WA6YSY John L. Arnold Hannibal, MO QCWA # 16267

First licensed in 1956 as KN6RDJ with lots of assistance from W6LYJ my high school physics prof. Have enjoyed providing emergency communications for local civil defense and AREC activities in and around the Redwood City to San Jose, CA in the SF Bay Area for many years. Interests are mobile and portable operations with a keen interest in QRP especially building and designing small, trail-friendly gear. I currently run a Small Wonder Labs SW-40+ built into a Hammond cast aluminum box together with an L-section antenna tuner, absorptive SWR meter, and an Embedded Research dc-dc converter running off a set of 8 Alkaline AA cells. The dc-dc converter does a bang up job of providing fixed 12 vdc over an internal battery or external input range of 6 to 16 volts. I also enjoyed designing a paddle key which plugs directly into the front of the rig. I just managed to 'squeeze' in an NE-QRP SCAF filter into the Hammond box I have the rig in. Tight, but sure helps reduce effects of QRN/QRM and brings up the signal being copied out of the noise.

I have a number of other QRP rigs including an SST-40, a Rock Mite, Warbler, and a number of Elecraft radios and test modules etc. I just finished building and testing the KK7B MicroR2 receiver. Great little receiver; works like a charm. Just finished buiding the KK7B MicroT2 transmitter. Going to package the uR2 and uT2 together in a small case with a SLA battery and small half-wave tuner. More later...

I also just completed the MKARS80 80Meter SSB transceiver. Receiver's great; haven't yet put transmitter on the air.

My only seemingly continuous need is a suitably small and flexible antenna for motel/hotel ops. I used an MP1 but don't feel it's efficient due to it's small overall size. I just built a very small Hi Z tuner for halfwave antenas which I'm going to try instead. I see lots of support for this approach.

72's/73's, John

April 29, 2015