Heard several stations from 7.025 up to 7.035, if you were there Gil I never heard you.

Quote from: gil on April 28, 2013, 08:47:17 PM
Hello,

I did call you at 11:00 EST sharp on 14060... We could try 7030 at 22:00?

Gil.

I'll listen for you then.

Quote from: EmptySpaces on April 28, 2013, 07:29:39 PM
A few I've made note of recently:

Radio Australia 21.740mhz   afternoons I believe this is the Western Pacific broadcast. Good signal.

BBC 6.195mhz  mid morning 9am. Signal weak but OK for listening. Note: BBC no longer xmits to the US so this was beamed somewhere else.

Taiwan 15.440mhz  Did not note time but probably afternoon.

CRI (China) 9.570mhz Early evening around 8PM (They even give lessons on speaking Chinese!)

VOA (broadcast to Africa) 17.895mhz Mid day around 1PM

All times CDT.  My location is in the south central US.

I've excluded the domestic religious stations because they can be received by simply chewing on a piece of tinfoil between metal fillings.

I've heard most of those in the past few weeks. I also heard radio Australia on 12.065 at 1500 UTC Sun.

Caught VOA right before sign off at 0200 UTC Tue.

Radio Romania International on 9.645 and 11.955 at 0000 UTC

Quote from: gil on April 27, 2013, 01:51:47 PM
I'll call you  ;)

Gil.

Never heard you today Gil, we'll have to try again. You busy this evening?

Quote from: gil on April 28, 2013, 11:06:53 AM
Great, what do you use for a charge controller?

Gil.

Me  8)

This is as far as I've got in this project, I don't even have a blocking diode in the circuit, just the panel hooked directly to the batteries so I have to monitor it to prevent overcharging. The whole project is more of learning process than anything, my goal is to get some real commercial panels for a practical solar system but for now this will do, besides the solar cells were dirt cheap. Chance are I'll get a commercial charge controller also but I may homebrew one for the time being.

I started building this solar panel back in February and decided to drag it out of the closet and try it out in the sun. I still need to build a frame/enclosure for it but so far it seems to be charging a couple of my SLA batteries that I use for QRP work quite nicely.

Quote from: gil on April 27, 2013, 09:13:40 PM

QuoteSo what was the end fed tuner kit you ordered?

Hello,

The kit was a BetterQRP end-fed half-wave tuner for 40 to 15m. That is the one I took camping. It does not cover 80m. The 80m end-fed matchbox I built was from scratch... I need to stretch the wire to measure the SWR, because with the wire over the house (inverted U), I get too high a SWR...

Gil.

Nice looking unit, pretty similar to my SOTA tuner. In my opinion the EFHW is the key to lightweight, quick and easily deployed field antennas. Dipoles, loops, etc are great permanently installed at home but they suck to put up quickly under field conditions, not to mention the hassle of carrying feed line.

Quote from: gil on April 27, 2013, 09:16:49 PM

QuoteI use a watertight gasketed box made by Outdoor products. it's nowhere near the quality of a Pelican but it's advantage is that it's cheap, i bought mine at Wal-Mart for less than $10.

I have one of those... The Pelicans do however look much stronger... That is why I don't mind spending a bit of money on them. It does cost much more to replace a radio!

Gil.

No doubt. You can park a truck on top of a Pelican case with nothing more than possibly a few scuff marks, I bet I could kick my Walmart special and break it.  ;D

I'll second Quietguys advice, you can't just get a technician license, play with a handheld radio for a week or two then squirrel it away in your supplies and assume you're now ready to communicate when the SHTF. There's skill, art and science involved in efficiently communicating via radio that only comes from knowledge gained through hands on experience. After a while of playing with radio day in and day out things like what bands usually have good propagation to what parts of the world, at what time of day, during what time of year; what a likely frequency on that particular band to actually contact someone is and what type of antenna you'll need to do that because the hurricane tore yours to shreds so you now need to build one from scrap wire you find, will all be second nature. The things I listed barely scratch the surface, TEOTWAWKI is definitely not the time to learn all this stuff. Besides, it's a lot of fun, you might just enjoy it  8)

So what was the end fed tuner kit you ordered?

I use a watertight gasketed box made by Outdoor products. it's nowhere near the quality of a Pelican but it's advantage is that it's cheap, i bought mine at Wal-Mart for less than $10.

I tossed an end fed wire up into the tree in my front yard today, used my trusty SOTA tuner to feed it and the very first QSO with the KX1 was a W7 in Glendale, AZ........... 1130 miles, 559 both ways. Not too shabby for a little over 2 watts.

I really need to get the internal auto tuner and the paddle kit to eliminate a lot of the clutter, should make set up much quicker and easier.

I'm back in the house now and hooked up to my big dipole, I'll probably be on 40 meters this evening somewhere around 7.105 MHz if anyone wants to ragchew.

I just realized I don't know your callsign  :o

Just to clarify; you mean 1700Z?

Well I completed the build at about 0100 last night, never ran into any problems, of course this isn't my first time building QRP, just follow the directions to a T and even an inexperienced builder should be able to build one.

Overall I'm very impressed, this is one sweet little QRP rig! So far I've just played around with all the menus options and different controls to familiarize myself with how it operates, it's pretty sophisticated compared to my Weber Dual Band rig, not that it's a bad radio either. As with practically all modern ham gear there's a bit of a learning curve to all the features especially since Elecraft stuffed so many features in such a small rig with minimal controls but just in the short time I've played with it I pretty well have the hand of it.

The very next thing I want is the KXPD1 plug-in paddle kit followed by the internal antenna tuner and finally the 80/30 meter module. Now I need to sell some more of my junk, err I mean prized possessions at the next hamfest to pay for them.

If anyone wants to hear it on the air let me know and we can set up a sked. 73