Saturday, September 29, 2012

Ten watts on ten metres

The trouble with having 100 watts at your disposal is that the temptation is there to use it if the going gets tough. So I thought I would avoid temptation and give the KX3 an airing using my attic antennas.
My first contact was on 20m SSB with CT1DQV near the Spanish border. I then popped up to 10 metres. The first contact on Ten was with a mobile station, Steve K0STP/M. Next was Todd KC4TVZ in the prettily named Flowery Branch in the state of Georgia.
After that I called another Steve, K3PIN in Philadelphia. Steve was using a K3 with an amp. On hearing I was using a KX3 he reduced power and was still 5 and 9. Steve complimented me on the audio of the KX3 and played some back. I thought it sounded great, with the KX3's compressor doing a great job of turning my rather soft voice into a punchy signal.

The final contact of the session was with Joe N2CEP in New Jersey. QSB caused part of my over to fade out but it was still a solid contact. It's good now and again to remind yourself what can be achieved with low power!

1 comment:

  1. Nice 10M QRP work. You are right about the temptation to run full power when on a 100 watt rig. What I do is use my 7 amp power supply with the FT-857 and set the power level to 5 watts. I never forget that the small supply is only good for 5 to 10 watts.

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