AA1XQ and his cab-mounted Wolf River Coils base loaded vertical
Wouldn’t it be great to know how your portable antenna setup compares with your buddies’? Does size matter? Is a small footprint better? Is rapid deployment the key? Is it $$? Is it single band or multi-band? Well that’s what a small group of NCRC members set out to determine this spring. After a goodly amount of friendly banter (aka, “trash talking”) K1JSM, WB4SON, KA1ZOU, AA1XQ, W1LY and KB1ZZU met behind the Eisenhower House at Fort Adams on the morning of June 10th, 2023 to determine bragging rights for the foreseeable future.
Rules were determined in advance by K1JSM and WB4SON with WB4SON tallying the scores. In short, all stations using 100 Watts transmitted relatively close in frequency and time on the 20 meter band. Reception on the Reverse Beacon Network was the impartial judge. Each score was determined by multiplying the distance in miles of each spot by the LINEAR SNR. So going further is worth more than a shorter contact. The SNR weighted score for each spot is then added to a running sum. This means someone heard by more stations (perhaps because of a more omnidirectional antenna) will receive more points because they will have more spots. All rigs were pre-programmed to send “CQ TEST CQ TEST DE callsign callsign” twice at 25 wpm to make sure to catch the attention of the RBN. This initial test group of six was purposely kept small to iron out any kinks in the process.
And the winner is ……..
Fellas, it wasn’t even close – Mike AA1XQ wins the first POTA Antenna Shootout with a score over 6 million! Second place was Willy W1LY, and 3rd place was Bob WB4SON.
It’s worth pointing out that the old saying “size doesn’t matter” was pretty much true in this case. Mike’s winning antenna was a simple vertical on the roof of his car, as was WB4SON’s. Willy, got into 2nd place with a 1/4 wave ground plane. AA1XQ and WB4SON only needed a few minutes for their set up and take down.
WB4SON captured all the raw data for all six stations. He noted that often there were spots before the test period as well as after. Those were removed from the scoring, leaving spots in the range of 1414 to 1420 UTC. Strangely one station in Greenland always reported twice.
The complete results are shown below. Note that 6.07E+06 is 6.07 Million. 7.33E+05 is 733 thousand. That big number calculated by summing up distance times a linearized SNR for each spot.
| AA1XQ | W1LY | WB4SON | KA1ZOU | K1JSM | KB1ZZU | |
| Score | 6.07E+06 | 3.50E+06 | 2.30E+06 | 1.85E+06 | 1.52E+06 | 7.33E+05 |
| Total Spots | 48 | 53 | 41 | 30 | 36 | 40 |
| Longest Distance | 3496 | 3500 | 2493 | 3182 | 2481 | 2471 |
This was an interesting project. Propagation was amazingly consistent. There was a spread from 30 to 53 in terms of total number of spots, but DX distances were not spread as much: 2471 vs 3500 miles. For the most part, all the participating stations were heard by the same group of spotting stations. The BIG difference was Signal to Noise, with Mike really putting out a consistently stronger signal.
WB4SON’s simple antenna was a 7 foot tall Hamstick on a mag-mount. AA1XQ won with Wolf River Coil base loaded vertical. An interesting experiment would be to compare base loaded short verticals to center loaded ones (A Hustler whip is center loaded vertical, for instance). That said, there was quite a large range of antennas tested. K1JSM came with a Delta Loop dubbed the “Hook’em Horns” or “El Diablo” for it’s shape. KA1ZOU used a roughly 130 foot long end-fed setup as an “inverted v” and 9:1 UNUN with the feed line shield as counterpoise. KB1ZZU used an Alpha Antenna 10-to-80-meter tuner free off-center-fed vertical. W1LY used his custom designed “Junk box Vertical” initially configured as a vertical dipole.
Great way to spend an hour this morning! Be on the look out for an opportunity to knock someone off the podium with your favorite portable antenna.
And Congratulations Mike!
73.
WB4SON and his 20M Hamstick
K1JSM and his custom “El Diablo” delta loop
A view of Narragansett Bay East Passage and part of the temporary antenna farm
KA1ZOU, WB4SON and AA1XQ standby while W1LY hustles by to tweak his “Junk box Vertical” (just visible in the background behind the W1LY white panel POTA van)
The Pell (Newport) Bridge is the background for the KB1ZZU off-center-fed “L” with the Pell Bridge in the background