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!
Setup a holiday shack
First thing I did when we arrived was setting up my little holiday shack. Only brought with me the little Elecraft K1 with four band module (40, 30, 20 and 17 meter). Because I don’t own (yet) the internal antenna tuner for the K1, I did bring my good old Kenwood AT-120 tuner (which is almost the same size as the K1).
Of course I did bring my Buddipole but also a fishing rod of 10 meters high and a MFTF WiMo 10:1 balun and some 10 meters of wire. So this was the first antenna I put up, a vertical. Did some testing with it, but it turns out the 10:1-balun is horrible for QRP-work. I should know the efficiency of this setup isn’t great, but the last time I tested it, it worked fine (with 100 Watt). After a few test runs with disappointing results, I figured I really need to setup the Buddipole.
The buddipole gives me kind of nice results on Reverse Beacon Network. Even in the Buddistick setup I’m able to get my signal picked op by RBN.
But I’m unable to get a QSO going. It’s already hard enough to find a station that is a little more QRS like me (12 WPM with more spaces). When I found one, they couldn’t hear me. I did a lot of CQ’s but no one returned. No luck on 17 and 20m this afternoon and again, no luck this evening on 30 and 40m.
I realized, I really need to speed up my cw to catch the ride. So back to LCWO.net this evening and training again. Maybe tomorrow more luck on the air. For today I sign off! 73 de PA1JIM
Week of CW-holiday
At the end of next week I’ll stay at QTH-locator JO32EK, the eastern part of The Netherlands for a week of holiday. The house we rent is in the middle of nature and (hopefully) has plenty opportunity to put up some antenna gear. At least I’ll bring my Buddipole. I only have traveling space for the Elecraft K1 receiver, so operation will be QRP, but it will be interesting. There is WiFi available in the house, so be prepared for some photo’s soon!
At home antenna’s are down at the moment due to chimney restorations. No radio-activity for a longer time, I’m afraid.