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My current assignment at Fort Leavenworth has me traveling quite a bit. My intent has been to bring a rig with me and have some casual QSOs while on the road. My success has been mixed. I would mostly attribute this to either a lack of planning on my part or being in a stuck in a hotel room with zero antenna opportunities.

One of the most inspiring ham radio blogs I ever ran across was the 100 Pound Dxpedition. I enjoyed how Scott, NE1RD, covered his adventures of conducting portable operations… documenting what worked and what did not. His last post on that paticular blog was back in 2007, but I still use the site as a reference. Scott’s praise for the Buddipole led me in using the Buddipole during my recent tour in Korea. Another tip from Scott I am going to try out is using a hardside golf bag case to transport my Buddipole to Hawaii.

Now for a rig… I think the Elecraft KX3 would be ideal for a Hawaii trip. With 10 watts output and an internal battery, I can’t think of better rig to take to the beach. But the wait time for the KX3 is still quite a while. I have both an Elecraft KX1 and a Yaesu FT-817ND. The KX1 would be great due to its small size and ease of use. But it is limited to only CW and I would like to do some PSK in addition to CW.

I pulled out my FT-817 and conducted an inventory:

– West Mountain Radio RIGblaster Plug n Play connects directly to the DIN socket on the back of the rig.
– CAT cable that connects from the RIGblaster to the rig’s ACC socket which enables rig control.
– PowerPole 12v adapter.
– Palm Paddle.
– Elecraft T1 Auto-tuner.
– Nifty manual for the FT-817.

My FT-817 has quite a few of the optional bells and whistles from W4RT:

– DSP module
– Kranker Knob – probably the most useful of any of the options
– One Board Filter (300 Hz)
– Speech compressor built into the MH-31 handmike
– Why all the options? The FT-817 was the center piece of my 2009 Field Day setup and I was attempting to get the most I could out of the pint-sized rig.

I also splurged on two recent upgrades:

– Peg Leg tilt stand – I think this will be helpful as one of my significant dislikes of the FT-817 is the small display which is hard to see.
– Magnets for the Palm Paddle – this is critically important as the Palm Paddle by itself is not heavy enough. The magnets allow the Palm Paddles to firmly stick to the top of the FT-817.

For PSK, rig control, and logging I have my Dell Mini netbook. I had not used the netbook in a while, so I started it up to see how it was working. I initally purchased it back in 2009 baselined with Ubuntu and have kept Ubuntu installed on it since then. After booting it up. I updated the distribution to 10.04 LTS and installed fldigi. The RIGblaster easily interfaced with the netbook via a USB connection and the headphone/microphone jacks.

I configured fldigi to work with the RIGblaster to include rig control using Hamlib:

– Audio: PortAudio using the netbook’s hardware soundcard for both Capture and Playback
– Rig: Hamlib; Device /dev/ttyUSB0; Baud rate 38400; Stopbits 2; PTT via Hamlib command checked

… clicked on the Initialize button and I was good to go.

Setting up the macros on flidigi is pretty straightforward with the default macros only needing slight tweaking for my personal preferemces.

Once I fired everything up all I had to do was switch to 14.070 MHz, switch the mode to DIG, and drop the input level a bit. With the narrow yellow PSK streams cascading down the waterfall, I picked one that was calling CQ and answered. Transmit worked and my home antenna provided a nice low SWR, no need for the tuner. My macros worked and the QSO was concluded successfully. All with 5 watts.

I plugged in the Palm Paddle, switched to 7.115 MHz, listened and heard nothing, then used the paddles to send QRL? a few times. SWR still looked decent. After a few CQ calls, I got an answer followed by a short QSO. Great – both PSK and CW were working FB.

Now the question is: do I want to bring my small Tokyo Hy-Power HL-100B amplifier that will raise the output to 100 watts? If I bring the amp, I will have to bring a power supply and a different tuner. I am thinking I need to be able to use two different configurations:

(A) Beach and Buddipole: using the barefoot FT-817, running everything on batteries.
(B) Lanai Portable: used from the hotel room, with amp and assoicated power supply.

Now it is time to go through my Buddipole bags and figure out what I need to pack.

Looks like I will be there during the Hawaii QSO Party!

UPDATE: Steve G4GXL’s 10 minute YouTube video of Wayne N6KR’s quick overview of the new KX3 is available from http://qrparci.org. Also there are early photos on Twitpic here - courtesy of Jeff Davis KE9V including this one:

One of the earliest - and clearest - photos of the new KX3 taken at the Elecraft stand in Dayton by Jeff Davis KE9V

Under the tantalising subject line “Something *really* new at Dayton from Elecraft” and while en route to Dayton – Elecraft’s Wayne Burdick N6KR announced to the Elecraft email lists a very interesting new offering to be launched there – the KX3 and a companion 100W amp, the KXPA100.

According to Wayne, the KX3 handles all modes, SSB/CW/AM/FM/DATA (the latter including built-in PSK31 and RTTY encode/decode/display).

He promised to post full details and photos later this weekend. But that was too intriguing for the list. This is an edited and probably repetitive summary of what they managed to find out about the new set.

KX3: Ultra-compact K3/KX1 hybrid, 160-6 m, 10/100 W, all-mode, 32-bit DSP/SDR, 1.5 lbs.

Ultraportable:

• 1.5 lbs (680g)
• 1.7″ x 3.5″ x 7.4″ (4.3cm x 8.9cm x 18.8cm)
• extended KX1 form-factor (KX1 - 1.2 x 3 x 5.3″ (3 x 7.5 x 13 cm) KX1 base weight 9oz / 255g)
• internal battery pack & charger
• internal wide-range ATU
• new adjustable, attached keyer paddle

…and a K3-like front panel, including the same LCD.

RX-mode current drain ~150 mA. Very efficient on TX, with dual-output-impedance 5W/10W PA.

The optional 100W amp is in an external chassis. The internal amplifier is 10W with switchable impedance matching so it can also operate with maximum efficiency at 5W.

PA output impedance switch allows efficient 5-W use from internal batteries, or 10 W from external supply.

KXPA100 - 100 W+ with new high-performance external amp/ATU that works with most 5W to 10W rigs.

>Same flat layout as the KX-1 – just bigger box I would assume????

Yes, but with new fold-up rear tilt-feet.

>…and a K3-like front panel, including the same LCD.
>
> And it makes use of EVERY display on that LCD?? Carumba!

Not quite. I think there are a couple annunciators that are not used. But it’s amazing that the design team managed to fit almost all the features of a 10W K3 into a box that is a small fraction of the size and weight. And with space left over for an internal battery pack!

By the time we’re done, we’ll be using every icon.

Totally different architecture than the K3, of course. (Wayne N6KR)

RX-mode current drain ~150 mA. Very efficient on TX, with dual-output-impedance 5W/10W PA.

> More $$$ or less $$$ that the regular K3?

Much less.

> Dual output impedance 5w/10w pa? I don’t understand.

The MOSFET 10-W amp stage includes an output transformer with both 1:4 and 1:1 windings. When using low power, or when running from internal batteries, the 1:1 winding is used, which optimizes efficiency at about 5 W, greatly reducing transmit current drain. The 1:4 winding is used when running higher power (using an external supply).

> One email said 10w/100w models. Is that correct?

The 1.5-pound radio itself puts out 10 watts+. We’ll also be describing a new, high-performance 100-watt+ companion amplifier/ATU for fixed-station/mobile use. It will work very well with other 5 to 10-W radios besides the KX3.

From follow-up discussion etc it appears as if the base price of the KX3 will be US$799. Availability towards end of 2011. See video for a pretty comprehensive outline of features. Options for the KX3 include roofing filters, internal battery pack and ATU similar to one of K3. Truly an exciting trail friendly radio!

I’ve created a page where I’ll pull together all the available information there is about this ultimate trail friendly radio.