A roll up counterpoise mat for vertical antennas

[@shroomskunk]

Love your projects Peter. You are keeping homebrew alive 👍

[@scgoralski]

Great video, Peter. Thanks for all the great content!

[@johnwest7993]

I think I'll try this, especially as I'm lucky enough to have a couple of rolls of conductive aluminum tape to use to stick down a bare wire down the middle of the mat. A quarter wave vertical really just needs a low impedance 'electron bucket' to work against to dump the other quarter wave's electrons into to make the vertical happy, and a nice large mat works great for that purpose.

[@Bob814u]

"I can barely hear you in California" (paraphrased) running 5 watts SSB and getting that far. 'but you can hear me?' LOL!!! Great job sir!

[@Steve-GM0HUU]

Playschool😆. Censored wire stripping method🤣. Excellent Peter - entertaining and interesting project. Hope you managed to stay up wind at the sewage farm. Even with a fairly small mat, I am wondering if you will get a reasonable amount of capacitive coupling to ground. To get the equivalent area using wire would take quite a lot of wire with a lot more weight.

[@vkamateur]

Thanks for the /P contact Peter... always great to get you in the log.

[@Paul_VK3HN]

You have the magic touch for working QRP DX Peter, well done!

[@MidlifeRenaissanceMan]

Agreed How many different birds calls can you make out during the video ?

[@Paul_VK3HN]

@@MidlifeRenaissanceMan Pretty sure I heard the Common Sidetone Finch and the Ruffled BFO Whistler. Did I miss any?

[@MidlifeRenaissanceMan]

@@Paul_VK3HN switch mode sparrows ?? Noisy video card crypto miner ?? So this small brown bird with a yellow beak flew in through the front door of the local Bowlo the other day. Flew around the room and landed on the bar. Walked over to the beer taps, and said “I’ll have a schooner of New thanks mate” Barman says to the bird. _I’m sorry, but.....it is illegal for me to serve alcohol to a minor_ That’s a take away joke. You’re not goi g to laugh straight away, but sometime in the near future, as you relive the trauma of reading it, you may just smile

[@Paul_VK3HN]

@@MidlifeRenaissanceMan Meanwhile his mate the pelican perched at a nearby table and two hours later got kicked out, because -- he had a very large bill.

[@MidlifeRenaissanceMan]

@@Paul_VK3HN ouch What ever happened to the Russian woodpecker ? I forgot about that. That said. You see large swathes of spectrum wiped out by something like that, especially when they’re doing _stuff_ in the South China Sea

[@potatoslim2332]

"shooting yourself in the foot" ...He doesn't know our VK3YE! Haha. If he only knew how good you are at QRP.

[@vk3ye]

To be fair, a more modest station than his in the US wouldn't have heard me due to higher local noise or inferior antennas. There is a legitimate place for super kilowatt stations on the amateur bands and if they didn't exist then those in noisy apartments with indoor antennas would never work DX.

[@Steve-GM0HUU]

@@vk3ye I tend to agree with this. When I am QRP and especially QRP/P, I often call "big gun" stations, knowing that they are more likely to hear me. Mostly they are good ops and often happy to make the effort to work a QRP station. In fact if they hear/copy QRP they will often tell the other QRO guys to QRT and ask for the QRP station to go ahead. I think of this as the "David and Goliath" approach 😉.

[@rudidraufganger7448]

@@Steve-GM0HUU always impressed with peters stuff been watching the guy for years and am always amazed at the dudes ingenuity and projects, he's definitely a guy worth learning from.

[@MrAlanmcd]

Peter, you'd better start Sewage Farms on the Air (SFOTA)!

[@Steve-GM0HUU]

😄 Don't jest, it could be a thing. Allocate SF numbers to sewage farms, set up a members website, selling T-shirts and award plaques at $100 a go. I wonder what the logo might look like? How would the points system work?

[@rudidraufganger7448]

Top wee video Peter and impressive contacts. Liked the beginning lol.

[@joeblow8593]

Nice going with WC6H and K6MYC , they were really booming in there

[@gardnep]

I understand if you want to solder aluminium, you place some vegetable oil on it and scrape off the coating and solder under the oil. The oil keeps it from oxidising. Haven’t had a go yet but plan to.

[@DominicMazoch]

I am experimenting with 30'/10m HFT x3 and alligator clips for my Wolf River Coil.

[@RonanCantwell]

Love the kilowatt boaster: Lesser stations will struggle to hear you with your boyish 5 watts. I'm hearing you and that's because I've got a massive antenna.... Have I told you how big my antenna is? I've got a massive antenna. That's why people look up to me, Peter. They know how massive my antenna is. If they don't, they soon will when I show them my massive antenna...

[@dl1qc]

Hi, this is Karsten, DL1QC - no kilowatt-Station, 3ele-Yagi at 12m up and 200W fm FT101DXMP. 73

[@markg6jvy135]

Excellent inventive idea 👍👏👏

[@jamdiversified9698]

So you’re telling me after I’ve finished my kebab I should do some DXing? At least HAM radio is a suitable past time for garlic breath!

[@dewindoethdwl2798]

I love this kind of play school 😂

[@vacuumfireradio253]

Yay! It's sewage farms on the air weekend!

[@darrinpearce9780]

SWOTA - Sewerage On The Air hi hi. Some big signals there, well done. 73's

[@PedroskiClimb]

SHOTA has a better ring to it than SFOTA . Another great video Mr Parker!

[@1337flite]

Ha!! I spoke with WC6H last Saturday on 20m at 10W portable from Veale Gardens on the edge of the Adelaide CBD - my first DX contact. Signal sounded about the same, and I reckon I got a similar signal report back. Was this that contact recorded on the 15th May Peter? The mat seems like a good idea - I imght try to get some more robust foil - maybe insulation from bunnings and give it a go.

[@vk3ye]

Thanks. Everything was recorded from yesterday afternoon.

[@MidlifeRenaissanceMan]

@jtan163 You’ll probably find some offcuts from a building or extension works going on. Gratis. Save you purchasing a roll, unless you’re using it to add an extra one or one and a half R points to your insulation?? We did and it made a massive difference. R1.5 sarking and R6 batts. The house is 8-10 degrees cooler inside in summer. No aircon

[@MidlifeRenaissanceMan]

@@vk3ye the conditions have been quite good over the weekend. Saw you on the RBN but was otherwise occupied. Managed to get my mobile setup working on 40m. I have a home brew 1.6m fibreglass whip top loaded with another 10cm extension above that to tune. Worked VK3 and VK4 on voice with around 20W and CW with 7W. Later pumped it up to the full 20W and worked VK4TJ just after sunset. 599 Sending left handed and head copying is certainly challenging. While you use a different part of your brain to the one you use to drive, and it’s not that much different to talking while driving, I did miss the navigation command for my final left hand turn to my destination :-/ According to the NSW roads and traffic act, you are allowed to operate a two way radio. They just don’t say exactly what mode :-) Peter. CW while on your bicycle ??

[@DavidVine-DOCVIDPRO]

I'm sorry to be the party pooper here but what were the other devices used in conjunction with the rig, wire vertical and ground mat? A head to head comparison with one, two or three radials would be relatively easy to do. It seems to work well but you are near a canal of sorts which almost certainly contributed positively to the results. Perhaps I missed something in your previous videos regarding the "ground tuner" and related add-ons or do I need to purchase your books to learn more?

[@vk3ye]

Lots of other videos or websites on GTUs - some by me, some by others eg G4AKC.

[@W4TRI_Ronny]

Well worth the effort! Will be making two myself once I find some book cover like that or similar. Great plan! K4RJJ

[@begbieyabass]

Why do we need a counterthingy again?

[@jamescoffey5225]

Do you have a video regarding construction of your ground matching unit? 73 de AE5ZX

[@vk3ye]

James - Yes. It's linked at the end of the video.

[@jamescoffey5225]

@@vk3ye Thanks. Sorry, I missed it on my first viewing.

[@James_Bowie]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/ianbo6h7gdmJqdU

[@vacuumfireradio253]

Parents used to shout at me for stripping wire with my teeth!

[@fostersradio3513]

That's a ripper 😎

[@rcpilothamradio4503]

Oh man I really like the imporvised style you doing your projects. And heck, it works great. QRP = use intelligence instead of power. Thanks for great video. 73 HB9DHH Rene

[@PedroskiClimb]

This is making me think..... I have a 20W ICP Solar powerflex solar panel and could add foil or copper tape to back of that! M3KXZ

[@MauriatOttolink]

Better buy a few rolls to keep 'er indoors from moaning. Also .. put your wallet on one end of the book backing. That'll hold it down. Hi!

[@Mahia965]

Who is the station near Malabar in VK2? (At 16:55). He's just around the corner from me!!

[@vk3ye]

VK2IO

[@spakkajack]

ground full of poo, sky full of signals.

[@TheLightningStalker]

It's a crappy view, but it's a beautiful view.

[@vincei4252]

I can hear you in California with 5w but you're shooting yourself in the foot unless you have 1KW which I'm doing for "you guys" Yeah, gotcha. I'll remember that the next time someone splashes the entire band on FT8 transmitting with full legal limit.