I had a real QSO on my Pixie 2! I heard K6WAY Mike calling CQ on 7.040 or so at around 1835Z and answerd him. He didn't return the call so I switched the cap on the xtal and he came back the first time and got my call!

I had terrible QRM from an AM broadcast station that was running an infomercial on nutritional supplements designed for "cleansing" and so it was a surreal experience trying to copy CW through all the QRM but I haven't figured out how to eliminate it yet...

Mike was running an FT920 at 100W into a 30ft high inverted vee fromS Stockton, CA. I am sure his RX helped a lot, but not bad for a 500mw output! At one point I dropped down to 100mW and he seemed to copy me as well.

I tried an Alkaline 9V instead of a CZn 9V thinking that might help BCB QRM (theory bing LM386 undercurrent nonlinearity doing the detection) but it didn't help.

- posted by Leigh @ 19:05 z