Category: amateur radio

  • Squirrely band conditions

    Squirrely band conditions

    The bands were busy today. I recently picked up an ex-display Chameleon MPAS Lite antenna and today was the first chance I had to try it out. I was in my usual east London park. I managed to set up the antenna, and KX3 quickly. No throwing wires into the trees, and hoping I didn’t…

  • 6028 km on 15 Watts (POTA activation ES-2126)

    6028 km on 15 Watts (POTA activation ES-2126)

    This is my report from POTA activation ES-2126. During a visit to Mallorca, I activated a new park, ES-2126 Puig de Ses Fites Natura. I activated it from the walking route. The walk-in was a 1 hour easy walk along the track. Set-up was very quick and I was QRV in approx. 5-6 minutes. After…

  • Fusing your mobile radios for portable operation.

    Fusing your mobile radios for portable operation.

    I’ve gotten more and more active in mobile and portable radio activities over the last few months. I started off with my KX3 and the internal 8 x AA battery compartment. With this option transmit power is limited to 10W, and transmit time is greatly reduced. I then moved onto a LiFePo4 battery (7Ah) which…

  • Pota park-to-park!

    This time I was able to set up my station, enjoy sandwich (Ham! Coleslaw! Wholemeal bread!) sitting at a park bench. Better day today! Lots of activity, but lots of QSB. A lot of loud, clear stations running beams, 100W. 20M conditions were good, but signals fading a lot again. Stations from Germany (DL4VER field…

  • Still no dice…

    This is the third day experimenting with my KX3. I’m getting faster at the SOTABEAMS endfed antenna setup and teardown (about 5mins and 3mins). Today there was a lot of QSB. Across 20M and 40M, I heard France (TM16FF, TM14JO, TM14IR), Italy (IQ0RU), Spain (EA7HTE), and Russian language stations. At times they were S +9,…

  • TIL: Swage nuts

    Or: How I Stopped Worrying I’d Break My KX3 and Enjoy Radio (again). I found, what I thought was a design problem with my (new to me) KX3 casing thumbscrews. It’s second hand and I thought maybe the thumbscrew was damaged (1 looks a little brown…rust?). In some, hard to replicate, circumstances one of the…