I had an opportunity to take out my Chameleon F-Loop 3.0 to park VE-1187 near Lethbridge, Alberta on January 22, 2022 and it did not disappoint. This was my first time operating the loop outside my QTH. I paired it with my trusty tripod in the parking lot and mounted it approximately 2 meters in the air.
I orientated the loop to face SE and tuned SWR to 1.5. The IC-705 was at max capacity outputting 10w. Over the course of the activation SWR crept up slightly but nothing that required retuning. I could have placed more effort to lower the SWR initially but I was more interested in getting on the air and I’ve found that being near-field affects turning so you can spend more time if you want but its somewhat diminishing returns for me.
Since I was not hiking in anywhere I left the steel loop on vs. the included coax which is very high quality iteself. The overall construction and quality of Chameleon products seems to be worth the premium price in my experience but your mileage may vary.
I was able to activate the park in approximately 15 minutes but stuck around to get a few more contacts making 14 on the day. I’m new to CW so a few contacts didn’t make the final cut most likely due to me flubbing a sign or two. I’ll include the QSO map which shows an interesting distribution.