I've decided I've outgrown my 2 band R4020 and want a KX1.  I have a line on a used one that is 5 years old.  Supposidely it's very lightly used and has never been in the field.  It's a little pricey, but cheaper than new and I'm an electrical engineer who does a lot of soldering for a living.  I'm also very busy so a big soldering project just doesn't appeal.

Do any of you QRP gurus know if there have been noticable changes to the KX1 in the last 5 years?

Reports are finally surfacing about the April 2013 attack on a CA power sub station:  52 minutes with 100 shots fired knocking out 17 transformers.  They are saying it looks like a dress rehersal and that it wouldn't take many simultaneous attacks to bring down most of the grid ('cept you Texans who have your own).

I have a generator and transfer switch so I can run my house.  It's only 6KW but will run a lot of lights, the fridge and the 2 basement sump pumps in the summer huricane season and will keep the furnace going in winter to keep the pipes from freezing.  However I only maintain 25g of fuel in the shed.  The generator burns 0.4g/hr so that's only 63hr of continuous operation.  In winter I figure I can get by running it 3 times a day for 1-2 hrs which would stretch the fuel to 2 weeks, but mother nature has put people out of power for longer than that in the US.

I have 2 fire places but even if I kept more than the usual 1/2 cord of wood, all the fire places do is heat one room and suck the house's heat up the chimney.  I think this needs to be my next focus.  Our 2 cars usually have 15-30g combined fuel in their tanks but I'm not sure I can siphon from them.  That's the first thing I'll check. 

How would you fare without power for, say, a month?

Now there's an iPhone app that will replay your school test cheat notes in Morse vibrations.

Now here's a case of mixed emotions for me. 
As the article notes, the kids are willing to work hard to learn Morse and cheat on tests instead of just learning the material.

I'm enjoying my Ten-Tec R4020 but wishing I had something that would do 15M or above.  Lots of good DX happens above 20M, and the antennas are conveniently short. 
I think the Weber Tri-Band is the only multi-band that offers bands above 20M.
For me the MFJ9200 series doesn't count since you have to open the case and plug in a different $30 module to change bands.
So why do most of the multi-band (trail friendly) kits only offer some combination of 80/40/30/20?

Gil's post in the Morse forum on operating Java Portable got me thinking.  He activated a street-side cafe table.  I bet some of you guys have some very entertaining stories of the strange or unusual places you've operated from.

As for me, the best I can claim is the northern most island light house on the east coast.  Little River Lighthouse off the coast of Maine.  I hung my 40M/20M coupled resonator dipole from the lighthouse and operated from the keeper's quarters where we were spending the night.  The fun part was after an hour and a bottle of wine the keeper and I discovered we went to high school together and were in the same Scout troop 40 years ago.

My 2 ambitions for the spring are to clamp a hamstick to an aluminum canoe and operate /MM in the local river, and on a Scout campout attach an antenna to an outhouse and operate /outhouse portable.  Yeah, I set my sights pretty low.

How about you?

Remember the Fukushima reactor diaster?  Radioactive fallout spread hundreds of miles by the wind.
When I lived in CA I felt pretty safe.  The prevailing winds were from the NW and the closest reactor to the N was over 600 miles away, and there was only that one.  Now I'm in eastern MA, surrounded by reactors and with prevailing winds from the W, but the wind can come from anywhere.  :P


The typical advice for a widespread release of radioactive material is to stay put and seal off a small living area and wait for the dust to settle.  In addition to enough potassium iodide and dust masks for the family, I have several large rolls of 2mill plastic sheet and lots of duct tape in my prep kit.  My plan is to seal off an area enclosing a bathroom, the kitchen and family room (need to seal the fireplace's chimney).  However I just realized I have a comm problem.  My shack is in the basement where the feed lines enter the house  ??? .    The basement is actually pretty well sealed so it may be OK, but I'm thinking I need to have enough spare coax to extend the feed lines into the kitchen and I'll just relocate the shack there while we are hunkered down for a few weeks.
Anyone else have a fallout plan?

The Green Monster at Boston's Fenway Park has some Morse on it that no one ever notices.

QuoteThe next time you watch a baseball game being played at Fenway Park in Boston, look carefully at the white lines in the scoreboard on the left-field wall. You'll spot some dots and dashes hiding in plain sight in two of the vertical stripes. They spell out "TAY" and "JRY," for Thomas A Yawkey and his wife, Jean R Yawkey; the Yawkeys were co-owners of the Red Sox for many years.

I know there are lots of other examples around the country of messages in Morse hiding in plain sight.  Post them here! ;D

Edit:  Oh yeah, in case you weren't aware, my Boston Red Sox are playing the World Series right now 8) .  The next game at Fenway is Wednesday (10/30) at 8:00est.

Living in the woods we need about 3,300 calories a day to not loose weight.  This article paints a grim picture of how hard it is to survive as a hunter gatherer and illustrates why on TV we see experts like Survivor Man Les Straud go hungry for a week.  The table below from the article shows how much plant material you need per day to get the 3,300 calories we need.  I can see why we transitioned from hunter-gatherers to farmers many centuries ago.

I'm starting to realize that any long-term survival prepping needs to include seeds and farming equipment as well as hunting and fishing gear.  If I recall correctly, in a total SHTF colapse, the time before this country runs out of food is just a few months.

See update in Reply #49.

Anyone else seen these on eBay?

It looks like a standard T-network tuner and has the usual QRPers bridge with LED SWR indicator.  It claims 15W and looks small and light.  You can't beat the price of $21 shipped.

So, anyone know about these, or do I have to be the guinea pig and get one?  I love end-feds but with a baby balun this could probably tune a twin-lead fed dipole on a bunch of bands.

Here's the scenario: 
The SHTF, really hard.  The internet is down and is staying down for a very long time.  The GPS satellites are off-line too.  Maybe an EMP took out everything not in a Faraday cage.  Even if your computer works, how useful is it?

*  You need to travel.  You have no GPS or internet maps.  Got PAPER maps?  You're going to need road maps for sure, and topo maps may be valuable.  Got a good old magnetic compas?

*  On your travels some 2M repeaters may be up.  Got a directory on paper?

*  You know a bunch of people in your town must have Ham licenses, but you don't know who.  You should probably network with them for a distributed neighborhood watch.  A paper copy of the FCC's license list (with addresses) for your town would sure be handy.

*  Things are really bad.  You have to find and/or grow your own food, make your own soap, be your own doctor, butcher your own meat.  Do you already know enough about those topics?

*  BTW, I think I'm going to print and save instructions on how to make toilet paper.  That may be as valuable as food and ammo if things get bad.

So, what else needs to go into the paper library?????



 

Anyone know anything about this radio?  There are no reviews for it on eHam.net yet and only a small Yahoo group that I haven't broused enough to get a sense of how they like it.

It's a 4W, CW & SSB all HF band radio with general coverage receive for $300.
  For the size and price the only down side I can find is the 0.5A standby current is a bit high for long term battery use.

Anyone have any experience comparing a wire antenna in the attic vs. outdoors?  Any idea how much gain/sensitivity I'll loose?

I promised my 14yo son that if he passed the 5wpm Morse test he could have a QRP rig in his 2nd story room.  It's looking like I'll have to pay up.  By far the easiest antenna for me to rig is a 1/2wave end fed wire in the attic. The attic is tall with a steep roof pitch and long enough for a 20M antenna.  Because of my situation a wire antenna outside would require a long feed line, a lot of rope, a window feed thru (not good on these 10deg New England winter days) and adding ugly to the house.  And with the wire in the attic I'll put a lightning arrestor on the coax to protect the radio's input from lightning's EMP but it won't take a direct strike so I won't have to come up with a heavy earth ground to the 2nd floor.

Several SE stations that probably have fun QSL cards or certs.
I hope they use eQSL because the world will be gone before snail mail gets me their card
BTW, just in case, I haven't been paying my bills for a couple weeks.  I'll do it Sunday if we're still around.


GAME OVER:
Dec 16-Dec 21, 1500Z-1111Z, KC2UFO, Merritt Island, FL. Skywatchers and Communicators. 14.260 7.050. Certificate. Skywatchers and Communicators, www.kc2ufo.org, Merritt Island, FL 32952. QSL INFO: kc2ufo.org For Special instructions for this Event -DO NOT MAIL- Look for KC2UFO to be on the air from various locations and frequencies leading up to the END. The Club station will be on the air from 17:00 UTC December 20 until 11:11 UTC December 21, 2012. kc2ufo.org

N0D  "now zero days"
Dec 20-Dec 22, 0000Z-2359Z, N0D, Houston, TX. Brazos Valley Amateur Radio Club. 28.400 21.400 14.200 7.150. QSL. KK5W, PO Box 2997, Sugar Land, TX 77487-29. The end is finally near. To celebrate this literally once in a lifetime event, Special Event Station N0D (Now Zero Days) will be activated on 10-80 meters and on several satellite passes for three days during and after(?) the end of the world. December 20; is a celebration of the end of the world. December 21, the day of destruction, we will be on the air as long as possible. December 22nd, that is a little iffy right now. Amateur radio stations around the crumbling globe are invited to contact N0D, who will be operating from a secret, undisclosed location. Our operating schedule may be a little erratic as destruction rains down upon us and as long as our antennas hold out. ....   QSL with SASE to KK5W. .... More information at N0D.Doomsday@gmail.com or www.nowzerodays.com

W2E  "world to end"
Dec 20-Dec 22, 2200Z-2359Z, W2E, Cookeville, TN. Buck Mountain DX Club. 28.366 14.266 7.266 3.866. Certificate. Dennis M. Barrett, N4ECW, 1035 E 6th St, Cookeville, TN 38501. W2E (short for World 2 End) event celebrates the end of the Mayan Calendar and what has been characterized in popular culture as Doomsday 2012. Special emergency power has been arranged in the event commercial power connections are inexplicably terminated. Also, 7.266 MHz will be manned using a vintage Hallicrafters transmitter and receiver should solid state transceivers become non-functioning.

DAY AFTER DOOMSDAY OPERATION
Dec 22, 0000Z-2359Z, WC5C, Azle, TX. Tri-County Amateur Radio Club. 28.340 28.040 14.340 14.040. Certificate. Tri-County ARC WC5C, Day After Doomsday, 820 Wood Lane, Azle, TX 76020. wc5c@azletexas.net or www.wc5c.org

To start this topic I'm re-posting some HT antenna test results from another thread.

Earlier I compared the stock 7" Yaesu duck, the Nagoya NA771 ($7-$14 on eBay) and my Ed Fong shirt-pocket roll-up J-pole.  The J-pole was 7' up in a tree branch.  Originally I wanted to see if the 15.5" Nagoya was better than the 7" Yaesu duck.  The 2 performed identically. This time I added a rat tail to the HT's antenna to see its affect. 
For a rat tail I cut a piece of 22AWG stranded, insulated wire to 19.5" and stripped 1".  I wrapped the 1" of bare wire and around the SMA connector before screwing the antenna on.  In use I made sure it hung down. 

I went outside during the Sunday pm 2M nets and compared Rx readings.  Here's the S-meter results from a somewhat distant 2M repeater:

ANTENNA     NO RAT     WITH RAT
Yaesu             S5           S8 to S9+20
Nagoya           S5           S8 to S9+20
J-pole             S8       

With the rat there was a bit more sensitivity to where I stood (S-meter moving up and down as I walked around), but wholy-cow, what a difference.  All I can say is that I'm a rat tail convert.  That magic little piece of wire is now in my HT travel bag.

Now that I've learned Morse well enough to get on the air, my next step is QRP, and especially for portable ops.  A QRP rig would also be a nice addition to the SHTF go-kit.  There are some really nice small QRP rigs, but what do most backpackers use for an antenna?  I mean, what's the point of putting the radio in an Altoids tin if the antenna is 65' of #18 wire, plus 50' of feed line, plus lots of 550 cord, plus a slingshot line launcher to get it up in the trees?

So, what do you use, or have heard that works and is compact and light?  If it's a wire, how do you get it up high?