My KX1 managed to snag some good DX over the past two
weekends without sunspots.
I spent some time this past weekend and the one before
with the KX1 experimenting with some different
portable antennas. I did all the operation in a park
and used an AA battery pack for about 3-4W output,
depending on band.
My results:
UA0ZC Kamchatka, Russia
JA1KGW/QRP Tokyo, Japan
E51NOU South Cook Island
4A3A Mexico
KH6KW Molokai, Hawaii
LU5FZ/D Buenos Aires, Argentina
Plus lots of FB stateside chats.
The antennas I was trying: 1) the recommended 24'
sorta-vertical wire and a single 16' counterpoise, 2)
a 44' NorCal doublet, 3) a 44' end-fed wire in a tree
with a rope and 16', 24', and 33' counterpoises.
My very uncontrolled on-air experiments seemed to show
me that the 24' sorta-vertical and 16' counterpoise
has a good tradeoff between performance and ease of
deployment. All antennas were easily tuned with the
KXAT1.
I also took my FT-817ND (500 kHz filter) and T-1 tuner
along for receive comparison. On several on-air
tests, the KX1 seemed to have the better receiver,
especially when the signal strength was low. When I
found a marginal signal, I tried switching between
receivers. In some cases, I could copy with the KX1
and could not with the 817. In fact, the only case
where I could copy a signal on the 817 and not the KX1
was on 17M. :)
I also tried some on-air comparisons between internal
lithium AAs and my external 12V AA NiMH battery pack.
Based on prior tests into a 50-ohm dummy load, the
external pack gives me about 3 dB more power. With
several patient stateside ops, I tried an A-B
comparison. In every case, the reply was that only a
small difference was noticed. Of course, these were
all QSOs that were far enough out of the noise that
the op on the other end was willing to hang on to the
QSO and listen. I imagine that for cases where the
3.0W signal was just above the noise, the 1.5W signal
would not have been copied.
My unscientific conclusion is that the 24' wire and
16' counterpoise and internal AAs is plenty to make
lots of contacts, DX included.
Anyone try any tests to get a feeling for how many dBs
elevated counterpoises are worth vs. sitting on the
ground? What about 3 or 4 counterpoises vs. a single
one?
73,
Mike N9OHW/6
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
_______________________________________________
Elecraft mailing list
Post to:
[hidden email]
You must be a subscriber to post to the list.
Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.):
http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
Help:
http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htmElecraft web page:
http://www.elecraft.com
Locked
