Colin's BITX DX From the Field

That has to be one of the best-looking scratch-built homebrew BITX20s.  Pete and I agreed that it looks almost too good to take out into the field.   But that is where Colin took it.  His BITX was designed for Summits on the Air, and the radio gods rewarded him for his efforts with VK DX.  Well done Colin! 

 

 

Hi Bill and Pete.

Well it just worked out that weather was going to be bearable this morning but getting worse through the weekend. I'm really want to ramp up my SOTA score so I'm trying to get out as much as I can. I switched my plans to an early morning activation on one of the local hills. The hill, called Sharp Haw, is a little lump on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales, it's not very high at all, but it is worth 1pt for SOTA.

The early morning time window brought the possibility of VK QSOs via long path on 20m. I looked at the VOACAP prediction for propagation and it suggested a peak at 0800utc.

I was actually late getting up, my alarm clock batteries have decided they've had enough. Despite the late start, I still managed to get on the air by 0725, hearing a strong Australian accent on the power up frequency of the BITX, 14.200, was a good sign.

At 0737, I was called by VK1DI. I had to turn the AF gain up, but sure enough, the signal was workable and we exchanged reports, 55 for him, 33 for me. Within the space of less than 20 minutes, I had 4 VKs logged, the strongest being VK3DET, giving me a 56. The other two stations were VK3CAT and VK2IO. I also worked an Asiatic Russian station amongst others.

I'm over the moon, I might even apply for my SSB thousand miles per watt wallpaper!

I still find it magical that 25 volts into a bit of 7/0.2 wire can transport your voice across 15,000 miles! Amazing!

73, Colin, M1BUU

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