Today Hanz W1JSB and I went out for a hike. We wanted to make
a couple of QSOs on 40 meters. We worked New York and
Pennsylvania and didn't even bring a rig with us! Huh? Hanz
used his cell phone to operate his FT-817 remotely at home.
It was strange and wonderful.
We hiked east from the Sanbornton dump toward Giles Pond.
It was about 33F, but sunny. We hiked around the back side of this
field and stopped along the trail about a half mile from the pond.
Hanz pulled out his Samsung cell phone and started pressing buttons.
First he connected
to his Windows box in the shack and fired up Ham Radio Deluxe. Then
he established a
link using Skype so we'd have audio. Then he got CWType running so
he could key the
rig. His FT-817 at 5 watts was hooked up to a center fed dipole
through an LDG auto tuner.
Hanz had a grin on his face as keyed "KA2KDJ de W1JSB" onto the cell
phone
keyboard. Gary answered right away from New York. It was magic. Then
Hanz told him how he was operating.
"FB CPY," Gary sent back. "UR 579" Gary was a 599 and clear as a
bell. They
chatted for about 5 minutes. Hanz's fingers were getting cold, so he
sent 73 and
TNX. As we started walking back down the trail we heard another
station calling
Hanz! "W1JSB de AA3OI/QRP" What the heck? we thought. A pileup. So
Hanz
answered Joe AA3OI and they had a quick QSO.
Pretty cool... what started as a goofy experiment actually worked.
Are we going to
stop bringing rigs and antennas on our hikes? No way, this was just
a proof of
concept, and not really very practical. But it sure was a hoot and
Hanz demonstrated
that he could certainly do a pedestrian mobile operation without
lugging radio,
batteries and antennas.
