I had a nice QSO tonight with Peter WA1ISA, at least for a while anyway. I answered Peter's "CQ" and he came back to me on the first shot. What was interesting was that Peter was using a Tokyo Hy Power Labs HF handi-talkie. I've seen these on K7VO - Caity Martin's Webpage; and I've read her articles about them in QRP-ARCI's "QRP Quarterly"; but I have never actually worked someone who was using one before. An HT for HF - can you imagine that?
Peter was pushing 2 Watts into a 40 Meter sloper that he had just put up this past weekend. As a matter of fact, I was his first QSO on the new antenna; which is very cool. I gave Peter a solid 589 and he gave me the same in return.
That's when I made the big mistake. I was having such an interesting QSO with Peter, that I got long winded in one of my transmissions. When I handed it back to Peter, I was to discover that the band had changed and our 589 signals had QSBed to ESP levels!
Darn! I was about to be told the ins and out of these Tokyo Hy Power Labs HF HTs and I got long winded and ended up screwing myself! 28 years a Ham; and I still forget some of the basics about summer time night band conditions and how they can change on a dime. Better luck next time!
73 de Larry W2LJ
I have one of these HF HTs... and it's quite a unit. It was hard to get.. you had to buy them from the manufacturer in Japan. There was an article in QST ("Obtaining the Unoptainable") that inspired me to try, and I got it! Before the FT-817, this was probably the most compact HF rig on the market. If I can ever get to an NJQRP meeting (it seems that I -always- have to work on meeting days), I'll bring it along.
ReplyDelete73 de Ray