A friend sent me the post about this and so I thought I would join the group and post my experience. I have had a KX3 for two or three years. I replaced one of the high end rigs with it and am very pleased with the results. I have a full quarter wave elevated ground plane antenna for 160. I’ve had it up for 27 years. It is made from Rohn 45 with a Rohn insulator broadcast section inserted so the insulators are 27 feet above ground. There are 14 sections plus a short base and short flat top section. The antenna is tuned with a 14 foot piece of 4 inch irrigation pipe out the top, which is adjustable. The over all height of the antenna is 150 feet. At the 27 foot level there are 7 full quarter wave radials. There were eight, but one broke and is in the woods somewhere and I can’t find it. The radials droop to 10 feet above ground at the perimeter. It doesn’t hurt that I live on a ridge which is the highest point in the county and my QTH is 300 feet or so above average terrain for 30 miles in every direction.
The antenna is excellent. I don’t own an amplifier for any HF band. I work everything I hear and I hear lots. I have worked JA and VK/ZL with 100 watts on 160. This year I decided to try QRP, 5 watts. I operated ten hours, just tuning to stations and calling them. They usually came back on the first call. I worked as far East as CN2 in Morocco and west to KH6. I made 250+ QSOs and 58 multipliers. From what I saw on the CQ160 scores page before they took it down, I had a top ten in NA and top 25 world score. Maybe next year I will make a serious effort. All depends on how I feel. My health is great. My motivation is lacking after 60 years on the air and more contests and DX QSOs than I can count. I run the attenuator on receive all the time. I leave the RF gain all the way up. I turn the Bandwidth down to 100 or 150 hz and seldom have noise or QRM problems. The receiver is the best I have ever owned. I think back to my first receiver, a dual triode super regen that heard the entire 80M novice band without touching the tuning and I think “We’ve come a long way, baby!!” 73 all, Dave, K4TO ______________________________________________________________ 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
