Category Archives: POTA

MTR3B v4 Currahee : Arrived!

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Christmas came….erm….late, but who cares?

I’ve kept everyone updated the last 3 months after getting in on the first 100 units and the delays that have slowed delivery. To be clear, I am ecstatic that LNR took the time to correct issues that were found and to update their manufacturing along the way to improve the final product.

Would I have liked to have had it earlier? Yes, but better right than early in my opinion.

Unfortunately it came after my Christmas holiday and time off, so being back to work it is back to prioritizing my time.

Having just had it on my desk for less than an hour and having a full afternoon and evening, I haven’t done much other than to turn it on, tune to a few stations, and play with the volume tuning. I also put the dummy load on and played with the capacitive touch keying a bit – will need more practice but so far it feels responsive and crisp.

With the switch to a color OLED, one of the updates they made post-launch was to change the hues of the colors to prevent wash out in direct light. It is overcast today and getting late, but here is what it looks like under a flashlight for reference.

Not a real comparison to a bright sunny day, but at least with 450 lumens on top of the overhead lighting it is still readable (no image enhancement).

Finally before I have to run, here it is next to a Venus SW-3B, another ultra small 3 band portable.

Lots more needs to be done to put this little radio through its paces, but out of the box it is – so far – exactly what I was expecting and wanting.

Small, 40m or higher, and low power draw.

More to come….

UPDATE

Just a few minutes after posting this I got curious and quickly hooked up my Palm Paddle to it. I wanted to see if attaching an external paddle disabled the touch keyer and yes, it does. 🙂

UPDATE 2

Adding a new photo of the internals

Question for everyone

What would be most useful for you as a consumer of this post? What about the new MTR3B could I provide to you as a reader, keeping in mind that the basics are all there on the LNR Precision website.

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US-2530 POTA, and KH1 Arrived

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A couple of friends and their sons joined my youngest and I for a quick overnight camp out to William O’Brien State Park.

Located just 45 minutes or so north east of St. Paul, MN, it lies just east of the St. Croix river which boundaries Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Our group campsite was a short walk from the parking area. Thankfully, they have carts available as this was car camping and we didn’t go lightweight.

My son and arrived earlier than the rest, so after taking some time to setup camp I immediately got to work getting the station setup.

The group sites here have lots of tables and multiple fire pits to host quite a few people. Overkill for the 7 of us but nice to have some space to ourselves.

For this outing I brought the MTR-4b v2. On the eve of the initial release of the brand new MTR-3b from LNR Precision on October 1st, it seemed appropriate to activate with this little workhorse.

Coupled with the JPC-12 vertical, I was up and running in just a few minutes. Being outside the cities and without infrastructure nearby, signals were clear and many.

Fortunately, after getting spotted on http://pota.app, the hunters didn’t take long to materialize and within about 20 minutes I had logged 12 contacts and then shut things down to focus on the important part of the trip – my son.

All in all it was an evening of good friends, food over a campfire, and sleeping to the serenade of coyotes under a blanket of stars.

KH1 In the House

I got home earlier today to find something unexpected – my KH1 had arrived! Ordered on September 15th, and shipped the 23rd, this was well below the expected 15-21 business days noted on Elecraft’s shipping status page.

I haven’t had much chance to do anything except opening the shipping box and taking stock of things, but will certainly circle back with my thoughts and experiences shortly.

Fall Camping with Radios

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Yesterday I took my sons with me to camp at a local State Park that we hadn’t been to before.

Frontenac State Park (POTA K-2484) is approximately 1 hour south of my QTH in a sparsely populated area along the St. Croix river which forms the boundary between Minnesota and Wisconsin.

It is a beautiful park that is atop a forested rise that sits above farmlands and the river on the east.

We reserved the group camp site and invited a couple of friends and their kids to come along, and I – of course – brought my radio gear in the hopes of doing a second successful POTA activation.

Arriving in the afternoon, and with it being November in Minnesota, the sun sets quickly and earlier with each passing week. The weather was getting colder and the wind was quite gusty, making the cool fall temperature feel much colder than it was. We set about getting tents setup and getting some dinner, and waited for our friends to arrive. While we waited, I got things setup.

I took the opportunity to bring my Lab599 Discovery TX-500 radio which had only been used from home since my acquisition in August of this year. I also brought my LnR Precision Mountain Topper 4 v2 for the same reason, hoping to get both of them on the air outdoors.

My 15 year old son making faces at me as I take a picture of my setup. Thanks son! You can see both the TX-500 in the center, and the N0SA paddle in the lower right.

I paired the two radios with a QRP Guys Tri-band Vertical which was supported by a 20ft (6m) Jackite telescopic pole.

New to me for this activation was a N0SA SOTA Paddle – an ultra-miniature paddle that is produced in very small lots by N0SA. This thing is tiny, but it is superbly constructed and a solid performer.

I called CQ once in order to get RBN to spot me and hoping to get the https://www.pota.app spots to pick up RBN and get me on the list (I scheduled a spot window before leaving). I was picked up in Arizona and California on 20m.

Immediately I had K7GT in Oregon come back and that kicked off a 20 minute back and forth. Allan was most patient with me as my fingers became increasingly numb and my fist became increasingly bad. Being a new CW operator meant that I also had to have him repeat things sometimes.

In the end, I had to call it quits as even with some thin gloves on I couldn’t reliably work the paddle any longer. The wind was gusting to 20+ mph (32kph or so) and with lower temps it was cutting straight through the wool.

I packed up the radios after a single contact and settled down by the fire with friends and my sons and enjoyed the warmth provided by both. We slept that night serenaded by the local coyotes while the raccoons scratched around the picnic table next to us looking for any crumbs left behind from dinner.

While I would have greatly enjoyed completing an activation of this park, I had to pack up early this morning to return home – something that I had known before I left the day before.

All in all this was another learning experience as all endeavors are; first of all I need to come up with a solid fall/winter POTA plan to deal with the cold and remain on the air, and secondly that even though it didn’t go as planned the experience was worth it nevertheless. I had logged a great contact with K7GT and had a good time with my boys.

Time with my sons is never wasted. 🙂

Some more pictures from a great getaway.

Bedtime
A very large group campsite that included two pavilions and nobody else for a quarter of a mile
Sunrise peeking out through the trees