QRO CW

Conditions these days are bad, and I find that I can hear stations that can't hear me. This indicates that my antenna is doing alright and more power is needed so the station on the other end can hear me better. I think that more power will also improve my chances of having a local ragchew, because the other ham won't have to struggle to hear me. There seem to be a few options to increase power, buying an amplifier, buying a kit, or designing and building my own from scratch.
My original thought was to get a kit and build it, but one evening while browsing eBay I stumbled across a KXPA100 for sale, at a good price. A few days later, I somehow won the auction. Fast forward a week, and there is a new amplifier sitting on my desk. Connecting it to the KX3 was simple, a matter of plugging the cables into the appropriate jacks. A quick trip to the store to get a UHF to BNC adaptor, and I was on the air.

40 (yellow) and 80 (green) meter spots with the amplifier.

It was evening, so I tuned around 40 meters. Not hearing any CQs I found a clear frequency and started calling myself. With only 10 watts I'm lucky to get a half dozen spots on RBN, and most of them will have SNRs less than 5. With the amp on at 60 watts I quickly got over a dozen spots, many with high SNR. And even better, after only a few calls I got a reply from W4HG in North Carolina. We had a short QSO, but there was some slow, deep fading which cut it short. I then went down to 80 meters to see if the conditions were any better, but didn't get any responses to my CQs. Maybe it was just too late.

The amplifier, hooked up and ready to go.

After a few days of playing with it, I've had some nice conversations with stations, mostly on 80 meters. By the time I get home and have time to play radio, 40 meters has usually got very long, and it is too late for the people on the east coast. 80 is still short enough to reach the people who are still awake. My guess is that it is the lowest band for many people, since 160 requires such large antennas.

What's next? I should improve my antenna, and try to get it higher. I also want to change the inital run of feedline from twin lead to coax. I'm debating whether I should make a balun or just solder the two feedlines together. I also have some ideas kicking around to make a higher power radio for SOTA.