W2LJ QRP - When you care to send the very least!

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Another portable antenna from the QRPGuys

Posted: 12 Apr 2018 11:20 AM PDT
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Boy, these fellows are really cranking out the new kits! Any new portable
antenna is bound to catch my eye - here goes:


The QRPGuys Multi-Band End Fed Antenna is designed as a portable 40/30/20m
two trap wire antenna with a built-in tuner and SWR indicator. It consists
of a main board with tuner and SWR indicator, two trap pcb’s and an end
wire support. It incorporates the N7VE led SWR indicator and has a board
mounted female BNC for connection to your rig. The built-in absorption
bridge design will ensure you do not damage your finals with a poor SWR.
Our test show and SWR of 1:1 on 20m, 1.1:1 on 30m, and 1.3:1 or better on
40m. It is rated for 5 watts continuous, 10 watts PEP. The kit comes
complete except for the user supplied #22-24awg wire for the elements. All
S.S. connection hardware for the radiator and counterpoise connections. The
tools required are a soldering iron with a small tip, rosin core solder,
small side cutters, and can be built in an hour or two. On a difficulty
scale of 1 to 5, 5 being the most difficult, this is rated at 2.



N.B. - I am not affiliated with any company that you see that has products
that appear in this blog. I deem these posts to be newsworthy enough to
share with the greater QRP community.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP - When you care to send the very least!



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Another evening - another demo

Posted: 12 Apr 2018 07:06 AM PDT
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Admittedly, my appearances on the HF bands have been pretty much nil,
lately. But as I have mentioned before, that does not mean my life has been
a void, Amateur Radio-wise.

Last night we gave another Amateur Radio "demo" to Boy Scout Troop 125
right here in South Plainfield, NJ. It's a small troop of only about a
half dozen scouts; but they seemed to take to the presentation given by
Dave KD2FSI and Harry KC2PGX and Marv K2VHW.

There were two "hits", as far as the reaction of the Scouts seemed to
indicate. The first was when Dave produced his Go Kit. The concept that a
small HF radio, a battery and a wire antenna tossed into a bush or tree
could get you talking around the world from the middle of nowhere seemed to
interest them to no end. Of course, you would think that portable
operations and Boy Scouting would go "hand in glove" wouldn't you? And yet
this seems to be something that's not promoted enough. Sure, there's JOTA
and all that; but can you imagine a serious effort to integrate Scouting
and SOTA - or even Scouting and POTA?

The other big hit was, once again, Morse Code. Not exactly sure why, but
the code just seems to have a certain "wow factor" that impresses the heck
out of youngsters. They eagerly ran up to the table where the keys and
oscillator were so that they could play with the straight keys, the bug and
paddles that we brought to show them. And they were duly impressed when
they heard and saw Morse Code being transmitted on 40 Meters. Dave had
Fldigi (I think that was what he was running) on his laptop and it was
decoding the Morse as it was being sent.

So, how does one get a feel for whether or not the presentation was a
success? Two or three Boy Scouts asking if we could offer a class seemed
to be a big indicator. Personally, I would love to hold a Tech course just
for kids and Scouts in general, both boys and girls.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP - When you care to send the very least!