[Elecraft] ARRL 10-m contest

[Wayne Burdick]

Hi all,

I only had an hour or so of contest time, but the band was in great shape and I worked everyone I called in both SSB and CW mode (35 QSOs in 19 states).

Just to make it more challenging, I kept power set to 5.0 watts, and used my 6-meter antenna exclusively (not a typo--yes, this was on 10 meters). It's a pair of 6-meter hamsticks forming a dipole, supported by a push-up mast at about 20'. It's fed with LMR400 coax, then connected to the K3, which has a KAT3 ATU. The ATU can tune this antenna on 20-6 meters. While it certainly isn't very efficient on bands below 6 meters, it was good enough to have some fun in the contest.

I was using the latest K3 firmware (rev. 5.01), which has excellent QSK audio characteristics as reported by those using this  field-test release.

73,
Wayne
N6KR