @ZL1TM, @AB4PP and @K4DY. I was also very pleased to QSO with Allen @2E0AGB for the first time on CW and also with André @F5UKL, who is located too close at the other side of the EA-F border, thus usually in skip with me.
When the stream of chasers dried out on 20m, I QSYed to 40m. Despite having with me a 21.5m long wire which would have worked perfectly on 40m, I didn’t use it and worked on 40m with my 20m band EFHW because I was running out of time and I was too cold not feeling like messing with thin wires given the numb fingers and cold body I was having by that time. So my operation on 40m was short and suboptimal with my 20m band EFHW wire and the minituner not being able to perfectly match it. I have the feel it isn’t designed for tuning a non resonant antenna and this mini tuner can handle small impedance mismatches, but not big ones.
I think I’ll activate tomorrow with my MTR-2B but using 2 monoband mobile whip antennas with a linked 1/4 wave single radial, as I’ve done several times in the past with very good results.
Thanks dear chasers for your calls and QSOs.
I’ll be looking forward to copying you all again soon from a summit.
73,
Guru