Saturday, August 21, 2010

CQ CQ........Is anyone out there???

 Elecraft KX1 setup
Close up view
It's Saturday afternoon and the back deck DXexpedition is over for another today. It was overcast all morning and threatening rain and at 11:20 local time the rain came.  I had to shut down but I had a blast and took some pictures to share on the blog. As you can see the setup is very simple but I have found in the past simple works wonders. I started at 10:40 local time on 14.060 mhz, the out put was 1.2 watts with an SWR of 1.2 into the Miracle Whip antenna.  It was very muggy outside with temp of about 88 degrees. At 10:55 local time I heard KW7D calling CQ but was unable to make contact. The conditions today were changing quickly and his signal was weak to
Epoxy repaired Miracle Whip
begin with. At 11:05 I heard N4BP but again was unable to make contact. I had a great time and as I said before it  finally started to rain at 11:20 so I had to pack it in for the day. I will be out again on Sunday and hope conditions and the weather will be in my favor. I was happy with the way the Miracle Whip performed as it had a small accident this summer and I have to do some repairs to it as you can see from the closeup photo of the  yellow epoxy.


Counterpoise
To the Right is my counterpoise that is alligator clipped to the PL259 connector. I just stretch it out along the deck it has two separate lengths one for 20 meters and the other for 40 meters taped together.  Had almost an hour of calling CQ with no reply but I did get to know the KX1 a bit better as I have not used it for some time.

2 comments:

Dick said...

Wow! I envy all the space you appear to have. I see myself with a half-wave 20 meter vertical and a hundred radials. NO towers!

Ah mon reve!

73 Dick

VE9KK said...

Hi Dick, Thanks for the comment and the vast space in the background is a hydro tower right of way. So there are 230KV lines not to far away great for making QRM