Monday, June 27, 2011

Departure Day!

Just a few hours from now, I'll be on my way!  Packing is about 40% done, although the list on what I'm packing has been done for several days.  I go to London first for 3 days, then on to Bulgaria on the 30th. 

My  K3 developed "ERR 12V" in the last 5 minutes of FD.  Manual says to see if there is a short on the Power Amp +12V line, and if there is the problem is in the Power Amp.  It also says to try resetting the PA circuit breaker, and see if that solves the problem.  Haven't looked at it yet, but I'm getting a bad feeling on it.  When I turn the K3 off, then on, then key it at the 50w level, I immediately hear a "click" inside the radio and the power scale on the display shows I'm back in QRP mode.  Since this is, in essence, a QRP contest, the K3 will still be usable at the QRP output level, so I'm taking it.  No other radio choice at this point.

Had fun at the Algonquin Amateur Radio Club Field Day this past weekend at the local EOC.  We entered as 4F, with 4 stations available.  Antennas are always somewhat of a compromise, but our setup this year resulted in absolutely NO interstation interference.  Late in FD, we even did a test to see if we could transmit RTTY and operate CW on 20M at the same time, and it actually worked.  Now, next year we'll have to try it for real during the contest.

Back to packing.  I have to be on the train at 4:45 to get to the airport for a 9:20pm flight.  Hope to work lots of you guys from LZ during the IARU in a couple of weeks.

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