Friday, January 25, 2013

Go Ahead Make My Lunch

I have been setting up portable on my lunch break from work in Panama City Beach, FL. One QSO is a success. Today I worked ZS4RC in South Africa  15 meters band, 10 watts SSB with the Elecraft KX3. Of course that made my day or is it made my lunch. The KX3 is ideal for this mission. My antenna today was a 50 foot wire setup as an inverted Lwith a Balun Designs 9 to 1 Unun. The counterpoise is a ribbon cable with a quarter wave conductor for 40, 30, 20 and 17 meters. I make use of the KX3 internal tuner and it tunes on all bands. The tuner only does a few clicks to tune with the unun. I have gone without the unun and it tunes most but not all bands. So I would love to work you guys. I operate at 1730Z for about 30 minutes. No telling where I will be on the bands. Go Ahead Make My Lunch!

There are two 20 foot crappie poles for the inverted L and the counterpoise in the foreground.

This day I left the adapter for the unun at home so I used a BNC to SO 239 and plugged into the center. I hooked the counterpoise under a screw on the KX3 which provides a ground pad.

It is hard to beat the Alexloop for convenience and surprising performance.