06/29/2005 | WA5ZNU This year I participated 1B at the elementary school near my house, and used a 30ft flagpole to raise the center of a twinlead-fed 44ft doublet, which I had made that morning. A passing civil engineer helped me raise one end of the antenna, and another neighborhood resident stopped by for an extended chat.

I ran solar powered off a 20W panel that I got at Weird Stuff Warehouse, fed to a 7AH battery that I had solar charged up from below 12v for a couple of days before FD.

I wanted to operate 1B1B like last year with my Elecraft KX1 (where I placed 2nd in SCV Section and Pacific Division), but with my Elecraft K2 enabling SSB, I found that with 5W I was causing too much pain to the RX operators, who could hear me but not took extensive repeats to get the exchange. When I went up to 10 watts, I could get through on a couple of tries.

Looking back, I probably should have gotten my K5OOR HFPacker Amplifier and run 35W on all modes, since those 10W SSB contacts pushed me out of the 1B1B category, and I would have made many more contacts.

-- ARRL, please consider 10W SSB, 5W CW/Digital for next year! -- WA5ZNU