Solar flare

All the hype about the solar flare a few days ago was a bit over-inflated. Nasa said "The particle cloud produced by the Valentine's Day event appears to be rather weak and is not expected to produce any strong effects at Earth other than perhaps some beautiful aurora in the high northern and southern latitudes on Feb. 17." Actually, today there was a good opening on 20 meters. I worked OE5FIN, Fritz from Austria and SQ2GXO, Marek from Poland. Both contacts were accomplished with 5 watts! My 5 watts got me a 559 RST from both hams. Not bad for a puny signal from my Elecraft K2.

The K-2 has arrived! It sits atop my Icom 735. K-2 umber 6255 with all sorts of goodies: internal antenna tuner, RS232 serial port, and many more. Basically every extra but the 100 watt amp and the 60meter option. I built K-2 #250 the first year the kit became available. I had forgotten what a great radio it is. I am presently using a Tentec 701 hand mike but have an Elecraft/Heil MH2 on order. The rig requires an electret type microphone to drive it. The Tentec is doing an adequate job. While I really like the Elecraft K-1 you have to take off the top and insert various band modules to other bands. The beauty of the K-2 is that it has all of the frequencies you want on one board.

This how my Qrp station is configured now. However, things are about to change. Within a week I will be adding an Elecraft K2. It will have all of the bells and whistles except the amplifier board and the 60 meter module. Its place will be next to the K1 where the clock is presently. The rig to the right, while not a Qrp rig, is an Icom 735 which I have cranked down to run at about 10 watts. On the extreme left is the ARK 40 which I picked up recently.