15m, down at the lake.

A very sunny but, in exposed places, very cold day today.  Even the local swan community was fed-up of the wind and waves!  Son out skateboarding, so a couple of hours to kill with the radio at a local lake.  Earlier work showed freshwater situations yield good signal enhancements.

If you live in the northerly latitudes, you'll know that colour of sky and water means it's cold!

 

For sure, the LiFePO4 battery is a great asset to backpacking; I can walk pretty much any distance now with the full kit.  I managed over a kilometre quite comfortably the other day.  What I couldn't manage today was not getting a very wet foot, trying to install a radial tent peg!

Well, conditions were very poor after a G3 event overnight (still ~G1 at time of writing).  I wasn't getting out very far, but then again, neither was I at home, with ~35W and a vertical delta; in fact, I was getting out a lot worse from home, and the 20m band WSPR waterfall was almost empty:

Send/Receive spots on 15m, from home, ~35W, vertical delta loop.  Not very good today!

Black coating for a radio is not a good colour for portable - it can get very hot!  The case is a good shade.

 

Here's what I managed on transmit from the lake (~3W, 1/4 wave vertical):

And here's what I managed on receive:

It's a pity that JT65 and JT9 are now out of fashion, because the possibilities with those modes on QRP are much better than with FT8.