This weekend my tower trailer will be used in a simplex net to facilitate the 2020 ARRL simulated emergency test. In preparation I’ve removed and replaced the last commercial antenna on the trailer with a Tram 1480 (they were on sale).
If you’re in the twin cities metro area; look for us on 146.550MHZ at 11:00AM to 12:00 on Saturday October 3.
Here is the trailer idling at 10 feet to test SWR and setup.
I’ve also got the mesh network configured in “warm standby” – aka, powered by the solar at all times, and active when driving down the road. If we have time we may do some mesh testing as well. Right now two mesh nodes are operating – one 5GHZ on the tower and one 2GHZ inside the base for now. The voltage was 12.8v going into the night and 12.5v the morning after; and was back up to 13v by noon even with some cloudiness. So we seem to be within our power budget at present.
Ham Radio Tower Trailers 