All, I received a nearly-overwhelming amount of responses to my email and I wanted to make sure I follow-up with you all to thank you and let you know the results of operating in my first contest QRP with the KX3.
Although I failed to mention it in my original email, many of you correctly assumed that I would be operating SSB. I'm still not proficient (and comfortable) enough with CW to go that route yet. Of course, digital is just point-and-click. :) Many suggested using a high quality (or high gain) antenna. I don't know if you'd call what I'm using high quality, but it's what I've got and it seems to get the job done well enough. You can see my QRZ profile for more information about it. (It's approximately 250' of wire in a loop above my house.) It seemed split right down the middle on whether to use "QRP" in my call or not. Ultimately, I decided to go with it: "KK4LOV QRP." I heard several other stations announce themselves as QRP or portable. We can debate if it's right or wrong, but when heard, they ALWAYS received preference from the station calling CQ contest. Speaking of being heard, I avoided most pileups where the station calling CQ even had difficulty keeping up with all the calls. In the few instances where I did throw my call in the pile, I paused at least a second before stating my call. I suspect the other station rarely heard my actual call but frequently heard "QRP" unless my signal was being drowned out by a QRO station. As far as the KX3 setup was concerned, I received two bits of advice which really seemed to help. 1. It was suggested I crank the speech compression ALL the way up. I had it on 10 (I think) and maxed it out at 30. 2. Adjusted my TX EQ settings: TXEQ1-16, TXEQ2-16, TXEQ3-8, TXEQ8-16. All this and a lot of patience got me a "clean sweep" on the 13 Colonies contest running this week -- all on 5 watts SSB. So thanks to everyone for your help -- I'm sure this will improve my SOTA operations as well! Aaron de KK4LOV ______________________________________________________________ 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
