[Elecraft] QRP Special Events Station K7S for Salmoncon

[Bruce Prior]

Margaret K7MWP and I are leaving shortly for Bowman Bay State Park, near Deception Pass, WA, for the annual Salmoncon event, sponsored by the Pacific Northwest QRP Group.  Some people will stay in RV's.  Margaret and I are packing our luxurious car-camping tent.  A more modest backpacking tent is more usual for us.  On-the-air activity for special events station K7S will be mostly on the usual QRP CW frequencies, and possibly some SSB as well, plus an occasional evening foray to 3588 kHz for some RTTY activity.  That will be with an Elecraft K3 in its paddle mode:  we will be sending Morse with iambic paddles and the K3 will spit out 45 baud Baudot RTTY and it will decode received Baudot on the monitor without need for an external computer.  I'll also be operating my Elecraft KX1 on the 20, 40 and 80 m CW bands.  There will be some 6 m and possibly 2 m activity as well.  Elecraft guru Lyle Johnson KK7P and his wife Heather N7DZU will also be attending Salmoncon.  Lyle will bring his K3 with the new subreceiver installed.  I'm looking forward to giving that a whirl.  

I'll be giving a formal presentation to the group on "Geographical HF Exchanges," in which I'll be proposing that we totally abandon bogus RST exchanges for all Amateur Radio HF contesting and DXing in favor of 4-character Maidenhead Grid Field and Square coordinates, just like radio amateurs now do for VHF and above operations.  At least when I'm operating, I'll be giving out the Maidenhead Grid.  If you hear us on, please jump in.  You might want to make a note of your Maidenhead Grid ahead of time.  A nifty way to explore the Maidenhead Locator System  is to check out the following Google Map facility for Maidenhead: http://f6fvy.free.fr/qthLocator/fullScreen.php . (In case the Elecraft list messes that up, it's http colon slash slash f6fvy dot free dot fr slash qthLocator slash fullScreen dot php .) Change the scale appropriately and then click and drag the map to bring your location into view and then click on the map to calculate your 6-character Maidenhead coordinates.  The boundaries of that Maidenhead Subsquare appear on the map.  Another approach is to enter 2- or 4- or 6-character coordinates in the Locate box and the map scale is changed automatically and the boundaries of that area appear on the map.  Try entering BK19 to see the tiny sliver of the island of Hawaii which is within that 4-character Maidenhead Square.  Try entering the  6-character Maidenhead Subsquare designator for Bowman Bay State Park: CN88qj.  Wikipedia and the ARRL website have more general descriptions of the Maidenhead Locator System.

The weather looks great in our neck of the woods.  Our prayers are going out for our California colleagues who are being threatened by wildfires.  We hope you have a happy and safe weekend.

73, Bruce N7RR




 J. Bruce Prior
 853 Alder Street
 Blaine, WA 98230-8030
 360-332-6046
 Amateur Radio Station N7RR
 Grid CN88px



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