From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Randy Hall
Sent: Thursday, January 26, 2017 10:59 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [BITX20] My BITX40 On The Air Experience

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Hi

With so many technical messages flowing on the list I thought I would describe my BITX40 experience.

I now have it put together and operating. My BITX worked the?first time I turned it on. No problems. I finished up the wiring Saturday afternoon. I was tuning around the band, and it sounded like a contest was in full swing.

Working QRP during a contest can be a challenge. It was the North American QSO party. One of the nice things about this contest is that 100 watts is pretty much the power limit. This helps our QRP signals have a chance on the band. Being a QRP station during a contest means, you will be giving your call our many times. Many repeats on callsign and exchange. But, the other station will usually work with you as he wants the point. I tuned around for looking for the strong stations to contact.

Over a couple of hours I worked:

K0IP John ID

W1RH Bob CA

K7LVJ John WA

N7MZ John WA

K0SN Tom MT

K9CT Craig IL

WN6K Paul CA

I was really amazed that I worked all these stations from this little board sitting on my bench.

Using 13.6 V DC I was getting about 4.5 watts out, as shown on my LP-100A meter. My antenna is a PAR end fed quad band 40/20/15/10 at about 15/20 feet. My location is Gold Beach Or CN72.

The Raduino?tuning kind of drove me crazy. I would be tuning for a station. I would not know that I was reaching the end of the pot, and it would take off tuning automatically. I really had to watch the display to see where I was so that I could tune back the other direction to try and find the station again. I understand that this is the normal operation.I may try tweaking the sketch for the frequency change amount and speed. After all, experimenting is what the BITX is all about.

I should have a video of a bit of the wiring and operating the radio in the contest next week, Feb 1, on Ham Nation. And then on my YouTube channel.

Farhan, thanks for the hours of fun.

Have fun and be radio active,

Randy, K7AGE

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