As simple as it gets portable....

A busy and enjoyable weekend here meant that it was 23 hours into the RSGB IOTA's contest before I thought about taking some time to make a few contacts. Since it was such a lovely day, I thought it would be nicest to be outside.

Knowing that I had a gel cell charged to around 11 volts, I thought that would be enough for a few low power contacts using the FT817. I quickly gathered up the 817, the ATX Walkabout antenna (works well on 28/50MHz) and the battery and decamped to the portable QTH (the arbour on the top lawn!).

On 10m CW, I quickly worked CQ2I from Portugal as well as a couple of French stations, a German, a Croatian and a Hungarian. I thought it would be worth while checking 50MHz and sure enough DK1MAX was coming through with a nice signal on CW - I was pleased to have a quick QSO with him - and had an 'almost' contact with EA6SX - but he couldn't get quite enough from me (he was quite weak at the time).

I shot a little video of the portable rig with HG3W coming through on 10m CW, just after I worked him.

If you haven't tried some low power, simple operating, I recommend it to you!