Well, I took the weekend off and instead of working on the radio I decided to make some contacts with it. I lurked around the New England QSO Party and worked some stations there. Tonight I just did some general calling and answering CQs and did quite well. Actually just finished up a QSO with an SM6 ! Very nice opening to Sweden on 40 meters. Just using a vertical with 6 watts of OQ power. I like the CW reader, it’s certainly a novelty and after a hour or so I went back to head copy, but it’s still fun to challenge it to see what it will or won’t copy.
I am not at all happy with the keyer though, it kept locking up on me, so I am going to rip it out and put my K1EL keyer back in for now. I will revisit the situation later, hopefully it’s some minor implementation bug on my part. There’s a few other operational things that need tweaking as well, the kind of stuff you discover while making contacts. All and all I am very happy and can’t wait to get more of these rigs out there.
GN de K1EL
