Hi to the group I know this is long so if you are not interested in Solar Field Days please hit delete.
I am late telling about my experience with Field Day but I had so much research going that I wanted to wait until after my two week vacation to tell you all about it. I have been using class 1B ND battery all but one of the last 15 years. I started with my K2 built in 2000 along with a Radio Shack Tandy 1100FD laptop all running on an old group 27 battery. The year the battery was 18 years old it failed about 6 hours before the end of field day and would not take a charge again. I bought another group 27 battery and used my K3 and the 1100FD laptop the next year. The club talked me into running under my call the following year as a 100w 3A ND station using a Windows XP laptop and N3FJP software. The next year I had my new KX3 and went back to 1B ND battery. I used the I-PAD and Hamlog software but the I-PAD battery ran out of battery after just 7 hours of use. Last year I ran the KX3 and a Windows 8 laptop as 1B ND Battery but had to run the 40 watt laptop as the only load on my generator. I understand that meets the rules but I did not like it. This year I replaced all the lights in my camper with LED bulbs and dropped the load from 1.5 amps per bulb to 0.2 amp per bulb. I found a Verizon 12 volt power supply that would run an I-PAD and Hotspot at the same time on a discharging 12 volt battery. The I-PAD used about .4 amp as long as I was careful to turn the I-PAD OFF instead of to STANDBY when I was not using it. The I-PAD looks OFF when in STANDBY but runs the battery down doing things in the background and charges the battery when it is turned back on which draws additional 12 volt from the battery. I programed the fast memories of the KX3 for W0CZ, and 1B ND and used the built in paddles for anything else. You can see pictures of my camper and antenna on qrz.com. I also added a 33 ft MFJ fiber pole with a 29 ft vertical wire that loads on 40, 30, 20 and 15 meters using the KX3 built in tuner. A week before field day I was given ten five watt solar panels. Years ago I had built the KD5NDB solar regulator so I wir ed all 10 panels in parallel and the solar regulator to charge the battery. My results for field day were 132 cw five watt contacts with a claimed QSO score of 1320 plus bonus points for 100% emergency power, Natural power QSOs completed and using the b4h.net applet. The solar charger had my batteries fully charged by the end of field day after operating all night. Two days after field day we took off on a two week vacation to Northern Minnesota to camp grounds without electricity. I had the 8 year old group 27 battery and a 4 year old group 24 battery as my only source of electricity. I also had the KX3, PX3 and KXPA100 along and used the station extensively. The solar charger was able to recharge both batteries every day the sun was out and help them on the other days so I never did use the small generator I brought along. In bright sunlight I was able to make several nice rag chew CW QSOs at 100 watts. All my other contacts were at 50 watts night or day. I made one more change to my solar project when I got home. It is a Home Depot Grape Solar GS-STAR-100W panel. I found when I was camping that it was a lot of work to move 10 panels so this way when the sun moves I can follow it by just picking up the one panel. KD5NDB is a silent key and I do not know of anyone selling his kits but I did take pictures of his kit instructions and schematic drawing which I can E-Mail to anyone that wants to build this solar regulator. One advantage of his circuit is that it makes no RF noise. Many other SOLAR REGULATORS make serious RF noise. 73 and thanks for the band width Ken W0CZ w0cz at i29 dot net7 Sent from my iPad > On Jun 30, 2015, at 10:16 PM, Carol F. Milazzo, KP4MD/W6 > <kp...@cfmilazzo.com> wrote: > > I used the KX3 on 40 meter CW and PSK31 with Win4K3 software, DigiPan, an > ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
