Tuned to 8416khz, I received a Navtex weather report. I tuned the X6100, CW, FIL2 set to be really narrow, and I let fldigi decode the transmission as Navtex.

I have a dipole that’s 20m long (10m each side) strung through the house right to the banana plug adapter to the radio and no coax. I’ve coiled the wires together at the feed point to shorten and tune. I can run 40m with tuner turned off. I’m hitting Europe, Central America, Canada, and the midwest US.

I figure, since the wires are insulated and kept parallel to each other, the coil is serving as feed line and not part of the antenna.

I pass off to KC3SCY, Luke, or AF3Z, Jim.

We discussed baluns:

• 4:1 balun
• 1:1 balun will let a dipole tune wider on any band
• 9:1 <-> 1:9 can transform for long runs of transmission cable

Running the 41-foot (12.5m) random wire, it works great for 10m and 20m. It tunes really quickly. The power supply gives lots of buzzing and noise on these bands. ATT tames the power supply noise pretty well.

Antenna of the day: 12.5m random wire w/ 9:1 unun strung from high in loft to the outside laundry line. It tunes for 10m, 12m, 15m, and 20m nicely, but not for 40m. I switched to 5m dipole twist for 40m.

I flashed minor updates to the UV-K5 using Chromium and https://whosmatt.github.io/uvmod/. This got me the following features:

• RSSI meter
• Mic boost
• Better menu strings
• 18mhz-1300mhz for receive
• Backlight on for longer

I originally had wsjt-x and js8call talking directly to X6100 to do CAT, but fldigi wants flrig, so I set it up. Now i have flrig running all the time, and have wsjt-x talk to that. Maybe it’ll be more reliable with fewer hiccups and disconnects.

I’m running FT8 on 10m with only the internal battery. I’m finding I’m only able to push ~3W. SWR looks good.

On external power supply, I can push up to 10W

(After passing the test, I immediately ordered a Quansheng UV-K5 HT. I also ordered this weird $120 HF radio based off the open source usdx project. The HF radio was garbage: the screen was tiny, the audio/CAT control was confusing or non-existent, and it liked to lock up and stop updating its screen. I returned it to Amazon.)

I had been in a hurry, since I was heading to Florida for the week. While I was down there, I discovered the Ham Radio Outlet in Orlando, so I ran there to look around and purchased the Xiegu X6100 QRP rig.

I also picked up a couple accessories shortly afterward to go with it:

• connectors between bnc and sma
• 5W adjustable power supply that didn’t quite cut it all the time (24Vx5W)
• 10w adjustable power supply (12Vx10W)
• speaker wire
• banana clip connectors
• Ham Radio Today: X6100 book on kindle

I went to the Hamfest in New Holland and tested for my Ham license. I had studied for Technician, and that went really well, so I tried the test for General. I passed that by only 1 or 2 correct answers, so I’m a General!

Time to order some gear.