Once again, the trusty Racal TRA-931X was the centerpiece of the operation, but this year would be different for a number of reasons. First, I decided I would operate at 5 watts, battery power for the entire operation. The Racal draws only 250mA on recieve, and at 5 watts the transmit draw is 1.8 amps key-down. I knew from last year's experience that I could run a long time on batteries with this rig, but I needed 24v so that I didn't need the voltage converter that we used last year. I found a pair of 12v 7.2 Ah sealed lead-acid batteries, wired them in series and connected them to the Racal - they worked very well, dropping to from 25v to 22v during the event.

Second, some research in the manual turned up that this radio uses mode J2A for CW, which is allowed under Part 97 [§97.3 (c) (1)], so I would be able to get the most out of my 5 watts. I did make 3 contacts on 40m phone, but CW is so much more efficient for QRP that I ditched that idea quickly. 

Starting at 1800 UTC, I set everything up underneath a tree in the yard, hooked up to a 135' doublet at 30 feet, and by 1900 UTC was on the air. This radio is an 80's-vintage military rig, designed for channelized nets rather than crowded Amateur Radio ops, so the filtering is pretty wide open - this, coupled with a 1000 Hz sidetone, really pushed my CW skills harder than ever before. I normally listen to a sidetone of about 600-700 Hz so retraining to the higher note was difficult, especially in a crowded band with no filters - just the one between my ears! I learned exactly why experienced ops tend to listen to lower tones - after about 15 minutes of listening, all the tones started blending together and I would have to take a 45 minute break to let my ears reset. Still, it was a valuable experience and I have much more confidence in using that rig now than I did before!

I only missed West Texas to complete my 5th Call Area sweep, and made contacts with New Hampshire and Montana for the eastmost / westmost stations. Not bad for only 25 contacts... 

Next year I hope to have a more modern QRP rig - my goal is an Elecraft K2, and an upgraded solar panel so that I can run continuous ops if needed. I really want to find out what a modern QRP rig is capable of.

73 and see you next year! 

Jeff NZ5G