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Last Saturday I visit my friend Mischa, PA1OKZ. I took my Elecraft K1. I still noticed no one replied my CQ’s when I used it and I also got weird results on Reversed Beacon Network. My idea was that transmit and receive frequency was not the same on the K1 and maybe the filters where not aligned properly.
It’s great fun to open up any case at Mischa’s. He is a very experienced guy when it comes to anything electronic and HF in particular. He also has a very impressive shack with a lot of professional tools such as a spectrum analyzer, transceiver testing unit etc.
When we attached the K1 to all the gear it became clear very quick why things weren’t as they should. Mischa aligned the band modules and low pass filters with much preciseness. Indeed the K1 wasn’t receiving and transmitting on the same frequency. So that was fixed quite quickly too. Now my beloved Elecraft K1 is putting out it’s maximum power of 7 watts on all bands, is aligned for best receiving performance and I might hear a reply on my CQ after all 🙂

Thanks Mischa for the great help (again)!

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Elecraft logoAfter last holiday with my beloved Elecraft K1 I realized I need some kind of zero beat tuning indicator on it. I find it very hard to tell if I tuned zero beat or not by only hearing. Googling around I found the K6XX cw tuning indicator. When I watched the indicator at work I ordered it immediately!
Although I ordered it a week ago, I didn’t hear anything yet. But I’m not in a hurry…

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Last night I was fiddling around with my Elecraft K1. Couldn’t get it to work properly. Couldn’t even spot myself on Reverse Beacon Network. Eventually I got out my Kenwood TS-590. Turns out my home-brew coax patch-cable didn’t work! Aaaargh, stupid mistake of course.
After a few spins over 20m and 40m I heard a faint station and after a few of his CQ’s I decrypted that it was M0JRS, Jonathan from England! With shaky hands I send my call and he came back! Now I really start to sweat all over, of course I couldn’t make much of his message because I dropped letters left and right. But I did understand he send my RST and his name (which I already looked up on QRZ.com). When he finished transmitting I tried to send his RST and my name but it didn’t go so well. When I started to listen for his return, two other stations where interfering and I missed his message completely.
Nevermind, I logged him and it’s my first CW contact with hand!
So Jonathan: thank you very much for your patience and excuse me for my bad return, I’ll work hard to get better!