High Speed QRP Radio in ZL1!

Activation Reports
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12 Likes
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Great video, love the humour. To my shame I owned an AX1 for about 12 month and never tried it SOTA. Ended up selling the KX3 and buying another FT-817, and other stuff.

Such is life. Cheers from the other side of the world! Mark.

2 Likes
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Thank you mate! Nothing wrong with the FT-817, love mine - fantastic rig!

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Great video Chris I must be spoilt I have kx3 and ft 817 . Just wonders Chris with that antenna you stick on your bnc input do you have any extra counter poise wire or do the tripody little short legs earth it out. Those short legs are a bit like mine by the way.
vk5cz …

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Thank you mate! Yep I’ve got the KX2 (not 3) and the 817 too! :smiley:

Correct, there is a pretty long counterpoise on it which connects to a lug on the rig body. I had that tossed out over the top of the brush (it tunes up really poorly like that, it really prefers to be on the ground in my experience). When its in an optimal position its roughly resonant. It’s a real pain in the ass in anything more than a gentle breeze though, normally I tie some cordage to the top of it and guy it out which stops it from trying to flip over but as this was a quick holiday trip I had very little gear on me!

I also have a tripod mounting bracket for it and that might work better but I can’t be bothered carrying an extra mini tripod around which is heavy enough to do the business, it also means I’d need to carry around coax.

On 40m with the AX1 extension the counterpoise is about 10m, on 20m it’s 5m (1/4 wave). I generally just toss the 40m counterpoise out regardless of band I’m running.

I’ve worked some ground wave 59 SSB stations with it without the counterpoise, but the documentation basically says if you’re not using the counterpoise the universe will implode on itself.

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Great video!

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Thanks partner much obliged!

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Spent some time up there chasing contacts myself - easily the best bang for the buck pointswise around Wellington :slight_smile:

Trying to work out if I like the humour or the Google captions struggling with your kiwi accent best. This one included reference to a “phone in the ass” :smiley:

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There’s a phone in my ass!? That explains a few things! :smiley:

Thank you mate. :wink:

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Another great video Chris,

NZ looks stunning - thanks for sharing it with us.

What camera do you use to record these vid’s, it’s excellent in HD.

Cheers,
Simon

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Thank you Simon, much obliged!

It doesn’t get a lot more simple - it’s an old GoPro 7 Black - it looks a lot better in 4K eh! (Plenty of detail to capture when you’re outside)