Yes but it’s stupidly overpriced for what it is. As Fraser says, Hobbyking LiFePO is a better solution.
I have the same battery that Fraser has posted a link to and another 4S1P version. 1 of those powered my 817 for a 2hr20 min session driving a 13cms transverter with another powering the transverter. Assume about 15% TX during that period and the 817’s high RX consumption of around 350mA for the rest. On returning home, each cell was 3.33V still. I’d expect the 817 battery to provide at least another 4hrs activation time at that level of use if not more.
I have other Lithium based battery solutions for things like taking on a plane but for “home” SOTA activating the LiFePo is money well spent in my view and well worth waiting for them to come back into stock.
In addition (and I’ll stand corrected) but it’s no longer legal to provide Euro style mains plugs in the UK without a captive adapter. The vendor says it will be dispatched by Royal Mail. It’s also against Royal Mail rules to ship batteries like that not fitted into the original equipment. RM are entirely within their rights to confiscate and destroy such a package with no compensation. Both things point to the vendor being “iffy” if not “dodgy” and it’s people like this abusing the shipping regulations causing everyone else problems in obtaining batteries etc.
While awaiting stocks to come in with Hobby King, I found these people in Wales. https://www.componentshop.co.uk/
I have emailed to see if they can do a 4200mah 13.2v pack as mentioned above
Are you handy with solder iron and few wires? If so, maybe build your own, that’s what I have done.
Bought 4 Li-ION 21700 5000mAh units and BMS (battery management system) from eBay. Soldered everything together and got a battery back exactly as I wanted it. Look on YouTube there are plenty videos how to make such unit.
Selling my IC-703 was probably the biggest regret that I ever had in amateur radio…to the extent that I subsequently purchased another one on Ebay for more than it was worth!
I now have an IC-705 (which is an awesome radio) but I still regularly take the 703 with me for SOTA.
Whatever happens with my radios, the IC-703 stays. I’m not making the mistake of selling that again!!!
Agree on that. Mine is a keeper even though I mostly use the kx3 now. Mine has the w4rt mod that gives me a mech filter on ssb and another on cw. Sounds great.
I use a good quality 5m travel pole to support a link dipole for 60m 40m 30m 20m and it’s very successful. I use both CW and SSB which helps build up more contacts over the 4 bands to get the best out of propagation at the time. On HF it’s usual to complete between 30 and 50 contacts in an hour by an experienced multmode operator. Slef spotting always increases the chance of a successful activation, although the RBN on CW does avery good job of alerting ones activity. I wouldn’t personally carry a 10m pole or one that is twice the height of my rucksack as it attracts a lot of attention and catches on overhanding trees etc. Many operators use half wave end fed antennas but I have always used home made link dipoles as an inverted vee fed with thin RG-174 coax to good effect.
Just realised this is an old thread… never mind I’ll leave the comments as is.
I got myself a 6m pole from Decathlon which I have tested with my roll up 2m antenna.
Hopefully when the bits i have ordered land, I can look to get out and try again.
Dont have a spare HF antenna yet for SOTA work.
If you want to attempt a home brew hf inverted V, but don’t want to make it all, then look at sotabeams website and hamgoodies.co.uk who both sell bits to make the job easier. Using a dipole calculator program makes life simpler and cutting to length isn’t down to mm tolerances for the lower bands.
I generally just divide 468 by the frequency in MHZ for a dipole or 234 for a vertical 1/4 wave as a starting point in feet and inch (in decimal) and then trim the PVC insulated wire length down from there roughly to establish the perfect matched length. Then tidy up the link connections finally to keep the weather out of them. For SOTA I don’t use a balun but I do at home. Old habits die hard and I’ve been using this method of measurement for over 40 years.
