Brian Bjerkelund (K7AIS/ZF2OR) writes that he wanted to combine a trip to the Caribbean with Amateur Radio, and he also wanted to see if it was possible to carry a complete station in a small case through airport security and customs without hassle. It worked!
"I handcarried the rig in a Pelican case through US and Cayman security checks with no problems of any kind. The rig was a SG-2020ADSP feeding an SG-237 autotuner into a 80-foot dipole which was only about 20 feet up at the highest point, strung up in convenient palm trees. The dipole was fed with 450-ohm ladderline with the '237 located at the transceiver end using the factory cable.
While I didn't spend all my time hamming, I did make a number of contacts on 20 and 10 meters with great signal reports and most stations worked were quite surprised at how "punchy" 20 watts can be. The actual location was a hut on the North side of the island about 60 feet from the beautiful Caribbean Sea.
Observations.......pretty much limited by the antenna, if I could hear 'em I could work 'em. The '2020 and the '237 worked flawlessly, with no retuning weirdness or other flaws. The dipole/tuner combo loaded perfectly on 80-10 but most operations were on 20 and 10. The Astron 7-amp power supply weighed more than the radio and tuner combined and I may try running on locally procured batteries next trip. "
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