BearCreekHam

The Elecraft KX-1 radio arrived on Friday (as per previous email).

Powered it up yesterday, but finally got enough time to try to get it on the air this evening.

Decided to try "armchair copy." Cut a 44' doublet out of some speaker twinlead and ran it though the house (my wife was laughing at me).

I heard a couple of stations on 40m & 80m. 30m and 20m were dead at 22:30 PST, imagine that.

The short story is that the SWR (not to mention antenna position) was unacceptable at 40m. There were indications that one station was able to hear me, but not very well.

Will take it to work with me tomorrow and put the doublet WAY up a tree and see if that does any better. (Darn solar flares and CME causing dead bands...)

Will report more later.

As for station improvements... I'm working down a list.

1) S9++ power line noise:

• JV will be coming over sometime this week to help hunt it down. Then we'll get PG&E on the case.

2) Better antenna(s). This will be an incremental effort due to negotiations with the XYL.

1. Europe-facing 15m/30m fan dipole (I put up a dedicated 15m dipole for SS)
2. Replace existing G5RV Jr with 20m EDZ
3. VHF/UHF/uwave improvements over what I have (for what little it is worth...)
4. More radials for the 80/160m antenna then unknown at this time improvements.

Operator skills improvement: More "time in chair" for experience and better skills.

• At some point I'll want/need to "apprentice" at a "real" station.
• Greg N6CK has invited me to go multi-op for the RTTY Roundup.
• There are some things that just need to be learned that way.

Winning the lottery so I can move to a more RF-friendly location.

I _will_ improve and do significantly better. However, my available time is constrained by family commitments.

It's about the improvements at this point.