water cooler :: Ham



Good old Kenwoods! On several days I've had contacts and they were all using kenwoods! (830s, 540s etc...) :laugh:

Although my station is a bit more QRP! :D

HF Elecraft K2 (#2448)
6M Walford Electronics transverter
4M converted PMR
VHF/UHF handheld
VHF/UHF Yaesu FT8000 mobile rig (to be used as base station)

Antennas for HF/4m/6m are homebrew from screw terminal blocks, earth wire and RG58 coax (from networks! comes preterminated :;):)

As for 6m kits don't know many stateside. Don't Tentec do one or a transverter?

72 Nicholas GQRP 11458
That's a really nice ham shack you have there, ke4nt1.  Thanks for all the tips, too.   Is it the status of the sunspot cycle that makes 10 meter dead until 2009?   It's an 11 year cycle, right?  When the band opens up, how many years does it stay open?  Are the lower frequencies affected too?  

libretto, this is all new to me, but from what I've read, the Elecraft K2 is a top of the line multi-band QRP rig, and a fairly major building project.  I'd love to try my hand at building one of those some day, but not anytime soon.  It looks like a job for an experienced builder.  Too expensive if you botch it, and I probably would.  

I've been reading up on low power operations the past few days, and I find myself greatly intrigued.  Imagine DX contacts on 5 watts and less.  

I've found a variety of QRP kits from Wilderness Radio, Oak Hills Research, Small Wonders Labs, MicroMoutaineers, and Elecraft.  I'm thinking about building a Wilderness Radio NorCal40A as my first foray into kit building.  It looks like it would be fairly easy to build.  I can look for ke4nt1 on the 7.100 to 7.150 MHz part of the 40 meter band once I pass my Technician test and my code test.    

BTW, I haven't found a 6 meter kit.  Ten Tec discontinued their model 1360 kit.  They have a two meter kit, though, and a 6 meter transverter.  Elecraft has a 6 meter transverter kit too.  

Now, back to my ARRL books...
The best thing I have found for 6 meters is to pick up a used Alinco DX70.
You can find them easily enough, but like any digital transceiver, expect to
pay 300.00 and up for a nice one.  
It has all the HF bands + 6 Meters built in, and enough output
to drive a small 150W brick amp.   If you find a DX-70 TH model, it does 100W
on all bands 'including' 6 meters, all by itself..
Another hot item is the Icom 706MKII .. which also adds 2Meters to the mix..
A nice rig to startup a decent 2M/6M SSB operation.. expect to pay more..

73
ke4nt
Kent..et al..

 I was reading back through my post.. did a fat finger on the call sign.. KG4RDV is what it should have read.  I have another old battleship..  ICOM 720-A    Still have not gotten through to learning the code as I have been busy with a ton of other little projects.. like studying Japanese.. Namae wa Maku desu ... dozo yorushiku  !

   Anyway.. my local ham club is getting ready to sponsor a code class to get those of us who have been slacking up to speed enough to pass the test.   If I know these guys they will not be happy with just getting us to recognize code audibly they will be putting us through some practical testing as well.  Torture !  I cant wait !  

  actually looking forward to it.. now if I only had a QRP mentor locally to blow stuff up with :)

Mark

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