Hello Elecrafter, I was QRV to an outline island of Hong Kong (known an Lamma Island). Therefore, I only brought K3+KPA500+Buddipole+25A switching power supply.
Scores were of course nothing promising because I was lazy and slept a lot. The buddipole was installed on the roof of 3 storey village type house. However, the metal canopy structure on the roof seriously influenced the buddipole set up so that SWR below 21Mhz was very high no matter how I adjusted the antenna. KAT500 is still in Elecraft's lab. Therefore, no tuner was used in this set up. KPA500 could handle SWR below 2 and I worked full power of KPA500 on 28Mhz. The KPA500 was cool and quiet. The integration with K3 was silk smooth. Below 28Mhz, I can only run bearfoot with K3 using the internal KAT3. In 7Mhz, I trust the effective RF out at the end of Buddipole could be as low as 50W. Anyway, I could still get some multipliers in Europe. The selectivity of K3 was excellent but I really missed the DSP NR in my big Icoms. I regret to say that NR in K3 is as bad as useless so that I simply turned off DSP NR during the entire contest. Also, when I adjusted the IF bandwidth say from 2.4khz to 2.1khz, I noticed a very short 'black out' time when I could not hear the signal during the adjustment. I would suspect the DSP IF filter in K3 needs some time to 'think' about the adjustment. Once I settled down to 2.1Khz, it was all ok. I used the Yamaha CM500 from my colleage VO1AU which was very good. I cannot get a CM500 in VR2, could any of you advise where I can get a CM500 in USA? The logging ware was N1MM. During contest time, band spectrum P3 seems not quite necessary because there were stations every other Khz. I heard quite a number of US stations even in 7Mhz but I could not work them due to poor antenna set up. How was your CQ WW? Any information / experience to share? TNX & 73, Johnny VR2XMC ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
