Just when I’m preparing for the PACC contest this weekend, my Kent Twin paddle got delivered! It took three weeks from ordering to delivering.
But it looks very classy and it feels great! Nice and heavy. Enough fine tune options. I think this is a wonderful piece of engineering to start off my morse career!
A day after the birth of my son (12th December) a package arrived from Elecraft! Of course the first week I’ve got something else on my mind but I got anxious soon to heat up the solder iron!
First I read the manual thoroughly and unpacked all bags and packs. According to the manual you have to start with the 4-band filter board. Then build the front panel. Last (but not least) it’s time for Continue reading
Pending the delivery of my Elecraft K1, I was browsing the Elecraft website when I found this link.
It turns out Rose is a lovely lady who makes (all by hand) beautiful Elecraft cases! Because it’s made by hand, she can sew your own call on the case. I’m a sucker for this kind of handcraft! So I ordered a case for my Elecraft K1 right away!
If you want such a beautiful case for your Elecraft, just send Rose an email!
After a few months of day-dreaming and watching YouTube, last monday I visit my friend Hans, PC8E to play a little with the build kit. Hans owns the complete Elecraft line: K1, KX1, K2, K3 with pan-adaptor and some other mini-module-kits. He got me convinced: I definitely want the K1!
I just ordered a K1 with the 4-band module and the internal battery adapter (I want to be able to use it portable of course) and the backlight kit for unbuild K1′s.
I’m anxious to see how long it will takes till the kit arrives. Maybe I’ll record a YouTube-video of assembling the kit since I’ve noticed there are no build video’s of a K1 around.
Now off to Learn CW Online to practice some more. I need to be able to run a cw-conversation when it’s time to test the kit 
As a small boy I seemed talented for working with electronics. My parents encourage this by buying me a Philips Electronics Box. I really loved it and build all circuits there were to build. Not long after that I got my first solder iron and start building little kits I bought of my allowance.
After all these years I always owned a solder iron but used it maybe once a year or so. These last months I’m really working hard on CW-practice. I’m not there yet but there is lot’s of progress. One of the cool things of CW is it’s high efficiency due to the high S/N-ratio. Therefor CW makes it possible to work great distances on HF with only very little power.
So no need necessarily for big transceivers for CW. And then suddenly a whole new world of the radio amateur hobby opens up: QRP!
Building kits for QRP CW is versatile and a lot cheaper en less complex to build compared to QRO. And there seems so much creativity and wide range of kits! From the fancy (and expensive) Elecraft K1 to the awesome kits from NorCal QRP club.
I think I’m about ordering a kit and pick up the solder iron to start building again! The fun and satisfaction of working with your own build equipment seems incredibly attractive!
Reporting back on any building here of course.
You would think it’s a great wedding to hookup a Icom IC-7700 to a Rohde&Schwarz HL451 Log-periodic. Let me tell you, it is! Last weekend we were building up the command center for the yearly Dutch balloon fox hunting and it happens to be there was a Icom IC-7700 lingering around. We decided to find out how the Rohde&Schwarz HL451 Log periodic would sound, so we hooked it up. I was listening to a USA-station in Michigan who sounds like we’re on telephone. Listen for yourself:
My birthday present of this year was getting a bit dusty. So after a days work this afternoon I decide to put it in the air for a test run. A few days ago I bought some nice mast pieces of 1m20 each. So I attached the BuddiPole to one of the mast pieces and build 6 of the pieces (the BuddiPole itself around 16 meters up in the air). It was kind of scary standing on the roof, holding the growing mast with two hands in the (little) wind. But it worked! I attached the temporary mast to my other 2m/70cm mast with some tie-wraps. There was virtually no wind, so not much could go wrong.
Back in the shack I did immediately notice the low noise level and strong signals. Of course it’s high altitude is also responsible for that (less QRM) but the SWR is flat on all of the 15 meter band! Thus it’s design and construction is quite nice. In less then an hour I worked 5 new DXCC-entities (countries) on 15 meter: Bahrain, China, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Cuba!
I think we can safely say the BuddiPole is working nice! Next time I’m putting it up in open field.
Last night I leave WSPR on for the whole night to see what happen. According to propagation rules, the best opportunities on 80m should be around the greyline. In the evening that means in western Europe I should get signals out of the east and in the morning I should get signals out of the west. A little disappointed I was this morning when the only thing I saw is stations from Europe. Could it be my antenna? Bad propagation on 80m? Not enough WSPR-station on the air? I guess my S9 noise level on 80m don’t help much.
The annual balloon fox hunt will take place on Sunday, September 11th. A probe built by radio amateurs will be launched underneath a weather balloon at KNMI in De Bilt (Dutch weather institute). After the launch a always spectacular hunt Continue reading
A great birthday present this year: a BuddiPole! Always wanted a simple but flexible portable antenna for the outdoor activities. Until now I used a glass fiber fishing rod with 2 pieces of wire so I could work on 20m. But that is not a small package which you can drop in your rucksack easily.
The BuddiPole is a cool piece of hardware which you can build almost anything you (portable antenna-wise) would want. It’s usable for 40 to 2m. It’s possible to build a much smaller vertical BuddiStick with the components of a BuddiPole. An ideal solution for apartments or hotel stays where it almost impossible to setup a big (even portable) antenna.
On little side note: when you’re in the ordering process, consider what kind of base you going to add. You can choose the tripod or (in the BuddiStick-modus) the table clamb. Because when you don’t order a base(like I did) you have nothing to put the dipole on.
Now I really need to fix my Yaesu FT-817 so I can test my portable setup on a quiet place somewhere out there.