A great way to finish off a day when on holiday - an hour's HF portable operation! This is what the FT817 was designed for. And best of all, there's not much to carry.
My QRP ATU and a 5m vertical wire antenna attached to a fibreglass fishing pole makes an excellent QRP portable operation. A 5m counterpoise is used in place of an earth and results seem to be OK. The ATU isn't much bigger than a mars bar; the wire can travel in the pole bag. no guy ropes, no mallets, and all ready to operate in around 2 minutes.
This setup achieved many contacts around europe on the 20m, 15m and 10m bands in Summer 2012 in a few hours operation.
Pictured: myself, Michael (2E0REC) and Chris (M6TUD).