[Elecraft] Quick Questtion on KX1 ATU

[thomaskd at rcn.com]

Don,

I was sure that I read 0.9mV on the DMM...but I have made plenty of mistakes along the way...so I went and double-checked.  Yep....0.9mV.  I guess it is in good shape.

I hooked it up to my attic dipole and tuned up on 20M  and get a reading of 4.2 watts and a SWR of 1.1.  I  made one call and had a nice QSO from here in PA to Florida.  He was surprised I was running QRP when he found out. It was only my 2nd QSO with the KX1 and the first one using the KXPD1 paddles.  They got away from me at one point and sent a nice string of dits even when I was not touching them.  I still need to adjust them better.  Then my earbuds fell out while I was sending and I started to lose track.  It was still a good QSO though!

I tried to tune the dipole on 40M and it did not tune well.  I think it got to a SWR of 5.2 or something like that.  I can tune that dipole on 40M with my LDG tuner..but I wonder what kind of efficiency I get.

I am still quite new at CW and very new at QRP.  I am going to enjoy this little rig a lot.  I will be cutting some wires and counter poises tonight to try out with it. Especially for 40M.

Thanks for all the help and hopefully I can get the 30M board installed and working without too many posts to the list!

73 de Keith KB3ILS