The Christmas holidays are over, and Carine and I had time to devote ourselves to our absolute favourite activity: SOTA. For the first time, our new, tiny KH1 from ELECRAFT is travelling with us - it will be taking in operation, if the wx-conditions will allow it. While I myself have already played with the new “CW-KW handheld” a few times on short hikes around our village and have always been able to log a few CW QSOs with whole of Europe spontaneously and without any spotting, Carine, HB9FZC is celebrating her “KH1 premiere” in the middle of the trees on the “summit” of Honegg, HB/BE-153. Carine immediately takes a liking to the ultra-compact transceiver and after a few “hacks” at the beginning, the SOTA QSOs go smoothly by hand via the filigree integrated CW paddle… wooooow, that’s really fun 
Wayne, N6KR from ELECRAFT is the developer of the unique QRP tiny radio. His idea with the KH1 was to launch a “handheld HF radio” which, thanks to its mass and weight, which hardly differ from those of a 2m/70cm handheld, can be carried anywhere and at all times and used to make a few CW QSOs spontaneously in virtually any situation. And Wayne has really hit the bull’s eye with this.The KX2 is and remains the No.1 SOTA transceiver on the market with its extensive equipment. Under certain circumstances, extremely uncomfortable conditions on the summit really don’t allow CW operation because your fingers simply freeze when you press the button - with the KX2 I can easily switch to SSB operation in such cases. Carine and I work in both SSB and CW - also with the KX2; our experience shows us that “flash activation” with two people is even quicker in SSB than in CW; especially because it is easier to use the same frequency with 2 OPs in SSB and simply pass the microphone back and forth, whereas a CW activation with two OPs on the same frequency often leads to confusion - we therefore always spot each other in CW one after the other on different frequencies and therefore need a little more time for a SOTA activation in CW than for an SSB activation.
With the KH1, we wanted to see how well CW is still feasible for us - even in wintry conditions - and we were anything but disappointed. Between 29 December 2023 and 4 January 2024, we activated a total of 10 summits in wintry conditions and worked exclusively with the KH1 without exception - the KX2 always remained in my backpack as a backup. We worked with the original telescopic antenna and mostly on 20m - once also on 17m. The “setup” is actually set up in less than a minute and you can start; no masts to erect, no guy wires to install, no wires to tension - just screw the telescopic antenna on top, unwind the wire counterweight, which we simply wound onto the KH1, lay it on the ground and briefly press the ATU button… Initially, I had a slight advantage over Carine when it came to using the integrated, delicate paddle because I don’t “squeeze”, but simply “hammer” left and right 
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As is typical for ELECRAFT, operation is intuitive and the repeats were consistently good despite only 5W transmission power from all over Europe - on the “Farnere”, HB/LU-010, even W2WC from New York responded to Carine’s “CQ SOTA…” 
The tiny built-in speaker doesn’t really deliver “high-end sound”, but the “clipping” doesn’t really have a negative impact when reproducing simple CW tones - the KH1 sounds “silky smooth” when connected to headphones. By the way, we were really impressed by the negligible power consumption of the CW tiny thing: After travelling to Ticino on 1 January, we actually never charged the device’s battery again for all of the following 6 activations in TI, and we logged a total of 78 QSOs.
Carine and I discovered SOTA quite by chance a few years ago; on a hike at the end of 2014, we suddenly heard “CQ SOTA…” from the handheld radio in our rucksack. Carine didn’t have her own amateur radio licence at the time, and I had never heard of SOTA - of course we immediately had to ask the person calling, and it was immediately clear to us that SOTA would be “our” operating mode. In the first year of our activities, we worked with handheld radios and then with the FT-817 in combination with various antennas. Because Carine and I are absolutely enthusiastic about really big mountain tours in alpine and high alpine terrain, the volume and weight of the SOTA equipment is absolutely central for us - on mountain tours lasting several days, the low power consumption of the equipment also plays an important role because there are often no charging options available between the individual tour days. We tried out a few things and finally ended up with ELECRAFT because both the KX2 (SSB/CW/DATA) and the KH1 (CW-only) from the American manufacturer are simply unbeatable in terms of practicality for large SOTA activations. With our experience from almost 700 activations since 2016 and both as 5-time SOTA mountain goats, there are no real alternatives to the two devices - at least not for SOTA activators who are serious about SOTA in alpine terrain and want to have a lot of fun and success - Our conclusion: For the SOTA activator, the question is not which brand he wants to work with, nor is the question “KX2 or KH1?” - The answer is quite simply “Both”
As you know, if you are doing a big hike the weight of your equipment is very important - ELECRAFTs radios are by far the best choice for activations like this - we love it 
