PAFF-weekend 9&10 April 2022 / More capacity from the Ecoflow River

The Dutch WWFF branch, PAFF, will organize a PAFF weekend on April 9th and 10th, 2022. At the beginning of this weekend (00:00utc, April 9th) a new set of Dutch nature parks will be added to the list (PAFF-0198 to PAFF-0226), and there will be a substantial activity in general from many Dutch nature parks (new and old). I myself will be in PAFF-0225 and -0226 on April 9th as operator of PA225FF and PA226FF together with the YNOMY group. On April 10th I will activate PAFF-0222 and -0223, and maybe PAFF-0224 (if time permits), as PF44F.
Exact park names and details will be listed here in the week preceding the event.

In order to be ready to activate multiple parks in one day, I decided to expand the capacity of my Ecoflow River R600 powerstation. This is done very easily by adding an additional battery pack (288Wh) which neatly fits under the existing basic system. I now have a very capable system of 576Wh, which will give me approx. 4 hours of operating time @ 100W output. If the weather cooperates and the sun shines, my solar panel will extend this period further.

Added battery pack (the part under the nice, but rather useless red LED bar)

The whole thing weighs in at 7.7 kg now, so that is still very portable. The superfluous LED bar (“ambient light”) can be switched off fortunately (but only via the Ecoflow app on your phone).

If the sun keeps going like it does right now, conditions will be great and we can use the higher bands for some WWFF DX contacts!!

Solar panel finally tested in the field

This year the summer has been a bitch. Relatively cold, lots of rain and many days overcast (at least the days I did not had to work …). Today, I finally was able to test my foldable solar panel. It was a relatively sunny day with only thin, high altitude clouds. I went out for a WWFF activity in PAFF-0194, Uiterwaarden Lek. The set-up with the Ecoflow River R600 power station is simple. You connect both AC outlet and DC solar panel inlet to the station, switch it on, switch the 220V AC out on and there you go. The fact that a solar panel is connected is sensed automatically and charging is managed by the internal electronics of the power station.

The panel was able to generate between 35 and 85 W of charging power depending on the clouds. Although this is not the 120Wp the panel is advertized with, I think this is a fair number considering the atmospheric conditions of today. The 120Wp can only be reached with a bright blue sky and exactly perpendicularly incoming sunlight.

In any case, the effect of having the panel attached is clear: after almost 2 hours of activity with 80W RF output (taking an average of ~150W from the mains), the capacity was still 55%. Compare that to a similar activity a few weeks ago when it was heavily overcast, rendering the solar panel useless. Then I had only 9% capacity left after 2.5 hours.

In an earlier post I already mentioned the EMC problems with the AC outlet. I fixed it with an FT240-31 ferrite toroidal coil. It appeared that the same treatment is necessary with the solar panel inlet cable. The cable from the panel to the power station also needs a toroidal coil close to the inlet connector in order to suppress spurious radiated by the switching electronics inside the power station. Another thing that helped a lot in getting rid of RFI noise is to put the power station and solar panel relatively far away from the transceiver. I used the full length of my mains cable (20m) to do this. I also put my (metal) car in between the power station/solar panel and transceiver. I do not know whether the last step is really necessary, but in any case I had no issue with RFI from the power station at all with this configuration.

Station on a picknick table, 3 band trap wire vertical alongside a glass fiber pole tied to a wooden gate. Power station and solar panel are positioned in front of the car (not visible in this picture).

Using the new EcoFlow R600 in the field

Saturday 19 december I finally went out in the field to (radio-)activate another nature reserve: Sint Jansberg, PAFF-0147. It is not too far from my home, so after a 20 minutes drive I arrived at the chosen spot on Google Maps.

I had the power station charged to 100% and decided to run my IC-7300 transceiver to 60% power output. Together with my laptop and microHam CW keyer the power consumption would not be too high. In order to be safe I had a short stake connected to the ground screw of the R600. The stake was put in the (wet) soil. The R600 worked flawlessly. No signs of RF noise, so the toroid filter did work fine too.

Details of the radio operation can be found in the blog of PAFF (in Dutch, sorry), the Dutch branch of the WWFF program. For as far as the capacity of the R600 is concerned, I can report the following. I was operating for 1:45 hours, and at the end I had 20% capacity left. Starting with 288Wh, a short calculation learns us that I had consumed on average about 125 W. Given the connected equipment and the duty cycle of Morse code transmissions, this seems to be about right. It means that I could have operated a little over 2 hours with this set-up. That is certainly enough for a quick activation and to pass the minimum of 44 contacts to make it a valid activation for me.

PAFF-0183, Bemelerberg & Schiepersberg, Activation – 17 October 2020, PF5X/P

In the current ‘Corona’ time, WWFF is more popular than ever. With hardly any serious DXpedition around people seem to have fun activating and chasing WWFF parks. For example the recent GYPO initiative by the US branch of WWFF generated quite a bit of activity on the bands…

So, it seemed to be a good moment to activate a new park. PAFF-0183, Bemelerberg en Schiepersberg had been activiated once, but only in SSB and therefore a nice target to give it a workout in CW. After a long and tedious trip due to a road block and associated detour, I arrived at 1045utc at the spot I had pinpointed on Google maps. Antennes and station were ready in approx. 30 min. so GO…. Eh, well, not really !
Some strange problems with my microHam interface caused the USB connection with N1MM to drop a few seconds after starting the program. I tried for more than half an hour, but at no avail. In the end I decided to use the internal USB interface of the IC-7300. Fortunately that did work, despite some timing issues with CW keying, which are known but were not that big of an issue … (back home the microHam CW keyer worked flawlessly again, so maybe RFI after all …? My antennas were rather close to the transceiver this time).
Anyway, finally at 12.09utc I could start on 30m. After the first spot things were running quite well. My 1/4 wave vertical apparently had a good take-off (KD1CT blew the Europeans away !!). Subsequently I switched to 20m which also yielded quite a few contacts in a short time. Various USA stations and a ZL station who was S5. As usual in a remote location reception was extremely quiet. A short, and likely too late try on 40m only resulted in a few contacts, while signals were weak. Despite all the issues at the start, I could close the station at 13.45utc with 102 QSOs in the log. Not a bad result. It was a nice location, but it was a bit cold at the end (10C).

Location PAFF-0183 at Bemelerberg

Set-up. Left: EFHW 40/20/15/10m, right: 1/4 wave vertical 30m, Honda EU20i generator

PAFF-0007, National Parc Maasduinen, Activation – 19 November 2017, PF5X/P

I started to activate various Dutch Nature reserves recently. The Dutch PAFF program is part of the worldwide WFF program.

In order to do this I acquired a small inverter generator (Honda EU-20i). As antenna I use either a aluminium mast as 40m vertical, a 12.5m glass fiber pole with wire verticals or end fed antennas (40-15m), as well as a 20m dipole which is hoisted to the top of one of the poles or the alu mast. The transceiver is a ICOM IC-7100 with LDG iT-100 tuner. A mini laptop for control via microKeyer II and logging (N1MM) completes the station.

So far I have activated:
PAFF-0108 Rijntakken – 2 & 10 Sep 2017
PAFF-0063 Rijk van Nijmegen – 17 Sep 2017
PAFF-0095 Deurnsche Peel & Mariapeel – 23 Sep 2017
PAFF-0004 De Hamert – 1 Oct 2017
PAFF-0048 Ooypolder & Millingerwaard – 14 Oct 2017
PAFF-0007 National Park De Maasduinen – 19 Nov 2017

This blog is about the last activation.

Sunday November 19th, 2017. It seemed to be a sunny day and not too cold. So I decided

to quickly go out in the afternoon for an activation of the nearby ‘Maasduinen’ national parc, PAFF-0007. I already did some reconnaissance in the past (our golf course is in that area). I finally ended up at the farmer’s trail in the middle of the forest. There was a fence which came in handy as an attachment point for my pole.

I had bought a 300W DIY end-fed antenna kit at a ham flea market, with which I had constructed a 30m end-fed antenna. I use fully separated windings as per suggestion of W8JI for better common-mode reduction and higher efficiency. Using my MFJ antenna analyzer it appeared that the wire needed to be shortened (according to the extra wire I purposely left on) . After this adjustment I could use the antenna without a tuner.
Unfortunately the weather did not quite cooperate and it started to hail. After some 15 mins it cleared again and I could start sending my first CQ around 3pm local. Response was fair. 30m is a nice band as it is somewhat quieter as 40m. On top of that at a remote spot the noise level is a LOT lower than at home, so I will hear almost every weak signal. Despite my 100W some station had difficulty in copying me (probably in a less noise free environment compared to me …).
As it gets dark already early in this period of the year and in view of my location in the middle of the forest, I started to tear the station after 1 hour in order to get that done in full daylight. In that 1 hour of activity I logged 59 stations, which I believe is a reasonable result.

All PAFF activities as PF5X/P are uploaded to LotW, ClubLog and the WFF database. QSL exclusively via LotW. I have no QSL cards for these activations, so you can spare money by just getting an account with LotW …