Another Barely Successful Activation at K-0454 NJ

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It took nearly 90 minutes but I made 10 contacts Wednesday afternoon to activate K-0454 Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge in NJ.   The bands were up and down, and I missed a few contacts who came in strong but then disappeared.   The highlight was getting a 11 signal report from VE7NGK from BC!  I could hear him perfectly at 58 but so it goes.

Maybe the smoke from the Canadian Wildfires was blocking my signal HI HI!    Seriously,  RBN spotted me so I knew my signal was getting out, but I had to rely mostly on P2P because I wasn’t getting much action from Calling CQ.   Tried both 20M and 17M bands.   Wound up with 6 P2P, 4 from Calling CQ, and a good mix of CW and SSB.

All in all a fun after work outing, and I was happy that N1MID Joseph Schlesier was able to stop by for a quick eyeball QSO and spotting assistance!

Rig:  Elecraft KX3, 10 watts, into the MP1 Super Antenna with a mag-mount on top of the rental car.  

Note on the batteries - This is my second outing with the LiFePo4 internal batteries that I rewired last month into a 4S2P configuration.  Each battery is rated at 3.2v and 600mAH giving total 12.8v and 1.2mAh.  

This outing proved those batteries just aren’t that great.   Fully charged I can get 10w out, but towards the end the voltage dropped under 8v, which reduced the transmit power to less than 5W after about an hour of use.  

Since I have to take the batteries out to charge them externally anyway, I’d be better off going back to the old NiMH 2800 mAh.    Doing so will require me to rewire the battery box back to the original configuration.   

Before I do that,  I might try a Li-ion option which are also available in a 14500 “AA” sized configuration. At 3.7v at 2500 mAh, I’ll need to add some voltage regulating diodes to reduce the voltage slightly.  Fully charged the Li-ION batteries would create a little more than 15v, which would probably trigger the KX3’s shutdown protection circuit.


Trial and error, living and learning,  this is amateur radio at its finest.   Thanks all.


73,  Chris de WX7V


PS The afternoon sky was pretty dark here in NJ but was pretty clear the following morning.

Link to NYT article:  https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/06/06/us/canada-wildfires-smoke-air-quality

















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