The First 100 Years Are The Hardest

 I was active in Wyoming on June 24th - 30th, 2023.  I was able to make 62 contacts - 45 on SSB,  17 on CW, all on 20M.  Longest contact was Spain (EC1R) at 7929 km. I also worked Alaska, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and New Brunswick. and Puerto Rico, and at least 25 states. I used my Elecraft KX3, and a combination of the MP1 Super Antenna mag mounted to the roof of the car and the KM4ACK EFHW antennas.  Overall I’d have to say the MP1 outperformed the end fed!    2023-06-30 K-0698 John D. Rockefeller Jr. National Parkway 2023-06-30 K-0070 Yellowstone National Park 2023-06-25 K-6229 South Park State Wildlife Habitat Management Area 2023-06-24 K-0613 National Elk National Wildlife Refuge 2023-06-24 K-0031 Grand Teton National Park The views were legendary and the mosquitos were fierce!  I actually made two trips to Yellowstone- the first with family to see Old Faithful, a nice hike to see the Grand Prismatic Spring, and a dr...

 We had some big storms in Texas this past weekend, and the OCF Dipole I've had up at the lake QTH was a casualty, along with many tree limbs.   I spent the better part of Sunday morning getting it untangled and take down (for now).  I want to find a better location, in the clear, and away from trees before I put it back up.   Since I'm travelling next two weeks I will probably have to wait till after 4th of July. The power of nature is truly incredible and I took these awesome pictures that I wanted to share.  73,  Chris de WX7V

My workstation has become a bit sluggish since I started running "SO2R" single operator 2 radio configuration to get the most out of my flex radio.   I added a dedicated AMD Radeon RX6400 RDNA 2 GPU card and I'm very pleased with the results.    Not a bad way to extend the life of a 3 year old desktop! Updated Benchmarks are nearly 3X the performance: Original GPU benchmark for Radeon Vega 11 Integrated Graphics: 73, Chris de WX7V

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 batterie...

The CQ Worldwide WPX CW contest was this weekend.  I made just over 100 contacts and 43 countries in the first day, including many new ones that will help my progress for the DXCC Century Club Award for CW Mode. I made the first 10 contacts using the Log4OM Contest Mode, which was very painful.   At the recommendation of Jon NN5T I decided to bite the bullet and dig into N1MM+ Contest Logger.   Boy and I glad I took his advice.  Not only did I learn how graceful a contest logger can be,  I was able to operate most of the day using the “Single Operator 2 Radio” Mode which was very easy to set up.  It took a dozen or so QSOs to figure out exactly how N1MM+,  FlexRadio, Slice Master and CW Skiumer worked together, but all I can say it that it was seamless once I had all the ports configured correctly. N1MM+ is the worlds most popular contest logger, and there is a ton of documentation on the web, unfortunately most of which is dated,  I found a prett...

Elecraft’ s choice to use of NiMH (nickel-metal-hydride) batteries is really the only complaint I have about the KX3.  It probably made sense at the time, but even the KX2 and the ICOM 705 use LiFePo4 (lithium iron phosphate).  The original NiMH batteries provide exactly 12v which limits the power output to 5 watts or less.  Also, the internal charger takes 8-12 hours and isn’t all that precise.   Which in practice means I typically use an external LifePo4 battery like the Bioenno 12v 3Ah battery which enables me to run at full 15 watts. When I travel, there are times I don’t want take an external battery so I found a KX3 LiFePo4 internal battery conversion project by Howard K4LXY.  The project consists of rewiring the battery holders into two parallel packs each holding 4 3.2v AA sized (14500) LiFePO4 batteries to create a 4S2P configuration (4 Serial, 2 Parallel).  Rated at 3.2v and 600mAH, the new batteries generate 12.8v and 1.2Ah of power, enough to p...