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The setup along with the cheat sheet

After my outing on Saturday with my KX1 and newly built Elecraft AF1 I was frustrated the filtering was just not as sharp and clear as I was lead to believe. I also was  getting what I thought to be RF  into the AF1 from the KX1 and rendering it more or less useless. When I keyed the KX1 my ear buds made my CW just sound like mush . I was unable to know what I was sending,  I put the question out to the Elecraft reflector. There were two common answers to my question, the first was "am I using a counterpoise with the Miracle whip antenna" the other "try if all else fails putting capacitors between the

AF in and out on the AF1" Not having any capacitors at the time I did have a counterpoise that I have used with the Miracle whip in the past. I stopped using it as I was able to get a decent SWR without it.....WRONG.......I really need to take antenna 101 the ARRL used to offer it but no more....that is another blog post....So I clipped on my counterpoise and all was well with the AF1. As well it improves the effeminacy of the Miracle whip I am told as well. So it was off to the back deck counterpoise in hand to give the KX1 and AF1 a workout to see how it preforms against the stock filter in the KX1. I had viewed some Youtube AF1 video's

and they seemed to be doing much better than mine. It's not that I am short of QRN as there are 500KV hydro lines right behind me!! With the counterpoise on I could hear my transmitted CW crystal clear. The AF1 filtering still did not seem to be all that great.  It was only by chance that I noticed the filter on the KX1 was still set at about 300HZ. I backed it off all the way allowing the AF1 to do it's job, seems I was having the two filters in competition with each other. After this was done the AF1 was very very impressive and preformed like the Youtube video's I was watching in the past. At this point unfortunately I have no way of recording the KX1 with and without the AF1 filter so the blog world can hear the difference....those techno wiz bong skills I continue to work on.

Counterpoise alligator clipped

With RF solved able to use roll up which is smaller

Counterpoise