Beach Portable operation on the HF bands

One of the most enjoyable aspects of amateur radio for me is operating /portable from the local beach. I’m lucky enough to live within 300 metres from the water's edge here in Mablethorpe, Lincs.

Because the saltwater is such an excellent ground plane a simple vertical antenna gives a very low angle of radiation, which is excellent for working DX.

Many dx-peditions now use verticals on the beach rather than yagis. Tests done by the 3B7C team proved a beach vertical to be as good as a 4-element yagi at 40 Feet!

You will find that received signals near the sea are 10-15dB stronger than at your home QTH, in fact so strong you will probably need to switch off the pre-amp and switch in the attenuator to prevent overloading the receiver.

This of course means that your transmitted signal will also be increased by 10-15dBm, meaning that a 50 Watt signal from the beach will be equivalent to using more than 1KW from home!

So you may find that:

You will get big "pile-ups" from a CQ call.

DX stations will come back to you

You can easily break "pile-ups"

I use a very simple quarter wave vertical made of aluminium rods of various diameters that can telescope to various sizes to suit 20,17 and 15 metres. For simplicity and ease of set-up I don't use radials, the outer of the coax simply connects to the metal earth rod supporting the antenna. This is pushed into the wet sand to provide a good connection to the saltwater ground plane.

The rig I use is a Yaesu FT-857D which is ideal as it's small and light, with an output up to 100 Watts.

For a power source I use a 20Ah lead-acid gel-cell, which normally gives about 2 hours operation at 50 Watts output.

Before going out beach portable it's wise to check the tide times, and an outgoing tide is preferable, to avoid moving as an incoming tide approaches. I would also recommend taking warm clothes as it can get quite cold sitting at the water's edge for 2 hours - even in Summer there can be a cool sea breeze. Also a foam microphone windshield is essential to prevent wind noise on your transmission.

I also take an external speaker, which helps pick out the DX from the "pile-up".

It's always best to choose a quiet beach, for this reason I avoid sunny weekends. Dog walkers can be a hazard-dogs tend to use beach antennas as substitute lampposts! Be prepared to answer questions from the public, such as "Who are you talking to?”,” Are you a CBer?"or even “Have you caught anything?"!

If you're unable to operate from the beach due to bad weather etc. the best alternative is to operate from a car parked as near to the sea as possible.

You can use mobile whips on the car or preferably a vertical dipole or ground-plane on the beach and run a long coax cable to it. Huttoft car Terrace  is an example, being able to park the car right next to the sea!

Cliff top sites are good, I often operate from the cliff top at Mundesley when I'm on holiday in Norfolk and have worked Australia easily with 50 Watts to a mobile whip on the car on 20 metres.

Here on the East coast propagation will be best in an Easterly direction, of course. You can easily work Indonesia, Japan, and Thailand but surprisingly many North Americans will also come back to you and they are always surprised when you tell them your working conditions.

So if you are fed up with not being heard on the HF bands why not try "nature's linear”, the sea, and enjoy operating in the open-air.

Paul M0XDX