E1245: HANDS ON the Elecraft KH-1 CW Transceiver with Edgewood Package - podcast episode cover

E1245: HANDS ON the Elecraft KH-1 CW Transceiver with Edgewood Package

Dec 04, 202316 min
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Episode description

This new pocket-sized CW transceiver from Elecraft if GREAT! It makes me want to learn CW at a faster rate than I already am! Today I take you through the menus of the radio and show everything that comes in the Edgewood Package, which is an add-on option for the KH-1 Transceiver

SPONSOR: Save 20% off of all courses with coupon JASON20 at https://hamradioprep.com

KH-1 Link - https://elecraft.com/products/kh1-transceiver

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Transcript

Thank you for choosing to download the ham Radio two point zero audio podcast rip. This is the audio taken out of a video or a livestream I did recently. You can catch all my videos on YouTube ham Radio two point zero and catch us live every Sunday night at seven pm Central Standard Time for a different topic each week. Thank you for the support, and thank you for

being a member of the community. I got it in. It arrived yesterday, the Allocraft KH one with the Edgewood package and all of the accessories that come with that bunch of different things. We're gonna go through it right now, all right, Once again, Ellocraft came up with this new little handheld transceiver called a KH one. This is the size of it right here. I put it all together last night. Am surprised at how small it is really. I mean, I knew it was small. I knew it was

a handheld transceiver, but it's like literally the size of a thing. Okay. It came with the Edgewood package, came with all of this stuff. It comes with this bag here, very nice bag opens up like that. Okay. It's got a zipper pouch here on the top and inside the top cover it's got a pouch there and there on the outside, and then it's got some straps out here. You could put it on a belt loop like that. You put it on a belt loop that way, hold it that

way, or hold it that way if you wanted to. It's got an extra place around here for a pin. Comes with this carabiner on top, and then another pin or maybe an intent or something like that over there. You put their KX one in there. I guess if you wanted to a neat little bag, I really like that. I'm kind of a sucker for bag. So there you go. None of this stuff came attached to it. This is the key that came separately. It just pulls right out here.

It's got a little three point five millimeters jack right there. It goes in the bottom. You can actually turn I was reading in the manual. This is the key pointed up right now. You can actually turn it whether the paddles are down and you can do it that way, or you can turn it around the other way that way. If you've got it in the bag, it's not going to protrude out the top. So a little bit,

a little bit safer for carrying it. I guess, but if you're using it, I assume you'd want to put it in this way like that and then you can kind of key it right there. So this is the power button on the side over here, and the charging button or they're charging port rather and I'm gonna go through all this here in a second. It comes with this flap here, and this is where you would put your paper

log would go in here. Now, it didn't come with a paper log, but I learned just like last week or something that the paper logs are actually downloadable and you print them out yourself. So because someone had made a comment on like maybe the Happy Hour or something, I don't know, they're like, ah, they're gonna charge a dollar a sheet for the log. No no, no, you download the pfile and you print it yourself.

So that's kind of cool. That's the flap there. It inserts into the side here with these two anchors that are at the top and bottom that are attached to this and then attached inside of that is this pin here. It comes with this ballpoint pin just right there, and that attaches to the flap on the inside, so you can close that down have your little pin in there. I always like having an extra pin with me anyway, and then

close that down like that. It comes with this antenna that attaches to the side of the unit here, and it's got rubber spacer type things on two sides of the antenna for it to fit more snugly into the side of the case. These are built into the radio that's not built into the cover, but built into the radio, so it just kind of snaps down right there and snaps into place, so it's all one unit right there. This is the antenna port on the top for this telescoping whip, and then of course

you can add your own in fed halfwave if you want to. So that's the back of the unit there. It comes with this carrying strap for the bag. It comes with a counterpoise with a little fork clip on. I forget the name of this little blade style connector on it that I just went

blank on. The name with that is. It comes with this alan There's an Allen wrench in here that will allow you to tighten down the key if you want to tighten it down in there and have it a little bit more stables where it's not going to fall out, especially if you're carrying in the case and whatnot. This is the power cable that it comes with, and it plugs in right there on the side, and then it's bare wires on the other end, so you don't have to worry about proprietary plugs or anything

like that. You can simply attach your inner some power pools to that and go from there, or you can attach an XT sixty connection to it or anything else you want to it. Leave it bear wires and put it into your power supply. But that comes with it like that right there. So what I did was I built all I put all this together last Night's very modular. You didn't have to solder anything. There's no kit building there,

nothing like that. It just came in pieces and you just assembled it last night when I was assembling it. It comes with the battery, but the battery's not installed. So what I did to get the battery in. You just pull this little flap right here on the bottom and open that up and this comes completely off if you want to take it off. This antenna is part of the back cover there and then it kind of rests against the side so you can kind of hinged right there. And then this battery comes with

it and it just plugs straight in there. Took me second to figure out how to route the wire down here to where the door would close properly. But this is how I've got it. So take a look at that. I've got it plugged in right there. There we go. It's got this little proprietary barrel connector here. I don't know how propriet It's not a proprietary really, but it's a different size than it feels like. It's a bit smaller size than the outside than the outside charging cable. I don't know.

I didn't measure it, so, but it comes with the battery out here. It is a twenty six hundred million amp hour lithium ion rechargeable pack. So again, you just put that in there like this, bring it around here, just kind of real careful with it, kind of lay it down in there and tuck the wire down into the side there, and then we put the cover back on it like that. Make sure that that little lip goes underneath this movable piece here, and then you're back in business and you've

got your antenna put down there just like that. This part of the cover here actually clips inside. You have to. It's got these little tabs on it right here, and it fits down inside of the radio here, so when you close the cover, it kind of snaps into place. I hope you heard it snap into place just then. It's not going to come open by itself, so that's that's nice. I like that. So you have to kind of you don't want to force it when you're opening it. It's

still new. Also, kind of lift up on those tabs and then open it up and there you go. You've got everything you need there. So let's see if we can pick up some signals. I'm not going to do any transmitting of CW right now because I really don't want to embarrass myself. I don't really want to go down that road right now. But you know something for a future video. Yeah, so let's let's put this on here. It'll do a short wave listening on sideband on certain bands. Probably.

Antena's probably three feet tall roughly something like that. And it didn't come with a manual, and that's okay. That's okay, because I mean, who really wants a paper manual these days? Anyway, it came with a little paperwork that told you how to how to connect the power supply. I think I don't remember something like that told you one thing out of a bunch of

things. So but I just went on their website. It's just a PDF file, is all it is. So we can go through right here and the part I was mainly, and it shows you how to do everything I just showed you right there. It shows you how to do how to insert the battery, how to close the back cover there, how to connect the cover. The blue arrows right there are the little tabs on it where the cover inserts into the side of the radio itself. And that's some other stuff

there. Tells you about the pen, tells you about the antenna. This right here, this is the part I liked right here. Okay, So when you go here, and I'm gonna switch back and forth between this a couple of times. So when I go over here, I've got four buttons here. This is your AF so your volume button down here that's left. You can see on the screen there it says AF is twenty seven. Okay,

it goes up to thirty. Not very loud. Most of you CW guys, you're probably going to be using some sort of headphone, especially if you're out in the field, so you know, it doesn't need to have a lot outspeaker. Something this small is not going to have a loudspeaker. And that's okay, it's not a big deal. This is your two, that's your VFO two NOB and you can see right there it's on fourteen two fifty four. And I'm not really picking up anything in here, but I've

got my I've got my intenna horizontally pointed that way right now. I was hoping to pick up something, even if it's a weak signal. I don't know if you can hear that or not. But if you go back to the manual here, which you can do, this is an explanation of all these buttons right here. This is an explanation of all these buttons right here. And you can say, you know B and C Jack. Of course, this right here is your SPD plus and minus the words permitted up and

down. So if we go back here, we can you know, this is the words permitted up and down. It goes down to eight words per minute, and it goes up to fifty. I think that's like NJ seven Victor level CW. Charlie, that's like Charlie level CW. I that's not for me, but it does, you know, twenty words a minute eighteen sixteen fourteen. I'm not sure what difference that's makes. Does that meaning that you're listening at that speed because it's the it's not listening, But maybe that's

expect what you're expecting to send at I'm not sure what that means. I'm not sure how you set words for minute because usually it's whoever sending to you is sending it at certain words per minute, and whatever you're sending is up to how fast you key. So I'm not sure even that what that is. But you know that's that shows just how inexperienced I am with CW. So these are the up and down buttons there turn the volume down a bit.

If you long press these, they do something different. So if you long press that, it goes into this menu here, which is the FL menu, which if you look right here, it says, yeah, the receiver FL one through three attenuator. That's your attenuator. So you can go zero dB minus ten minus thirty and you have the writ there, so so I can go at minus ten just like that and then that will this will exit out of it. So long pressing the buttons does something different. This

is the PFN and transmitter power level. So you've got the tuner there. If you long press this button here, the second one from the left, you got the tuner power level that does something different. There. Okay, this is usually the exit key than one on the far right here, So we go there. Span power PF three is test. I wonder how you do actually do the power hold to and select low or high. About two watts on loan, about five watts on high. So if you hold it

twice, long press it twice, long press it's on low power. Now a long press it one more time and it turns to high power. So there you go right there. Okay, good good, good, good, good good. And this is this is a very good manual, very breaking down all this stuff, very good, very detailed oriented. So and we can go into this button here, which is your band in mode not in

auto tune. Hold it down, okay, sof VFO or memory. So we've got forty meters there, thirty meters, fourteen dot two which is twenty meters, eighteen dot oh which is seventeen meters, and twenty one which is fifteen meters, so it goes fifteen through seventeen meters, twenty meters, thirty meters and forty meters, so five bans advertises five band. I'm not sure what that last menu is in there. And then if you want to change the mode, we can scroll down over here and see how to change mode.

Holding ban mode brings up this display. Yes, tap one two to change the last band to change modes, hold one, there we go. So holding one, it's got this plus and minus. So you go to up and down. So we're at the bottom of the list. Now CW we'll hold that lower sideband, upper sideband, and that's the top right there. Okay, Now I'm on twenty meters upper sideband, and as far as listening goes, see if I can pick up a signal at all. Let

me vertically polarize this thing. I'm inside the shack. This is I don't know if you can hear that. There's a guy talking out there. So it's receiving. It's receiving, and in traditional allocraft fashion, I suspect that that this uh that this receiver is fantastic, so it is receiving. So good, let's put that right there. Make sure I got that out of the way. Okay, because I do want to want to go through the

rest of this menu here, so we can go back. So if we if we short press that, it goes into RPT one, two and three. I'm not sure what those are. RPTO, Oh, there it is RPT oh recording. You can record messages, okay, record and record and play messages. Okay. And then if you long press that this is the menu, then you've got You've got all kinds of stuff in this menu right here. Okay. So you turn the afknob to change menus, you can turn logging off and on. It'll log for you the key weight key jack

i ambic firmware version. There's a firmware version. I'm on one dot one five right now. Ee initiate display mode ATU parameters. ATU mode is bypass, so we're gonna have to have an antenna, okay, and a lot of a lot of menus in there so you can get into the menu that way. Pretty cool. If you want to operate a radio like this and you have no idea what I'm doing right now, I highly suggest you go check out Ham Radio Prep. Hamradioprep dot com is a website and they actually

have an app. You can download for free on your smartphone, iOS or Android. Get started today. You can learn everything you need to know about Ham radio, about getting your first, second, and third hand radio license. Learning CW is an art into itself. You can listen to single sideband with this radio, you can't transmit single sideband, so this is for CW operators and Ham Radio Prep to my knowledge, doesn't have a CW course,

but there's plenty of CW courses out there. But the first thing you have to get before you can start learning CW or before you can start using CW on the air. I should put it that way is get your hand radio license, get your technician, get your general get your extra license. Use Ham Radio Prep dot com. You can save a twenty percent discount with a coupon code of Jason twenty off of any of their paid versions of their app.

Again, the app is free. You can start learning now, but then when you purchase any of the versions, or you purchase their all inclusive package, it's going to give you a lot more. It gives you access to videos, lecturers on videos that show you how to do and explain the questions and whatnot. So I'm Radio Prepper sponsoring this video thank you for their sponsorship. Be sure to save a coupon code discount of twenty percent with the

coupon code of Jason twenty. So I'll be interested to hook like a pac tenna or the sparkplug gear antenna or something like that. So a resonant here's the cool thing. Something I just thought about. A resonant forty meters in FED halfway because guess what. You know what, I don't have to have eighty meters because this radio dies new eighty meters, so you've got a shorter

intenna. With a forty meter INFED halfways is usually be about sixty five ish feet I ish, and an eighty meter in FED halfways is about twice at about one hundred and thirty feet. Well, I don't need eighty meters an eighty meter intenna for this because it doesn't go to eighty meters, so I only need forty through fifteen. So it'll one of those Pac ten is with thanks cut in it, like the one KD. Emerdy made for me.

It'll do ten, fifteen, twenty, and forty and then you got a link in it cut for seventeen that'll do almost everything you need to do. Except with the exception of thirty meters on this radio. So a good practice would be to set up a in fed halfway connected to this and actually do some listening out in the field, which is something I'm going to do. What types of videos would you guys like to see on this radio? I tell you what, I am going to send this radio to Charlie because I

told him that I bought it. I bought this. I should have said this up front. Also, I purchased this radio. They did not send it to me. Ellacraft did not send it to me as as a gift or a loaner. I purchased this radio with the Edgewood package. That's the all the extra stuff that we talked about today, because let's face it, I'm my name's Jason, and I buy radios that I don't need. After I purchased it, I sent a message to Charlie on Discord. I'm like,

hey, did you see this? He's like, yeah, man, I'd love to have that, but I just bought an ftd X ten. I'm like, I'll tell you what. I'll send you mine if you make some videos with it, and he's like really, I'm like, yeah, man, come on. It's CW. It's right up your alley. So let me know what videos you'd like to see me make with this thing, And let me know what videos you'd like to see Charlie MAKEE because he's going to do a lot better CW than I will.

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