KQ9L
Richard Lim
Burr Ridge, Illinois
EN61as
Welcome to my website.
This site will be under constant construction, so visit often!
About Me:
My name is Rich, and my QTH is Burr Ridge,
Illinois (EN61as) which is about 25 miles west of Chicago in DuPage County,
Illinois. Iım an active member in
the Dupage Amateur Radio Club (DARC) and have worked several events including
FD using the club call W9DUP.
I have been licensed as a Ham since
February 2002 and upgraded to the Extra Class license by June of the same
year! I operate 75% CW and 25%
phone and am interested in DX, QRP, contesting and mobile hamming.
I am 38 yrs old, married to my XYL Lana
(KC9BBL) and have two fantastic children Andrew 3 yrs and Alyssa 10 mo.
I have subdivided the webpage into my
mobile hamming, QRP, and Keys, you can get to each section by clicking the
links below.
I hope you enjoy the website, please feel
free to email me with questions, comments of suggestions! 73 and God Bless!! Rich
Mobile:
Here is a picture of my mobile station:
The Truck is a 2003 Land Rover Discovery
II with 3² of suspension lift and 265/70 R16 BFG Mud Terrain KOıs. The antenna
is from Robert Young at Tarheel antennas and is a Little Tarheel screwdriver. www.tarheelantennas.com . My mobile rig is an Icom 706MKIIG
running barefoot with a Heil mic and Palm Paddle Key attached to the parking
brake. And YES I do work mobile CW HI HI.
Mobile hamming has opened a whole new dimension
of the hobby to me. I can now convert the ³down time² involved with my daily
commute to and from work to ³radio time².
I have learned a lot about setting up a mobile station, mainly through
trial and error HI HI.
Some of the key features to establishing a
killer mobile station include:
1) Clean power wired DIRECTLY to the battery.
2) Good antenna and rig grounding.
3) Getting the antenna as high up as possible.
RFI can also be an issue with your vehicleıs electrical system, luckily, mine was easily fixed with proper grounding.
QRP:
³Life is too short for QRP!²
Thatıs a phrase I have hear all too many
times. To me, anything worth doing doesnıt come easily! I enjoy the challenge
of QRP and have found the community of QRP ops to be some of the most friendly
and supportive Hams around!
I have built many of the popular QRP kits, but, my favorites by far are from Elecraft www.elecraft.com . I have built a K2 #3232,
K1 #1669 and KX1 #21. The K2 is the cream of the crop in the Elecraft line up
and has better numbers than many of the commercial rigs out there (see www.elecraft.com/k2_perf.html .
I added a twist to my K2 when I built it and below is a picture of what has
been called the K2 Twins. It consists of the basic K2 with SSB, NB, ATU and
battery in one case connected to the KAT100-2 ATU and 100w PA in another
enclosure.
This set up is hot! I can work QRP/QRO at home and at
a moments notice grab the K2/QRP for portable ops.
I used the K2 Twins at this years field day and
together with Mike AA9QE we logged over 600 Qıs in 20 hrs. Below are a few pics
from the effort.
This is me Rich KQ9L at the mic of the K2 twins during
our 20m FD event.
This is Mike AA9QE in the tent. You can see the K2
Twins as well as a Yaesu FT897 as a backup rig.
This is out tent where we ran the K2 Twins entirely on
battery power with solar backup. Notice the Hexbeam antenna www.hexbeam.com (KILLER signal!!) and the
Tiki Lights to ward off the Illinois Mosquitos!
I have recently moved my K1 to mobile duty as the
IC706mkIIG is ³sick². I canıt believe how well I can get out with only 5w!
More QRP:
Some of the other kits I have built include a
Wilderness Radio SST www.fix.net/~jparker/wild.html
with dual frequency ranges:
This was my first kit transceiver and was
a great learning experience. I
highly recommend it to anyone interested in building their own rig. Check out Bob Dyer's website at: www.fix.net/~jparker/wild.html
Dave Benson at Small Wonder Labs puts out
some of the slickest little QRP kits in the business. www.smallwonderlabs.com
I have built two of his rockmites, a
DSWII-20m and a frequency mite.
The rock mite is a wonder of engineering.
At $25 dollars you get a transceiver and keyer which is easy enough to build in
one nite! Here is a pic of the my
rock mites:
This is the 20m RM built into a Context
engineering case. This rig has an internal 9v battery and can work off of 12v
DC. The paddle is one of my
favorites made my Jim Richards K6VDH and can be found at www.morsex.com
This is my RM for 40m built into a Mity
Box made by Doug Hauff K6RIE at American Morse www.americanmorse.com
You can see how tightly everything fits in
here!
Keys:
Coming soon!
EMAIL ME: