Summer radio activity planning... follow up

Yesterday after I posted I decided to dig out my Leixen VV898 to see if it powers up, by means of connecting it to my car jump starter as a temporary power source, low and behold it worked fine, but one thing was nagging me, it was programmed to start up with my old callsign and not my current one displayed, so I connected the programming cable to the radio with CHIRP running on my laptop, however no amount of reprogramming would change the callsign over, however I noticed another oddity, for the VV898 CHIRP seems to not quite work as you'd expect, to change the power level you would change the mode and the mode you'd change the power level, I do not know if this is a bug with the radio or a bug with CHIRP, the same effect was found on my shack computer.

So what to do, the original Leixen software remains on my shack computer, running this after much trial and error finally got the results I wanted, the radio displayed the correct callsign on power-on (being something my Yaesu FTM-400XDE does as standard I figured all my radios should, and they do), with the radio confirmed working, and TXing fine into a dummy load at both 5 and 10 watts on VHF and UHF I turned my attention to a source of power that would happily run radios and also, importantly, be lightweight, of course LiPo batteries would be an option but these can catch on fire if handled improperly, so a bit of digging on Google was in order and I found the blog of James M0JCQ.

The article in question can be found here in which M0JCQ explains the subject in full detail, needless to say I may have found the solution to the power issue and with summer some time away that will give me chance to ensure I have batteries, the batteries in the article are LiFePo batteries and the article impresses me, though I don't plan to do any SOTA activations as is the case for M0JCQ.

Shelter comes next, of course, a small basic pop-up tent would suffice but I also need to take room for the equipment into consideration, and perhaps make it a joint venture with someone I know, they don't need to be licenced as I'll more than likely also have CB equipment with me, which they would be allowed to use legally.

Once shelter is sorted getting an antenna erected is the next thing, I have my telescopic fibreglass mast, though with the top two sections damaged I may replace it or keep it and use it as is, it will still hold my T2LT for CB use, but obviously not anything heavier than a wire antenna, as I want to operate 10-metres as well I'd need something that could cover both on the same antenna though this will be something I can look at, for 2-metres and 70cm (as it appeared to work on the latter) the groundplane antenna will be rebuild and a new PL259 connector installed, the antenna will be tested in an open environment.

I now have further digging and research to do on this subject, and I'll keep you posted.

73 de 2E0EIJ