CQ contest DE M/VE3WDM........

My XYL and I went for  a tour to York England yesterday it was raining in the morning before our trip but that was the end of it. We had a very nice but overcast day....apparently this is great weather according to Julie for picture taking.  (480 pictures were taken) York is a very historic city with buildings from the 1400's and churches that date back to early 600 A.D. Our big event of the day was the visit to York Minster Church. We were touring this magnificent Church for hours and Julie had a good workout with her camera there.  We ended out trip by having high tea at Betty's and from there it was some more picture taking then back home on the train to Yarm. So what does the above have to do with contesting you ask......well nothing really.....but when we got home to Yarm it was time to get on the Elecraft KX1 and throw the Miracle whip antenna in action. This weekend is the CQ WW WPX CW contest. When operating portable like I am I find that contests weekends are the best for making contacts. There are thousands of contesters out there all listening for signals as they call "CQ CONTEST".  Here in England I found the conditions on 20m to be just fine considering the propagations reports saying things were
poor.  It was a challenge using the KX1 in a contest as the filtering is not that of the K3 that is at home. This contest was interesting I did not have the computer and it's contesting programs. Everything was manual from logging, tuning, sending the serial numbers to tracking dupes. I was very tired and was only on for 45 minutes. I did not do to bad with only using 3 watts and the Miracle whip antenna I made 16 contacts giving points away.

 Today the weather is overcast and raining, the plan was to do a walk into the town of Yarm for a day trip. Look in the shop's, have lunch in a nice British pub and of coruse take pictures. If the weather turns really bad.... then.......it could be more contesting!!!! This evening before the contest is over I hope to get on again and this time run the KX1 barefoot on battery power only at 1.5 watts and see how I do for contacts with that.  CHEERS ALL!!!!!!!!

News from Scotland....Loch Long

Loch Long 

Just an update from Scotland was able to make just one contact so far, not due from bad conditions but rather good conditions in Scotland with touring around, in the pub late and getting into the room and just wanting to get to bed to rest for another busy day. In the picture above is Loch Long and we are staying at the Inn on the far right. The view across the loch is fantastic and this Loch is a salt water Loch so you have the opportunity of seeing the tide come in and out.
As for contacts on May 27 I made as I said one contact from my room here at Loch Long, it was OH7QR. Erkki had a 599 signal and I was given a 579. I am very happy with that since it was the KX1 at 2 watts at the window of my second floor of my room. Well it's off to breakfast now and I hope a little more operating time on the rig as this is our last night at this location.
Bye for now.

Operations from the U.K.......

On May 19th I gave the KX1 a go from Yarm in England from 1800 UTC to 1900 UTC. I tried calling CQ both on 20 and 40 meters but was shut out. While on the weekend we took an amazing trip down to London I did bring the KX1 along with good intentions. Turns out we walked and walked and tubed (subway) the city all day and into the late evening. By the time I made it back to our room it was all I could do to get into the bathtub and sooth my muscles.  On Monday we are off to Scotland for a week and the mighty KX1 will be in tow. I will say that this week the evenings will be more free time and looks good for some operating time. In short our trip to London was out of this world we got excellent weather and were able to see all that we wanted to. Also we made it to as many local pubs to test all the local drafts. Well it's time for bed now just got back to Yarm and have to pack and hit the sack for our trip to Scotland.

Introducing the Elecraft KX3

This was taken from www.vk2rh.com

Ultraportable Elecraft KX3

Posted on 19 May, 2011 by vk2rh

Under the tantalising subject line “Something *really* new at Dayton from Elecraft” and while en route to Dayton – Elecraft’s Wayne Burdick N6KR announced to the Elecraft email lists a very interesting new offering to be launched there – the KX3 and a companion 100W amp.

According to Wayne, the KX3 handles all modes, SSB/CW/AM/FM/DATA (the latter including built-in PSK31 and RTTY encode/decode/display).

He promised to post full details and photos later this weekend. But that was too intriguing for the list. This is an edited and probably repetitive summary of what they managed to find out about the new set.

KX3: Ultra-compact K3/KX1 hybrid, 160-6 m, 10/100 W, all-mode, 32-bit DSP/SDR, 1.5 lbs.

Ultraportable:

• 1.5 lbs
• 1.7″ x 3.5″ x 7.4″
• KX1 form-factor
• internal battery pack & charger
• internal wide-range ATU
• new adjustable, attached keyer paddle

…and a K3-like front panel, including the same LCD.

RX-mode current drain ~150 mA. Very efficient on TX, with dual-output-impedance 5W/10W PA.

The optional 100W amp is in an external chassis. The internal amplifier is 10W with switchable impedance matching so it can also operate with maximum efficiency at 5W.

PA output impedance switch allows efficient 5-W use from internal batteries, or 10 W from external supply.

100 W+ with new high-performance external amp/ATU that works with most 5W to 10W rigs.

>Same flat layout as the KX-1 – just bigger box I would assume????

Yes, but with new fold-up rear tilt-feet.

>…and a K3-like front panel, including the same LCD.
>
> And it makes use of EVERY display on that LCD?? Carumba!

Not quite. I think there are a couple annunciators that are not used. But it’s amazing that the design team managed to fit almost all the features of a 10W K3 into a box that is a small fraction of the size and weight. And with space left over for an internal battery pack!

By the time we’re done, we’ll be using every icon.

Totally different architecture than the K3, of course. (Wayne N6KR)

RX-mode current drain ~150 mA. Very efficient on TX, with dual-output-impedance 5W/10W PA.

> More $$$ or less $$$ that the regular K3?

Much less.

> Dual output impedance 5w/10w pa? I don’t understand.

The MOSFET 10-W amp stage includes an output transformer with both 1:4 and 1:1 windings. When using low power, or when running from internal batteries, the 1:1 winding is used, which optimizes efficiency at about 5 W, greatly reducing transmit current drain. The 1:4 winding is used when running higher power (using an external supply).

> One email said 10w/100w models. Is that correct?

The 1.5-pound radio itself puts out 10 watts+. We’ll also be describing a new, high-performance 100-watt+ companion amplifier/ATU for fixed-station/mobile use. It will work very well with other 5 to 10-W radios besides the KX3.

We have landed in the UK.

Wednesday was landing getting up to Yarm from Newcastle, going out for dinner dinner (Had my first pint of English beer) now just recovering from the jet lag. There will be no radio this evening but I do hope to get the Palm Paddle humming Thursday night. The weather is great here we left Toronto with rain, wind and a temp of around 6C. Much better weather here in Yarm looking forward to Thursday taking this day to get our feet on the ground and do some planning for our train trip to London on Friday were we will be spending 3 days.

TALLY HO....IM QSY TO THE U.K........

I HOPE TO HAVE A QSO WITH YOU FROM THERE !!!

Blogger burp...........

Well for those of you like me who use blogger it may have been a very frustrating 24 hours or more. Blogger experienced a "burp". I found out about it when I tried to log on this morning from Starbucks and was shown a page that basically told me that it was down. A few weeks ago Blogger changed the format to a new one, now I just got used to the old one and was swinging right along. Then a new release and the learning curve happened, before this major crash I had experienced draft posts vanishing for now reason...along with my post!!!! I would log on and be transported to a page that I had never seen before (or never see again) and had to re-log into blogger once again.  Hey Blogger tech...........the not so old setup worked just great I never had an issue until the "new and improved" unrolling came about. Here is what blogspot blogger's are being told from Google....

We have rolled back the maintenance release from last night and as a result, posts and comments from all users made after 7:37 am PDT on May 11, 2011 have been removed. Again, we apologize that this happened and our engineers are working hard to return Blogger to normal and restore your posts and comments.

Now I have only been with blogger for under a year and have been very pleased with their services. Lets also not forget it's FREE as well. It just seems that  the new and improved blogger was rolled out before it was fully improved. There is Wordpress if I wanted to switch?????

But for the time being I think we will just hug and make up...

Well here goes I going to give the publish button a go and see if we are live with this one!

Remebering back................

My son Ben and I at the rig.

It was back in 1989 I had my first ham setup an Icom 735 rig, Kenwood AT-230 tuner and the Cushcraft R5 vertical antenna. My rig was in the living room at the time as space was limited. I built an enclosure around the radio along with a door that doubled as an extension of the desktop when it was open. The main purpose of the enclosure was to Keep my son Ben and his curiosity far away from the rig. I ran across this picture on the HD of my computer and it brought back lots of memories. It was actually published in either CQ or QST I just can't remember which it was.

Another attic adventure.................

After doing what seemed endless searching I have purchased an antenna for the attic. In previous posts I mounted my High Sierra Sidekick and then I tried my Pro Am AB4 antenna in the attic with not much success. It seemed the best antennas for my attic situation was the dipole. At this point in time the attic is getting filled up with dipole antennas. I have an inverted V for 20 meters and for 40 and 30 meters dipoles made from mobile whip antennas. These antennas worked fine but I was wanting to try and work most of the bands and use just one antenna. This will allow me to reinstall my Discone antenna

20 meter inverted V

40 meter whip dipole

that had to be taken down down due to space limitations. Also possibly install an active antenna for diversity mode with my Elecraft K3 as well. One of my considerations was the MFJ-1788 loop antenna. It covered 40 meters to 15 which for me was just great and it is very compact as well. One of the major draw backs was the size of the opening into my attic. The loop antenna was about 10 inches to large and it meant I would have to open up the attic entrance. It did not seem like a big deal

Why not just join the party.

On Sunday I found myself with some spare time and an opportunity to get on the radio. Once again I wanted to give the KX1 a go to get used to the little rig. It was around 4 in the afternoon and from checking the propagation reports earlier in the day I was not sure how the bands were going to be. I was on 20 meters calling CQ and no matter where I went on the band  seemed to be filled with "party goers"....Florida QSO party goers that is....Instead of paddling up stream and calling CQ on an already busy band why not just join the party. So for about 45 minutes I did just that. Not only did it give me a great oppertunity to fine tune my skills with the KX1 I was also able to give some contest points away as well. The conditions I found changed very fast from signals  at 599 to then drop almost to the noise floor. I was able with these conditions to get some real hands on with adjusting the one filter the KX1 has and using the RIT. I was very impressed with how the little radio preformed. I seemed to have no troubles getting down into Sunshine state. In this contest the exchange is a signal report and my Province the Florida stations send their report and county There was one time I decided to send ? with regards to the county the fading was getting very bad.....in turn I was sent not their county but TU es GL DE.....and their call. I guess he thought I lived int he Province of  "?" My XYL for sure at times would agree with that.....:)