OZ9AEC

Well, it happened again, the base element of my DX-88 vertical antenna broke again. This time, however, the antenna itself was rather innocent.

Small BoomBox and mojo to go... This is how NN6CW and many others describe the K1 - a small, lightwiegth QRP transceiver kit from Elecraft. The K1 has been a legend ever since it came out. It is easy to build, looks very professional, has a superb user interface, and offers great perfomance.

When I got up this morning I turned on the FT-817 with the Miracle Whip mounted on its back. There were a lot of strong stations calling CQ TEST. I didn't quite know what kind of contest it was but a quick check on the net revealed that it was nothing less than CQ WW DX 2005.

I took a long weekend from 28. Oct to 1. Nov. The plan was to drive from Paris to Denmark by car and take some of my stuff home as part of my moving back to DK. I left Les Mureaux on the 28. around 1000 local time and I actually arrived in JO45 after 14 hours. Not bad on a friday.

After my DX-88 died in a winter storm, I have decided to give the Butternut HF2V a try. This antenna is a 10 meter long vertical for 80 and 40, with extensions available for the 160 and 30 meter bands. I was rather curious about it since this is the only vertical antenna that provides the four lower bands in one package. Moreover, having used the HF6V previously, I had quite high expectations to this one. Although rather expensive, my success with antenna have been very satisfactory so far. As a bonus it even works well on 15 meter band with flat 1.2 SWR between 20-22 MHz.