Ham Radio . Magnum Experimentum
Antennas, experiments, engineering and other articles of interest to radio folks.
Posts involving Elecraft amateur radio gear.
Add amateur radio to your beach trip keeping in mind family life balance.
With components from a variety of vendors, custom machining and a bit of trial and error, another variant of a small loop HF antenna is born.
Despite a weak battery and few contacts, our 1B-Battery effort verifies a 40m small-loop and packet-radio NTS messaging using quick deploy antennas.
Operating QRP portable from the back of a Subaru during activation of the rare VQP city of Manassas Park (MPX).
The Elecraft KX3 heatsink modification improves digital performance and extends reliability for all modes.
This year our club ran 3A for the ARRL Field Day.
Radios included an Icom IC-756 Pro, TenTec Omni VII, Icom IC-746 (for the GOTA) and a Icom 7000 for VHF plus HF spare. All these radios performed quite well despite the high temperatures.
The 100 Watt Elecraft K2 stood above the others not necessarily on performance, but the elegant way the radio’s owner configured his K2, 100 Watt Amplifier and 100 Watt Matcher.
OK so I decided to buy the base K2 kit and build it along with my son.
Choosing Elecraft is a no brainer, but any of the other kit manufacturers would be fine also. The point it to give a young man an opportunity to see something start from a box of parts and become a higher level assembly.
We are also considering the Elecraft KX1 as a good starter kit. We have already built several of the other smaller Elecraft kits.
Here is a summary of our current situation…
The summary of the very helpful answers are…
Bonus points are important for the annual ARRL Field Day event in June.
If you are thinking of participating in your local club’s Field Day festivities or are heading to the campground with your family for a Bravo station, bonus points are available.
One of my favorites is the Alternate Power Field Day bonus.
To quote the ARRL Field Day rules for 2009…