+++++++++++++++++++++ From: "Tom Whiteside" To: Date: Sun, 14 Jul 2002 09:20:30 -0500 Subject: [Elecraft] K2/KPA100 Results in IARU W1AW/5 20M CW Well, it is over after months of planning and preparation! This note will be a bit brief both due to fatigue and to another impending Texas Thunderstorm off the port bow... I think this was a very good test of a K2 in combat, contesting conditions. As an HQ station in this contest, the pileups were fierce with many strong stations calling at once. It was also a bunch of continuous operation over a 24 hour period. The station consisted of a 5/5/3/5 antenna stack that scoops up lots of signal to present to the K2's front end. In turn, the K2/KPA100 was driving an Alpha-87A and punching a bunch of power right back out. 70W output from the K2 drive the 87A to 1500W so it did not have to run full out but was transmitting a good percentage of the time for the contest. Worth mentioning is that we did not have to touch the K2 power knob *ONCE* during the entire contest! The K2's ALC held things just super constant the entire time. I did rig a muffin fan to blow in the K2 heatsink - not required but it seemed like a good idea. A Variac was tweaked to make the fan blow as hard as it could without adding noticeably to the ambient noise level. The room is small and despite having an extra air conditioning duct to the room, it stayed a toasty 30 degrees C! I measured the KPA heatsink temperature immediately after the last CQ at 36C which seems remarkably low given the duty cycle and the room temperature - even given the muffin fan. AF5Z ran the pileup for the first 2 hours before a break - Bob is (I think) the best pileup op in the area with his skills honed from years of living on Guam where he faced a pileup everytime he fired up a rig. Even given that massive pileups with many stations running high power and the large receive antennas, the front end just won't overload. Bob reported a personal best 2 hour rate with something on the order of 275 QSOs handled. We did almost 1600 raw QSOs on 20M total and this included some incredibly bad QRN hours with big storms all around. I left the QSK interval fairly short - just long enough to mask the noisy big signal backscatter you get running huge power with big antennas. So hearing someone calling us was easy and there is not the fatigue you get with some radios and QSK. I did get one complaint - the keying waveform needs to clicks to help keep the frequency clear - just kidding, Wayne... Not much else to say, really - it just worked and worked well. Thanks to all that worked us and to the team at Elecraft for a super product! Tom Whiteside N5TW Georgetown, TX ++++++++++++++++++ Date: Sat, 07 Sep 2002 23:30:50 -0500 To: elecraft at mailman.qth.net From: Tom Hammond =?iso-8859-1?Q?N=D8SS?= Subject: [Elecraft] N0SS Summary for Team Elecraft Rig: K2/100 driving an Alpha 76PA Bencher Skyhawk at 73' 80/40 dipole at 70' Time operated: 4 hours SPRINT SUMMARY SHEET Contest Date : 10-Sep-02 Callsign Used : N0SS BAND Valid QSOs Points Mults Countries ___________________________________________________ 80CW 97 97 2 0 40CW 121 121 26 0 20CW 64 64 12 1 ___________________________________________________ Totals 282 282 40 1 Final Score = 11562 points. Comments; The K2/KPA100 worked just great! The bands pretty well sucked, due to a fairly large coronal mass ejection which hit earth early this mornging... lots of auroral flutter... Good to hear a bunch of other K2 owners on in the contest. 73, Tom N0SS +++++++++++++++++ To: elecraft at mailman.qth.net Date: Sat, 7 Sep 2002 22:37:17 -0700 From: k6se at juno.com Subject: [Elecraft] K6SE Sprint Summary for Team Elecraft What a workout for a Sprint rookie among a bunch of speed demons, hi! I used N0SS's e-mail as a template for the following: Rig: K2/100 driving an Alpha 76CA 20m antenna = TH6DXX at 75' (tower #1) 40m antenna = 402BA at 75' (tower #2) 80m antenna = both towers as a phased array (spacing 135') Time operated: 4 hours SPRINT SUMMARY SHEET Contest Date : 10-Sep-02 Callsign Used : K6SE BAND Valid QSOs Points Mults Countries ___________________________________________________ 80CW 27 27 0 0 40CW 51 51 9 0 20CW 50 50 22 1 ___________________________________________________ Totals 128 128 31 1 Final Score = 4096 points. Comments: Due to all of the QRM, I feel that I would have done better using my FT-1000MP with its better CW xtal filters (much better skirt selectivity). Would've worked Tom, N0SS on all three bands, but I wasn't quick enough on 80m (I found out that you have to be lightning fast in this contest!). At least I had fun beating out any other west coasters to the east coast on 80m, hi. 73, de Earl, K6SE ++++++++++++++++