SOTA and Laptops

Thanks for all the wonderful advise. This reflector is a great resource.
Looks like I’ll continue to use pencil and paper until I find a reasonably priced tablet/laptop. If you hear me on please be kind, I’m an old man with sticky fingers. Especially when cold. Oh BTW, I did pick up some hand warmers.
See you on the next one!
73, fred

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Fred,

for my outdoor radio activations ( SOTA and Flora/Fauna) I use the KX3 and mostly the GPD pocket mini-laptop. It’s a 7 inch, with touchscreen Windows 10 laptop. I installed N1MM and have a CAT/KEY cable to control my KX3. So that way I log all my QSO’s. At home I export the ADIF file to RUMlog on my Mac. It saves me a lot of time to enter all the QSO’s.
The battery use is about 5 or 6 hours. Even in the sunlight when the screen is vy bright. The weight is about 500 grams. There is even a vy small mouse. I see that the price this days is almost €200 more than 2 years ago, when I bought it.
Here you can see the spec’s https://www.amazon.nl/GPD-Ultrabook-m3-8100Y-Dual-Band-PCKT-2-M3-AB/dp/B09449QWC5/ref=sr_1_5?__mk_nl_NL=ÅMÅŽÕÑ&crid=2MJMDQDHKDBHV&keywords=gpd+2&qid=1648586748&sprefix=gpd+2%2Caps%2C111&sr=8-5
On my youtube channel (PA9CW) you can find many recordings of this setup.

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Just throw this in there for the laughs. :smile:

Actually I will bite. Toughbooks are way too heavy to be considered practical as SOTA laptops but for general use if you get a CF-31 (older models have ccfl backlights which die) you will not find a more capable outdoor laptop, the filtering on the screen is amazing and the backlight burns your retinas indoors. The screen resolution is limited but win10 or Linux does a good job of making it very useable.

Mark

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Exactly what I’m looking for. Very nice setup!
73, fred

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TU Mark

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Lenovo Thinkpad X240 (or similar 12" models) is quite compact and can run up to 7 hours on a 6-cell battery. I bought mine couple of years ago just for 200 euros (refurbished).

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I am in the Surface Go2 train. I use the Kensington hard case and the keyboard as the screen protector. OH8STN has some great videos and articles on the topic.

Kent K9EZ

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Hi Kent,
Yes, I have seen this video. Julian has some incredible content. He is very dedicated to emergency communications.
Thanks for sharing the video.
73, fred

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I used a MS Surface tablet for the Flex radio 1500, but now with the VK-port-a-log App I don’t carry anymore tablets or laptops for Sota.

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Hi Jon,
Thanks for the feedback.
73 fred