[Elecraft] K1-4 #1065 -- "It's Alive!"

[Thor, n9ik]

> I chose the 17 meters as I like to go hiking and hamming, and I
> thought that
> 17 would be a quieter band.  Oh, well, I'll bet I chose the wrong
> band!  No
> matter, as I've made contacts on 17 and they went well...


I chose the 15m over the 17m band, only because of the Novice portion (read
"slow code") and because the vertical on my roof includes that band but is
not resonant on 17 meters.


> Hope you get to enjoy your 4-bander as much as I like mine.  I
> chose the 80
> KHz range...


Who knows if our technical kit-building choices were "right" or "wrong" for
our future enjoyment?  As far as I'm concerned, if it works as it's supposed
to and we enjoy the results, whichever choice we make is the "right" choice!

I agonized over the choice between 80 and 150 kHz range, and ended
sacrificing the better tuning control for the expanded coverage that (again,
slow code) includes some Novice portions of the bands.  I know, I know... I
now hold an extra class license, but I haven't paid any attention to CW
since I passed the 13 wpm test when I upgraded to general 5 or 6 years ago.
But now I'm determined to join the fun!

And I love this little gray box that I assembled and got on the air (with
only one minor learning-experience difficulty, easily overcome)!  I'm kind
of embarrassed to admit it, but I've been a ham for 11 years, and other than
many, many antennas, cables and pc-to-radio interfaces, this is the first
time I've built anything significant.  It's only been a day since I finished
it, and to many this might not seem like much of an accomplishment and I
only screwed up the courage to make one contact with it so far (thank you
Wayne, W4MOX for all your patience during my nervous brain-farts when I
completely forgot my code in the middle of words!), but I'm proud of my
accomplishment.  I look forward to many, many, many more.

73,

 - Thor, N9IK