I took my kids down to the local park this afternoon as an excuse to have a play with my new FT817nd and squid pole as a portable station.

I acquired a transport case for the radio and bits (a bit bigger than needed, but this is the camping/holiday setup). And this holds everything (and more) safely and neatly for our travels. I also had my iPad and macloggerDX for contact logging.
 
I purchased some double sided Velcro wrap the other day and used this to lash the squid pole base to a fence at the park. Connected the wire to the other end. And sat on a park bench with my travel case open and ran the earth wire along the ground. Connected it all up (2 min job) and was on the air.
 
This is a favourite park of the kids and I’ve used the radio in the car from the carpark before, but experience horrible (plasma tv or solar inverter noise in the car) and the portable location on 7mhz was no different. With lots of background noise. Even with the noise I was able to work into Sydney (they had trouble hearing me in Sydney) due to local noise though.

Next up to 14mhz. Where I worked a ZL station (New Zealand) who gave me a 56 signal report. Not bad for a bit of wire and 2.5 watts from the park!

Later on, I tried to call some strong eastern Europeans, but they were working a noisy pileup and clearly running a lot of power. I need to peddle harder! By this time the kids wanted pushing on the swings and I had to pack up.

So far, with my quick play of the FT817nd I’m impressed. 🙂