The Month The Rockmite Ran Around Naked in the Woods

The gang and I were out camping for five weeks this summer. I'm finally getting a chance to take the time to write, and to look at old pictures, so you'll be hearing more about all of this, but a post on the GQRP group this morning asked about using radios without enclosures, driving me to this particular topical niche of our camping trip first. 

The GQRP poster mused about using either a plastic enclosure for a radio, or no enclosure at all. The 12 year-old here, Daize, and I had discussed mounting a radio on its battery a few times at the start of this year. As it happened, we had an extra Rockmite 20 laying around, so right before we went out for our camping trip, we moved the radio out of its case and onto its battery, this was mostly done to reduce voltage drop between the battery and the radio since the Rockmite is typically mounted at the antenna feedpoint when we're out and about. Here's the rockmite about to be launched with the antenna:

and here it is up with the antenna:

One of my biggest concerns with this setup was rain. However! Where there's a will, there's a way, and here's the rockmite with a rain enclosure assembled from a Donettes bag

The radio wasn't any noisier receive-wise in or out of a metal case. Of course rockmites are known for having wide-open frontends, so I'm not sure that's a super-valid data point.

As for tx and rx performance, at a SOTA summit, W7N/WP-147 8340 the Rockmite reached Japan on 20 m.

 

and here's the map on Google Earth