[Elecraft] 4-pound Field Day, anyone?

[Matthew Zilmer]

For your #2 work in progress:

I've asked Grace Frisk (The NicdLady) to put together an NiMH 14.4V pack.  I should have it next week.  My idea was similar to Wayne's, but I wanted to operate the external pack at a higher voltage than is typical for standard cellpacks.  Field Day is my target date as well.

Specs -
2700 mAH, 14.4V, 39WH.
Size: 2.5"W x 1"D x 2" H
Weight: About 450g, including the 18" cable (about 1 lb total weight).

In case there is any interest, I'll plug Grace's business:  http://nicdlady.com/.

73,
Matt Zilmer, W6NIA
Semper Gumby



-----Original Message-----
From: elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Wayne Burdick
Sent: Friday, April 26, 2013 9:40 AM
To: Elecraft Reflector; KX3 at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Elecraft] 4-pound Field Day, anyone?

Hi all,

This year I'm going to break with tradition and *not* drag tons of gear to my field-day site. I'm going minimal....4 pounds max of radio gear. This will allow me to put more emphasis on food, drink, and enjoying time with my son (now almost 9). If anyone else is up for "FD4#", let me know. I'd like to compare notes on equipment, especially antennas, battery packs, and logging.

4 pounds (or so) is not an arbitrary number. This allows for:

- a KX3 with internal ATU and attached paddle
- mic and headphones
- external Li battery, plus 8 internal AA batteries in the rig as a backup
- two 50' (roughly) lengths of antenna wire, adapters, and a couple of 1-oz weights to get one wire into a tree
- paper log and dupe sheets (maybe...more on this below)
- soft carrying case for all of the above (in my case, a Think Tank "Strobe Stuff" bag)

I still expect to be reasonably competitive in the 1B-battery category even with this lightweight station. I hope to operate on 80-6 meters in CW, SSB, and digital modes (RTTY using the CW paddle and the KX3's text decode function).

There are two items I'm still working on:

1. External battery

I need something that will fit into the bottom of the Strobe Stuff bag. It should supply at least 11 V, and I'd prefer 4 to 5 AH, though I could get by with 3 AH and switch to the internal AAs later if necessary. Has any consensus formed about specific Li battery packs in this class? Ideal max size would be 1x3x2.5" (HWD).

2. Logging

I actually like paper logging in the field. It's kind of a Zen thing, checking dupe sheets manually (Griffin is old enough to help with this, too). But are there any good FD apps for the iPhone? I need the iPhone anyway so it doesn't count towards the station weight total. If there's an app that's easy to use for this, I'd love to try it. Heck, I'd even pay for it.

Wayne
N6KR


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