AmateurRadio.com

View from the portable op's position.

It was another amazing day weather wise up this way and with winter soon coming I wanted to hit the trail again with the KX3. I was up and out around 10 am local time and off to search out on my bike a nice spot on the lake to operate. (Lake Ontario) The spot I found was right at the lake and I could see the police boats setting up their perimeter for the air show that would be happening around noon. I planned to be done my portable op's before the air show starts, the noise of the low flying jets (which is a very cool sound by the way) drowns out my CW coping skills. I set my endfed antenna in a sloper configuration as I found the inverted V was just not doing the trick. The CW open contest was in full swing and that sure was a bonus for making contacts. I checkout the Contest rules and they were looking for a serial number and name. I was able to make 8 contacts in the contest:
N4OX on 20m from FL
AF4RK on 20m from FL
K5WK on 20m from MS
N6ER on 20m from CA
KZ5D on 20m from LA
N5XZ on 20m from TX
W9ILY on 40m from IL
AA3B on 40m from PA
N8BJQ on 40m from OH
I found the contacts on 40m were no repeat backs and all the info was conveyed on the first try. As for 20m I was asked for repeats on my call, name and serial by most if not all the contacts. I raise the output of the KX3 to 10 watts and the external power supply seemed to handle it just fine.

The park setup

With the fall fast approaching which signals colder weather that is just around the corner and with that an end to outdoor op's for another year I decided to get outside today. It's a long weekend up this way with Monday being a holiday. I decided to use up some of my time off and took Thursday, Friday and Tuesday off as well. I went to our local park this afternoon and with it being a work day I did not find it too busy there I was able to get a nice spot under a shady willow tree. My first setup was an inverted "V" configuration. I was out last weekend and used the same configuration and was not spotted anywhere on 20m or 40m. I was reading this week that it's best to setup the inverted "V" with an angle greater than 90 degrees. I was not sure if that was my issue last weekend  but I decided to try again today but making sure my angle was greater than 90 degrees. I ended up having the same results with no spots. I then changed it up to a sloper configuration and I was able to contact K8DSS from Florida on 20m. Ed gave my 5 watt signal a 539 and I was happy with that but for the day that was all I had time for. It was soon time to pack things up and head home. While in a QSO with Ed his CW signal was in competition with practicing air show jets ( CF-18's and FA-18's) and the jets were

New power config

winning!  During the summer I have had on to many occasions battery issues. I have had AA cells in the KX3 not last more than a 1/2 even after a full charge. I have a Tracer lithium Polymer power pack that is an 8Ah pack. I decided to purchase the same item again and parallel the two 8Ah packs. This gives me a solid 16Ah's of power and a nice steady 12 volts. I have been using this arrangement for the summer and am very pleased with the performance.

The park setup

With the fall fast approaching which signals colder weather that is just around the corner and with that an end to outdoor op's for another year I decided to get outside today. It's a long weekend up this way with Monday being a holiday. I decided to use up some of my time off and took Thursday, Friday and Tuesday off as well. I went to our local park this afternoon and with it being a work day I did not find it too busy there I was able to get a nice spot under a shady willow tree. My first setup was an inverted "V" configuration. I was out last weekend and used the same configuration and was not spotted anywhere on 20m or 40m. I was reading this week that it's best to setup the inverted "V" with an angle greater than 90 degrees. I was not sure if that was my issue last weekend  but I decided to try again today but making sure my angle was greater than 90 degrees. I ended up having the same results with no spots. I then changed it up to a sloper configuration and I was able to contact K8DSS from Florida on 20m. Ed gave my 5 watt signal a 539 and I was happy with that but for the day that was all I had time for. It was soon time to pack things up and head home. While in a QSO with Ed his CW signal was in competition with practicing air show jets ( CF-18's and FA-18's) and the jets were

New power config

winning!  During the summer I have had on to many occasions battery issues. I have had AA cells in the KX3 not last more than a 1/2 even after a full charge. I have a Tracer lithium Polymer power pack that is an 8Ah pack. I decided to purchase the same item again and parallel the two 8Ah packs. This gives me a solid 16Ah's of power and a nice steady 12 volts. I have been using this arrangement for the summer and am very pleased with the performance.

The test setup

I was out today once again with my portable operations but this time there was no on air time it was time to test and decide. I went out with my MFJ antenna analyzer, mobile whip antennas and various lengths of counter poise. I wanted to see where my 20m mobile whip antenna was resonant and using the MFJ analyzer was the easiest way of doing this. The counter poise for 20m I started with was 17.5 feet long and the SWR was not showing it was resonant in the CW portion of the band but in the SSB section. So I found I have to lengthen the counter poise to 30 feet to get the SWR to 1.2:1 in the CW portion of 20m. This got me to thinking if the mobile whip was the way to go, I did have these antennas hanging around and I wanted to give them a go to see what results I would get. They are still very useful to me when I operate portable mobile from the car and they preform very well in that situation. I wanted to try the whip  antenna as I felt it would be a very small footprint of an antenna but with a counter poise of 30 feet the footprint is larger than I would like. From most of my blog reading about portable trail operation, NPOTA operations and just plan old out in the park for the day operation hands down most of the time the antenna of choice was one of LNR's par end fed antenna's.   I have looked over the antennas at LNR Precisions site and not sure yet which antenna to get, I am leaning toward the EF-20 as it's not as long (33') as say the other models. I'm really not going to use 40m and I figure (but not sure) I can use the Elecraft KX3's tuner to operate 15 and 10M?? Any feedback about this antenna or others would be appreciated.

The bike all loaded up

I had Friday off and it was a beautiful sunny day so it was time to take my KX3 out on the trail to see how my new bike/ham radio setup works. My goal today was to see how to fit all I needed and find out what I really don't need to take on my bike and to make sure my antenna setup worked. I wanted to have an enjoyable ride and at the same time have all needed to setup for portable operations on the trail. The antenna was my mono band whip antennas from 10m-40m. I have them in a nice nylon roll up canvas bag I found they fit just perfect on the bikes horizontal support frame. I also have 2 canvas carry bags mounted on the rear of the bike that can be removed. While also loading the side bags I came to the conclusion that less is more! I had to trim down on what I was bringing. First off my KX3 was in a Pelican case and the case has to go as it takes up one side bag Since the KX3 is a trail rugged rig and I have a protective face cover ( from GEMS) for my next trip the KX3 is not going in the Pelican case. I also found the binder I use would not even fit in the side bags so that has to be re-thought out as well. The binder I have now is nice as I put a small metal plate in it for my Palm paddle to secure too via it's base magnets.
After loading up the bike the first thing I found out was the kick stand on the bike would not support the bike and the loaded side bags. It turned out to be a fine balancing act when it

Diamond K400 mount

came time for setup making sure the bike did not tip over. Since the bike is brand new and I told the bike store what I was doing he wanted to see if this bike stand would work as it is lower profile. I was told if it was not doable then to come back and a more robust kick stand will be installed free of charge.
Here is a list of the items I am packing:
KX3-on it's own with no Pelican case
Extra battery just in case- The Tracer battery pack
18 gauge counter poise- only for 20m at this time
Pens, paper and 3x5 cards with programming Kx3 instructions
Headphones- I don't use ear buds as my hearing is not that great and any noise around me tunes out CW.
Trunk lip mount base for antenna- Diamond K400 
Miscellaneous items- antenna connectors, adjustable wrench, tire repair kit for bike, hat, sunglasses and so on.
Lets get to the trail adventure..........I was able to bike to one of my pre picked spots down at the Lake where a nice size picnic table was available. The antenna mount setup worked great on the bikes rear rack which I mounted back at the condo in case there was issues. I attached the counter poise via a male female 14 gauge connectors. The rig setup was straight forward as I have done this many times in the past. I fired up the rig  and I wanted to see at this point if the counter poise was sufficient for a decent SWR and it was. BUT after

The setup

the tuning process had finished and my KX3 display returned it returned with an error message "ERR TXG D=114. Never had I seen this error before on my KX3 but then again Murphy is always close by to make things interesting. I was not able to transmit at all so I was dead in the water........and I was even picking up a G4 station calling CQ! I got the Iphone out and Googled the error code and it came back that possibly a TX gain calibration was needed to be done. That was not a big deal as the Elecraft software utility does this automatically but the rig has to be at home to do this. The trail/ham radio outing had come to a grinding halt but that was just fine as I really accomplished what I set out to do and that was see how things packed up, transported and how the rig operated using the bike to mount the antenna on. Back at home I did the TX gain calibration and the same issue persisted. I went online to the Elecraft reflector and was advised that it may be my internal AA batteries were low. They were just charged I thought.........Julie informed me it was about 3 months ago that happened. I

The surprise error code

charged the unit and all is well. So today it's another great day and it's off to the trails again to hopefully make a contact or two.