There comes a time in a person's life when you gotta stop talking and start
QSOing. That time was last night. I figured this little Radiokit was good
enough, so I put the top cover on, tightened down the screws and set it
down on the operating desk. I built a couple of adapter cables so I could
connect things to the RCA phono jacks (!) without using clip leads. I
hooked up the Gap Titan vertical, my $2.00 Radio Shack headphones, and the
old Speed-X straight key. 99.9% of the time I use a keyer, but all the
keyers except an old Curtis are built into rigs. The Curtis is somewhere
at the bottom of a junk box with a dead battery. So I turned the power on
and tuned around a bit.
Boy, the band was a lot hotter Tuesday night than Tuesday morning. Since
it was nearly 8:00, I decided to move up to around 7037 (or as close as I
could get using my pencil-drawn dial calibrations) and wait for the Golden
Fox. Sure enough, there he was, right on schedule, singing his lonely fox
call. He worked a couple while I listened, then I decided that the moment
of truth had arrived, and when that fox let out his cry "fox de n6wg", I
had the Radiokit answer back, "k1mg". No luck. Bob came back to Tim K5OI.
At least I was hearing everyone. Then the fox finished with Tim and I
stuck my call in again. Was that an echo? No, that was the fox! Now
there is one more fox pelt hanging on the wall, thanks to the infamous
Radiokit. I listened to the fox hunt for a little while and heard everyone
that Bob worked plus a few unsuccessful hunters. My sympathies go to
WA9PWP (I think that is the call, I don't have my notes in front of me) who
called and called and followed Bob when he QSYed and called again. I hope
that his persistence finally paid off. I had to turn the rig off and go
eat my dinner.
This morning, I turned the Radiokit on again and tuned around. The
receiver is pretty nice; it's very sensitive and selectivity is excellent
with the 4 crystal ladder filter plus audio filter. I came across a
Japanese station calling CQ, so I answered. He was running a kW and didn't
have QRP ears, so he never did get my call exactly right, but at least I
have the satisfaction of knowing that my RF made it across the ocean on 40
meters, even if I can't count it as a legitimate QSO. Then I tuned up the
band a bit and came across another CQ. I responded and had a very nice 25
minute QSO with Jon in San Diego with good signal reports both ways. Jon
is a CW-only op and gave me compliments on my straight key fist, so I
wouldn't trust his signal report, either, hi hi. It is expected to be 81
degrees in San Diego today, BTW. Pretty soon I had to go to work, so here
I am.
The radio seems to be working pretty well. There are good points and bad
points. I miss full QSK. The AGC time constant is working as designed,
but I prefer a much shorter hang time. I always run with the shortest time
the rig will let me, so I can hear the noise in between the dits and dahs.
If I were to keep the rig, I would change the AGC capacitor to one at least
ten times smaller, but I will leave it as designed for the judge. On the
positive side, the rig is clean sounding and very sensitive. I could
probably back off the IF gain a little more for a little extra margin
against oscillation. The filters are excellent for a rig of this size and
cost. Tuning is smooth, and the VFO is very stable. There was no need to
retune during any of my on-air operating and listening.
I guess all that's left is to make a better looking dial for the tuning,
and then pack it up and send it off to ?
I'll post the final report tonite.
Mike K1MG
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