I was on the peak Schilthorn in the Alps above
Interlaken, Switzerland at close to 10,000 ft. today
and took the KX1 out at the peak. This is the peak on
the James Bond Movie "On Her Majesty's Service."
My antenna was two lengths of 28'+16' connected end to
end, and one 24' counterpoise. There are no trees up
there, so I weaved the wire around a wooden fence
about 4' from the ground. The antenna turned out to
be an off-center doublet. I had about 2W on internal
batteries.
I tuned to 14.060, called CQ once, and got RX3ABC,
Ardy in Moscow on my first CQ! Ardy was running 5W to
a low dipole. Then I heard HB9AFI, Kurt, in Lausanne,
Switzerland very strong (about 100 mi away, maybe even
line of sight). He gave me a good report and wished
me good luck.
I was able to work two stations within 5 mins of
setting up. I only had a about 30 mins of operating
time until it was time to head back down to avoid the
bad weather approaching.
I was really amazed at how much I could hear up there
and how easy it was to be heard. I even heard a US
station right before I had to QRT.
I'll be posting some pictures and maybe writing
something up for the ARS, I'll send a note out on this
list if I do that.
Things I would do differently next time:
1) Take one AA out while hiking. I think the LED or
rig accidentally turned on while I was hiking, so the
fresh AA's I put in gave me a little less power than I
was expecting. Probably not a big difference, but
1.5W vs. 2.5W.
2) Put the rig in a ziplock bag in the backpack. It
was raining on and off and I was concerned my pack
wasn't waterproof enough to protect the rig. It was
fine, but the rig was a little moist by the time I
took it out.
3) Take a 2M HT up. I could have taken my VX-2R and
done some nice VHF mountain topping, and asked an op
on the ground to put out a posting on HFPack, ARS,
SOTA, etc for listeners.
More hiking tomorrow, hopefully I'll get some more air
time on the KX1. I'm hiking with some non-hams who
are not as amused with QRP mountain-topping as I am.
:)
73,
Mike HB9/N9OHW
__________________________________________________
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
