[Elecraft] Getting Started with QRP and the Elecraft KX3

[Fred Jensen]

Re CW vs SSB--  I report the "North American News" for the WW SOTA 
Newsletter on the reflector at www.sotawatch.org and get each month's 
statistics for it.  For Dec 2014 activity:

CW: 1670 (59%) [3043]
SSB: 1036 (36%) [1869]
FM: 110 (3%) [145]

First # is the number of summit-to-chaser or summit-to-summit Q's for 
the month, number in [] is last month's total.  One side of essentially 
every Q [guy on summit] is at QRP levels.  For summit-to-summit Q's, 
both sides are at QRP levels.  The roughly 60/40% ratio of CW/SSB QSO's 
has been holding pretty steady.  Moral is, while CW will likely net you 
more QSO's than SSB, and a number of SOTA fanatics who began SSB-only 
are learning and moving to CW, there are still many contacts to be made 
on phone.

Re /QRP:  "/QRP" as an indicator is compliant with 47CFR97 for US hams 
since there are no ITU prefixes in the block QAA-QZZ.  It may not be 
compliant in other countries.  However,

--It adds 4 characters to your call sign, 3 of which are long characters 
in Morse;

--It conveys essentially no real info, if you're weak for your QSO 
partner, you're weak.  He really doesn't care why.  You could sign 
WB0XXX/BADANT [not compliant in the US, all the B's belong to China] to 
explain why you're weak, but again, he doesn't care.

--A number of folks are easily annoyed by lots of things, /QRP is 
usually one of them

Re QRP Achievement:  If you manage a QSO with a station [such as distant 
DX], you're achievement is persistence ... that QSO was undoubtedly 
preceded by an almost uncountable number of calls which failed.  The 
distant station, not you, gets the receiving achievement.

That said, it is surprising just how strong a 3-5 W station with an EFHW 
on a summit can really be.  Listen in the 14060-14065 range and you'll 
be surprised.  The SOTA 20m SSB watering hole tends to be 14340-14345.

Someone asked about depleting a LiFePO4 too far ... my K2 quits at about 
10.0 - 10.3 volts which is just about the "knee" of the discharge curve 
and right about where you want to stop the discharge.  This is true of 
most QRP radios running on a nominal 12 V battery.

73,

Fred K6DGW
- Northern California Contest Club
- CU in the 50th Running of the Cal QSO Party 3-4 Oct 2015
- www.cqp.org

On 1/4/2015 9:51 PM, Bill Frantz wrote:

> I second the thought that you will have more success with narrow band
> modes like CW and PSK31 than you will with modes like SSB and RTTY.
> Regardless of mode, running QRP and getting a response on your first
> call can make your entire day. It more than makes up for those other
> days when you don't seem to be able to contact anyone.