KX1 field day in Alaska

[Frederick Dwight]

Wayne,
    Once again my little KX1 on internal cells did a super job in a contest from Alaska.  I knew conditions in Alaska would only be fair at best so I opted to hike
to a nearby mountaintop and carry my new Jackite 31 ft mast and and RG58 fed dipole up the mountain with my 62 lb backpack.  With better conditions my usual 26 ft wire from a poorer location would have worked fine. I used two of your dupe sheets back to back taped to a piece of cardboard.  Past experience has taught me that my old body NEEDS a proper chair for long operation.  The chair was a cheap but very comfortable sling type folding chair which broke half way through the contest !
    I was quite comfortable operating WITHOUT a table.  I attached the KX1 to the top portion of an 8 1/2 x 11 clipboard with two large heavy duty rubber bands, and simply
used a folded ARRL logsheet slipped partially under the KX1 which held it on the clipboard.  Nothing slipped and I was very comfortable holding the clipboard/kx1
on my lap.  The dupe sheet rested on my backpack where I could see it or on my leg or with a corner tucked under the clipboard. I think this is even more comfortable than bending over a table.  Since the chair was quite low slung I could even use it inside my backpacking tent, but move it outisde when it was warm and sunny.  For scratch paper I used yellow stickynotes on portions of the log I was not writing on.  If you write very small and orgnaize your scratchsheets one pad of stickynotes will last for several contests.
    Unless I am travelling very light I always carry my lightweight noise cancelling headphones. During the FD the wind on my tent made quite a noise which the headphones mostly cancelled.  Even in quiet areas the noise cancelling phones just seemed to make the signals stand out very clean.  I believe someone even makes some noise cancelling earbuds.  
     Since I had the 31 ft mast I could erect my inveted vee on perhaps a 20 or 30 degree slope just below the top of the mountain which sloped toward the lower 48 states. Thus my vee at 31 ft acted as if it were perhaps 40 or 50 feet high.  The Jackite mast is a medium duty mast,  since I was in an exposed windy location I retracted the top section and had only a 29 ft mast.  
     I must have been quite a sight to all the hikers with my big backpack with mast and lawnchair bungie corded on the back.  However this is Alaska and everyone just said HI as they passed me on the way up and said something like.....guess you are getting in shape for sheep hunting in the fall.  It is not unusual to see "old guys" hiking up steep mountains with backpacks full of rocks who are getting ready for hunting season.  Now I need a shorter lighter mast for vertical climbs of over a few thousand feet.  
     The antenna was a 20 meter inverted vee with approximately another 16 feet of wire after each end insulator.  The pole was bungie corded to the end of the tent and to change bands it was very easy to just telescope the mast part way, then hook up or disconnect the clip lead jumpers to change between 20 and 40 meters.  For 80 meters I simply clipped on approximately another 33 feet to the ends of the vees.  This setup performed very well on 40 meters and I am sure with better propagation it would have been a great performer on 20.  On 80 it would probably be a good "cloud warmer".  No luck on long haul 80 meter qso's but seems to work fine for local qso's out to at least several hundred miles.  Perhaps loading the feedline and vee against several counterpoise wires on 80 would make it a better DX antenna.  
       Thanks again for a very fine product in the KX1 and your dupe sheet.  Hope this might encourage readers to just get outside and operate.
PS  the KX1 operates just fine with a 26 ft wire and 17 ft counterpoise in most conditions............
                          Rick   KL7CW    Palmer, Alaska    KX1 #  798  
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[wayne burdick]

Frederick Dwight wrote:
>
>     Once again my little KX1 on internal cells did a super job in a
> contest from Alaska. 

Thanks, Rick, and everyone else, for the many great Field Day reports!

73,
Wayne
N6KR


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