Remember, on VHF/UHF, height over might! Use your height (elevation) to your advantage and get your 5W going in the direction of interest. I vote for the yagi every time as you reap the gain advantage on receive too, as others have said. While the extra TX power may seem better, start thinking in terms of dB rather than watts. Also, to power a 90W amp you’ll be hauling up some significant battery power with you… You already know what range you get with a simple 5W handheld - pretty incredible distances, right? You already have the power - your best bet is to optimize it in one direction. Also, depending on the yagi’s gain, the beamwidth isn’t usually as sharp (or exclusive) as many think. Check out the plotted radiation pattern of your yagi to get some idea. A 5 or 6 element yagi can yield about 10 dB of gain, making your 5W handheld into a 50W blowtorch! And - received signals are also 10 dB better. There’s your 20 dB advantage on the mountain right there - all in a hand held yagi! 20 dB is a factor of 100 - think about that…!
Tom. I hope to take a trip the Catskills at the end of October. Hunter/Slide being my goals. Thanks for taking time writing your reply.
*As a side note. Yesterday was a incredible day in Colorado. I activated 2 “6” point peaks in the afternoon. On the front range west of Denver the problem here is deciphering all the calls responding to my CQ’s! I also got to test the SOTAbeams 2M filter out in a tough RF environment. Tonight I will post a report and hopefully get some good dialogue about high RF/filters.
Dave thanks for QSO and spot yesterday! I am going to start experimenting with the Yagi next time I’m out East. There are many SOTA peaks within 3hrs of my eastern QTH most are heavily forested and have no VHF/UHF activity listed in SOTA logs so either they have not been tried on those bands or people have learned to not even bother. Since most of these peaks are very short hikes I think a setup that uses a YAGI with a very tall mast is possibly the key to activating!
I just did my first activation on Saturday with an Arrow II yagi and had reports of many folks hearing me but I never heard them. Frustrating! I’m using a Yaesu 817 and was on a barren 5300" Arizona mountain top. The folks on a mountain top 72 miles away I could hear great, one person in a mobile in Tucson I could hear, but everyone else was quiet to me. I wonder how many folks were frustrated with me?
Its very unusual to be an “alligator” -big mouth no ears- on 2m with only 5 watts…your are more typically a “rabbit” - big ears no mouth due to the low noise level on the summit.
In my experience the 817 benefits from a receive preamp. I got an old german made preamp with rf switching from a ham radio estate sale years ago. A preamp will help you hear better.
Be sure also your squelch is open and that you don’t have the attenuation set on the 817 or the “IPO” setting enabled and make sure your 817 gain is all the way up if running SSB (sorry I had to ask not knowing how new to hamming you are) and make sure your coax is good. Coax for portable use needs to be checked with an analyzer occasionally as sometimes there are no visual clues that it is not running well.
Thanks Tom, LOL regarding “alligator” and “rabbit”! I was a rabbit for sure that day.
I didn’t have the squelch enabled and the rf control was up. Both the attenuation and IPO are disabled for 144MHz on the unit. The coax was new so I assume it was okay (but I’ll start checking). I’m a three week old newby so it was likely my fault, but don’t know what I was doing wrong. Holding the yagi wrong? Thanks for the preamp tip. I appreciate your help!
73 and thanks again.
David KJ7QPD
Was that your first activation or first using Yagi? You said it was a barren mountain top. Was there other antennas on top? Was there a mountain nearby with antennas on top? If so it could have been high RF overloading your receiver from those antennas. I have had that happen to me a few times.
It probably would, but also the front end gain as purchased is backed off somewhat. You can edge it up in the engineering menu quite easily but at the cost of making the receiver a bit more sensitive to overload. This applies to the FT857 and 897, too.
It was both my first activation and first using a Yagi. There were other Border Patrol antennas on the mountain top but I’m not sure they were active, however there was an active BP site nearby. I’ll try a mountain top without antennas of any kind this weekend. Thanks KE8OKM!
That means you have lots and lots to learn and do and it’s easy to be overwhelmed. So make a cheat sheet and write it out on paper with a pen/pencil not some file in your phone.
Make a note of all the settings you need to get correct for the mode you want. For 2m FM you want to ensure there is no tone squelch (as used on repeaters) enabled, no frequency duplex etc. Write down on your cheat sheet the 2m calling frequency and some QSY frequencies. Write down the local repeaters you should be able to hear. You can tune about and check out your receive is OK if you can hear things you expect to hear. Just like pilots have take off and landing checklists they follow, having an operating checklist takes the pressure away. The difference is when you gain experience you wont need the cheat sheet unlike pilots who always need to follow the checklist.
You can also program some memories with simplex and repeater frequencies but writing it out on paper and reading it from paper and setting it in the radio will help you learn what settings you should be using. Nobody starts out knowing what to do, it comes from doing and learning from the doing. There is no replacement for practice. We all had to start from a no knowledge and experience position.
Also a hand held Yagi is a pain to hold and small movements even when you are strong with your QSO partner can be enough to introduce enough multipath and reflections that your signal disappears or flutters. If possible fix the Yagi to a support of some kind.
Carrying a copy of the bandplan will help you operate on the right frequencies. And again, have it on a piece of paper not in your phone. You want something easy to refer to and not have to try and use your phone, find the damn file, view the screen in the sunlight, point the antenna and hold the microphone.
The receiver was desensed by a nearby transmitter perhaps a commercial transmitter adjacent to your band. In this country we get this problem sometimes with pagers operating just outside the 2m band. This would explain people calling you but you not hearing them.
