Sunday, March 3, 2019

Happiness is a new radio...

When I got home from work on Friday my Hilltopper 20 had arrived.  So I wolfed down dinner, kissed the wife and headed to my radio room.  The Hilltopper is a radio designed by none other than Dave Benson K1SWL  of Small Wonder Labs fame.  The Hilltopper is kitted and sold by the Four State QRP Group.  I bought one that was already built by another QRPer.  You can read all about the kit on the club website and I might mention that is it one sale right now...you can save $10.00

My Hilltopper isn't acting quite right.  I tune to 14060 and it transmits on 14062.  I am also having some issues with the receive being on the wrong frequency as well.  So I have signed up for the support group on groups.io and will get this figured out.  20m has been dead as a door nail all weekend...at least in the CW band.  I think everyone must be running the ARRL SSB contest this weekend. 

The Hilltopper can put out about 7 watts with a fully charged 12v battery.  I can't wait to have a QSO with it. 

I was able to get on the air for a bit this afternoon, and knocked out four contacts, but no new states.  I had to go down to 7052 and call for SKCC, I managed to work GA, NC, NJ, and MD with the K1 at 5 watts.  The A index is at 12 and we're seeing no sunspots right now so it's pretty tough sledding.  I am going to try hard to get the Hilltopper 20 going in the right direction and between it and my Norcal 20 I hope to make contacts in the western states I need for my WAS efforts. 

Anyway, thanks for checking in.  Next weekend we are doing a VE test session for 40 people that are finishing up a county CERT training class.   That will be fun!

Best 73 de KB9BVN


No comments:

Post a Comment