Minimal Power, Maximum Adventure QRP with K0KLB Kevin of Ham Radio QRP

It's our bi-weekly episode where we explore ham radio topics in New Hampshire , new England and beyond . So whether you're a regular listener or first time guest , we're excited to have you here and we always appreciate your support and thanks for tuning into this week's episode , and we got a good one for you . So let's get into the show .

I'm your host , my call signs , november one , japan United radio , and I'm with my co-hosts .

My apologies if I have to mute here , but we'll get through it . We've got an online store set up .

Finally , as you can tell , I'm wearing our first cut of the Livfree and Ham hats there , so we are constantly adding more stuff and coming up with great ideas , so feel free to jump on over there if you're interested in getting some Livfree and Ham swag and love wearing it proudly . And the road less travel giveaway is up .

So if you saw our premiere earlier today at seven o'clock , you can head over to our website at Livfree and Hamcom slash giveaway and you can learn more about how to get involved in that . And again , this is from the brain trust of Todd and I .

As we talked about in episode 21 , are a dual kilo , and so we we threw our challenge out , and so hopefully you guys can come be a part of the fun and see if you can be part of that giveaway . And lastly , we've got our usual host , our live stream once a month .

So make sure you stay tuned to our channel and you're subscribed so you get notified when we do go live . So , without further ado , we've got a new segment . And now for something a little extra , with Todd W on STJ . All right , well , yeah , well , yep , that's a little something extra , for sure .

This is one of our new segments , Like I said earlier , where you may have caught wind of in our episode 24 , that Todd is feeling a little left out as Paul already got his extra . So we are going to band together as the Livfree and Ham crew and help Todd get his and attain his goal of getting his extra .

So what we've done is create a small little segment and we're going to , you know , grill Todd here with our quiz master , paul , on three questions every episode on the extra pool , trying to test his knowledge , to get him prepped to take his extra exam . So we're going to be tracking that progress on our website at Livfree and Hamcom slash something extra .

So if you want to come be part of the progress , and so , without me delaying any longer , I am going to hand it over to our master of master of ceremonies and host Paul . Go ahead , this is your show .

And so if you take the power factor of point two and you understand that E equals 100 volts and I equals four amperes , then you can do the math to figure out the consumption of the power factor defined by Ohm's law , and then you get the apparent power which you refer to with the symbol of S , and so that equals 400 watts .

And then to determine the real power , the apparent power needs to be multiplied by the applied by the power factor , which gives you a result of 80 watts , that's exactly what I would have said to you .

Lower losses will increase your Q for your inductor and capacitors .

Might want to zoom that a bit .

Well , that was a good start for segments , for this segment of , uh , you know , uh , something a little extra . So we'll keep improving on this one and I know Todd will get much better along the way . We'll make sure we , you know , quiz them offline and you know we'll work on some of the questions there too as well .

But thank you , guys for kicking off that interesting segment there . So , all right , cool . Well , we're going to dive back into our regular scheduled radio conversation . So , as we always do with every episode , let's talk about your hemorrhoea week . And because , kevin , you are a steam guest , what's been going on with your hemorrhoea week ?

A little bit above free , it's not even above freezing , it's just at near freezing and I'm like I can't stand out there and you're like in the video having a conversation with the you know the weather , and I was like , dude , I can't handle that . That's too intense . But yeah , that was awesome . Either way , it was good video .

And I said , well , you should check out the antenna that I have , because it's it's a fantastic antenna , but it's a little bit different , right ?

Uh , it's the K1JK Cobra Ultralight , uh , senior , so it's 140 feet overall total length , but it's a three wire element at the top , uh it , the bottom uh element is on its own and then the top is a folded diapole , essentially , and um , and so we were , uh , we were , you know , kind of modeling things , but we needed some , uh , some actual data from the

antenna , and so I , uh , I went outside with the antenna analyzer . Yesterday was a little bit warmer , it's a 27 currently , but uh , I think it was about it was about 40 degrees yesterday when I was out there with the antenna analyzer .

So uh got a lot of really good data points and uh , so they're , uh , they're they're working on the modeling aspects of uh , of the antenna , and we'll we'll discuss that further later on . Um , but I did also get a uh , a new little piece of test kit and that's the short calm uh , uhf , vhf , uh , swr and power meter .

And so I'm excited to uh to see how my dual band antenna on the cookie sheet on the roof is actually performing . Oh , very cool .

My uh one of the bigger projects is I want to uh get set up my receive antenna and I want to put a big square loop uh cloud warmer antenna uh end-vis .

It was a great short way radio uh antenna , but it wasn't very good for transmitting over over God . I keep saying that , parker .

But I've been listening , I'm up to , like , I think , chapter 15 and I'm picking up on the stuff , Cause after they go through the questions , they then review and as he's reviewing I I've already be able to say the answer , so I'm hoping it'll help . It's a start .

Uh , I'm also going to start using the app and taking the quizzes and going through the questions , but now , with you guys hounding me , I'm going to have to really uh , start cracking down so I don't look like a fool in front of everyone watching these on nets . I'll be like that guy is like dumb , like what's up with him . But , uh , but that's about it .

I mean that's about it for now . I mean , I've been , I've been pretty busy . Uh , it's been a really busy couple . A lot of it seems like forever , but the last couple of weeks it's been really busy at work and uh . So I really haven't had much time to uh play around with the radio .

But I am , when I do work , the overnights and stuff I do uh , I was looking at the flex stuff and learning how to do uh profiles and all that kind of stuff . So little by little I'm dabbing into things . So that's about it .

But I I'm looking out to get out to another pota as soon as uh an activation , as soon as uh the weather clears up a little bit . We've had a lot of crappy weather lately too , either rain or snow , so it hasn't really been ideal for getting out there .

Okay , we opened our mouths and inserted our foot , so that's what we get , oh , cool , well , all right . Well , with myself , just kind of round things out .

I , you know , like I said , I've been fighting uh COVID for the past week , a week or so , so I haven't spent a whole lot of time in front of the radio , except for a little uh FTA there , when , uh , you know , um , I say something pops up on him alert or whatever . I'll try to work them myself from the couch .

But uh , been spending a lot more time uh on the YouTube's , catching up on a lot of my favorite uh YouTube channels and uh getting to to know Kevin a lot more , uh with , uh all of the the stuff he's been doing and been totally blown away by , uh just how much he's , you know , done over , I'd say , months , even years at this point , in terms of , uh all

the stuff that uh , he just , you know , turns into , we'll say , antenna gold . So , um , you know , with , without that , I , I , you know , I'm more of a . I started out as an appliance operator , as most folks would know , and so I don't tend to usually build a whole lot of my own things .

So I'm always uh interested in and , um , enamored over folks that , uh , just have that natural ability to just kind of look at something and go , hey , maybe that might work as a Nintendo .

Or you know , hey , let's see , you know , a cobble together a two coconuts and , uh , you know , a small little coat hanger into a radio , you know from a Gilligan's Island or something .

So , you know , either way , it's , it's uh , it's totally amazing and it's it's great to to find people like that on the you know , especially on the YouTube's , but uh , you know , even to be able to meet them in person , it's a really cool . So let's kind of dive into tonight's topic here a little bit . We're , we're , we're meeting here , obviously Kevin .

So , like I said , we did a little bit of introductions to him again . Kevin K , zero KLB . He's obviously well known for his YouTube radio show or YouTube radio show , youtube channel called the ham radio QRP . He's the guy that a lot of people have been talking about , uh , when coming up some really creative and innovative ideas like the wagon train dipole .

How about silos on the air ? You know , my favorite one to date so far and it's in the top three is powered by Cheetos and water . You know , and you know . Obviously the last one that I truly nearly needed in my heart is the shovel antenna . I can't tell you how I was impressed with that , that design overall . So let's welcome Kevin here .

Uh , you know , thank you again for being on the show . How about you ? How are you doing ?

I've got my general license and uh , uh , I feel for you , todd , and now I know why I won't become an extra uh , having those kind of questions at me . So , uh , I'll probably just be a general for the rest of my life .

But uh , no , I kind of got into the hobby , uh , through a uh friend who actually lives up in New Hampshire he lives up in Gorham , and uh , we were friends through another hobby and somehow we got on the subject of shortwave radios and uh , and ham radio and he was , uh , he was a uh , a ham radio operator years and years ago and uh , so he kind of got

me talked into it and got me started and I got my general license and , um , let's see , uh , I put up a uh , you know , I was a QRO guy for first two years while I was uh , playing radio . I didn't even know what QRP was , right , I didn't even know what QRP was .

So , uh , I was just cranking a hundred watts into the air and then , uh , my , my friend , leon um KC , one LBL , the lives up in New Hampshire there , he looked at the aerial view of my farm here and said , hey , uh , why don't you put up a wire from this tree to this tree to that 70 foot silo ? And uh , see what kind of , uh see what it'll do .

It ended up being a 550 foot long wire and it's kind of off center fed , and so I started using that and I started you know , I kind of , just kind of by mistake , I was trying to get into a net down in Texas on 80 meters and I was trying to get into them and I I Haven't been able to on a vertical antenna , so this long wire really helped me .

But I got into them with 50 watts and I was like , hey , you know , they heard me and I started lowering my power . From that point on I started working 50 watt QSOs and then I started dropping my power to 20 and 10 and 5 and and I haven't looked back I've been QRP since then , so I rarely operate anything above 5 or 10 watts .

Was it kind of like a frustrating moment for you , or is it more just like , hey , I'm just gonna go over into this , you know area that's unknown , and just you know , try it out ?

And I met a lot of good friends that way and their QRP ears now they weren't before . It's kind of funny , steve , though the guy worked the , the , the QRP net with , he was a hundred water until we had that conversation that night he couldn't believe that we could talk back and forth with five watts .

So I kind of started out there and I met a lot of good friends and a lot of good QRP ears from that experience .

You know I'm not gonna buy anything less than you know , anything more than the radio . It does 20 watts , because I know she got a couple of different radios in your stable there . You know you want to library a little bit on that and kind of why you went those route .

My Random metal objects on the air is kind of what I called it at the time silos and grain augers and Windmills and dumpsters . And I used the zygoo G90 for that because that tuner , they told me , well , yeah , my , they told me that that tuner on that radio with the wood to the wet noodle .

So I was gonna put it to the test and For a while I was using an external tuner because I didn't . I wasn't sure you know how these , these metal objects would respond , and and I didn't want to blow up the radio . So it was a little while into it that I finally just started using the tuner of the zygoo .

I'm like you know I'm if I blow it up , I blow it up . But I'm gonna see if this thing will really tune up anything like they say it will , and and so far , everything I put against it it's , it's matched .

So I'm not , I'm just operating five watts on all these experiments to really kind of test it and see if it's really gonna work . So then I've got the icon 705 as well . That was kind of my next radio and I use that a lot for Pedestrian mobile . That's kind of the reason I got that .

One was for some pedestrian mobile with the icon backpack and I've used that there . And I also got the FX for CR use Radio out of China , which I really enjoy using as well .

Repurposing one of my older bikes to turn that into a little setup in the basement , I think that's , that's neat .

I'm gonna keep this thing because I might be able to use it someday and and I had a stationary bike here and I'm like you know , I'm gonna rig this up and it was a lot of fun . I , I got a , I got a wired to my radio . I did some my . I use my zygoo G94 case . I do blow it up .

You know I'm not out too much money that way , but I did some photo activations on it . I think the last part photo activation . I took it out to a wildlife refuge and I pedaled for an hour and 15 minutes and had 58 QSOs and that was all five watts QRP and I was pretty tired at the end of an hour and 50 , but I rallied at the end .

I had to get it had to get at least 50 . That was my goal . So it was a lot of fun and it is . It's great exercise . Yeah , I'm on it every morning , monday through Friday between 5 , 30 and 6 . I'm calling CQ on 40 meters now , but during the summertime I'll crank up to 20 meters and I've met a lot of good friends in the morning that way too .

I'm just calling CQ five watts to anybody that can hear me , and the nice thing about it is when I push to talk and I'm talking , I'm pedaling harder and faster because I got to generate more power , because the radio is requiring more power , and I'm generating about 30 watts To push to talk and talk to somebody at 5 watts .

So it's a lot of fun and it's great exercise and it makes exercise fun . I hate exercise and doing this . Combining it with ham radio , it makes a lot of fun .

So if I did did pedal too fast , because you know , at first Pedal when I had a QSM , I got pretty excited that somebody was hearing me through this thing and I started pedaling a little too fast . Next thing I look down and my bolts are up at 14 volts . I'm like whoa , I got a slow down but I did put a zener diode in there to help cap that .

But I don't don't blow my my radio up by by pedaling too fast and creating too much voltage . But it's a lot of fun and it's great exercise and and I enjoyed .

Because I'm kind of curious with somebody that has a good amount of acreage , if they've got an electric fence , if they , if they turn the electricity to the fence off , will that tune and how well with that tune it does . Well , I did it .

You know , I was looking at the electric fence and there was no cattle in the pasture so it was turned off . So I just disconnected the the gate there and ran one section of the electric fence . It was probably a thousand , maybe 1500 feet of wire and five watts .

I just started hunting parks on the air guys and they were here in me and I was talking about the electric fence . They were here in me and I was talking to them and I was like , well , this works too . So that kind of Kind of got me more involved in thinking about what else can really work out there .

But yeah , electric fence , and I thought you know it's only three feet off the ground but it is separated with insulators . You know it's not part of a fence , where it's grounded it's it's totally , you know , insulated . So it worked really well . I was , I was happy with that I did a video Awesome , I'll have to find that one .

I mean , that's like kind of like you know , a lot of people like know that you know , especially in the ham radio world , you're not going to make a millions of dollars on YouTube . You know , you know recording videos of , you know antennas and stuff like that , but you know so , so what would you kind of make that transition ?

I mean , obviously it's an awesome transition and I love the fact that you know . You're like , hey , I got to share this with the world . But so what was the kind of the premise around that ?

When we on the farm here I created a lot of harvest videos and just day to day videos and I probably have over a thousand or 2000 videos of just farm and stuff and I got you know my editing .

I guess my editing fine tuned where I could keep things short and keep things interesting , and that's probably was the biggest reason just to share with anybody else , tell the story of kind of what's what I'm doing and just have basically having fun and sharing it with everybody that wants to watch it .

I would rewrite the words to songs . Boogie Nights was one of our last ones and I'd rewrite the words and we would play it as the farming you know in the fall . So it was a lot of fun and that's kind of how I got my editing in videos and I thought , well , I can do the same thing for the ham radio stuff too .

So I just continued it into the ham radio hobby .

I hit Sweden and Canary Islands over the weekend with five watts and my little inverted B antenna up here on the pole and just but just it kind of depends on propagation and time of year where I'm going and and how far I can go . It's kind of . It's a great experiment with QRP because you can actually experience .

You can experience the propagation changes as the sun moves across the country and being here in the middle I can actually watch it where it dies off on the east and starts picking up on the west coast and next thing I know I can hear myself on the Hawaii SDR and just kind of as a skip keeps , continues getting longer and the gray line moves across .

So it's , it's been a great experience with QRP and learning how propagation works and and how those cycles work .

And that's one thing about the QRP net is the guys can actually go back and listen to their audio and see what they sounded like at one watt or two watts or five , whatever they can do . And you know that's a learning experience for them as well , you know , and they try different antennas and and and see which ones work the best for them .

But it's a lot of fun . I'm glad you guys checked in . That was great to have celebrities . We like having YouTube celebrities .

Right now we're starting at four o'clock central , five Eastern , and we'll probably slide that back an hour as the days start getting longer and we can . You know , in the middle of summer we usually start around six o'clock central , but Sunday nights and we don't have we don't have a designated frequency like most nets .

We just find one that's open and then we start the net and most of the time we get QRM away . So we have to move and QSY to another frequency . So that's the beauty of the live stream as well , as everybody watching the live stream can see the frequency on our radio .

So as we go find another , another frequency and QSY , they follow us right along and we just pick up where we left off once we find a new open frequency . But I think the biggest benefit is the folks can actually hear what they sound like with their , with their rigs and and the QRP .

Just left it at that and they cleaned off pretty quickly . So I was like , okay , cool , they'll keep coming along and so you know , and they paved the way for me to be able to get in there . So I was , I was happy to check into the net and it was definitely fun to you know , I've never , you know , I , I , I am not . I do have a QRP per se .

I have an FX four CR which I love to death . That's a phenomenal radio and you know , every time I watch you use it , I'm like I got to dig it back out again and start using it . But I built it for a beach go kit so I could use it , you know , kind of at the beach per se because of all the functionality with it .

But you know , from a standpoint of you know , getting into QRP . I think once I finally , you know , we , we , we achieve the kilo and and and get that all squared away , I think QRP is going to be on the radar again . So you , I say you inspired me a lot more .

I don't know if I'll be a true diehard QQQRP guy , but I know I definitely will make sure it's part of my overall repertoire . You know , as a , as a ham radio operator . So thank you for that . So you , you yourself , are a hero , right .

I kind of I saw that one and I was like , you know , I looked at it because it's funny , cause , like I watched some of your other videos and I found myself doing the I'm going to watch the proverbial landscape part of his like , when he does like wide shots , when you do your your aerial views of the drone and stuff like that , and I'm like that could be

tuned up . That could be tuned up . And you know you zoomed in , you know a wide shot of the Quonset hot . I'm like he's got to have a video on that . And then I saw the video and I was just like , oh , bummer , man , there's got to be a reason why that didn't tune up . Did you ever ?

You know , do you ever have any of those like moments like when you did ? Do you know that doesn't antenna and it didn't come out well ? Did you ever want to go back to do a version two to see if you could solve it ?

There are some failures out there and their videos , so I just shoveled the good with the bad . But it was funny on that bicycle one I could hear myself on the Utah SDR . I knew I was getting out there but I couldn't get anybody to answer my call . So but yeah , there are some ones that work really well and some that don't work very well at all .

It's kind of part of the whole game .

That one I was blown like just the fact that you were able to make the context you were pulling out of Massachusetts , new Hampshire , you know , connecticut , the East , I mean everywhere . It was just like you were literally running a full vertical , you know , halfway on 20, .

No problem , this shovel was no bigger than what you know , four square barely , you know , in terms of size . So it was relatively small .

It worked pretty well . I was , I was pretty happy with it and you know it's just some work better than others I think I had . I had some pretty good propagation , I think , in my favor that day too . So a lot of it whether these things are successful too is depends on propagation and the ban that day .

Some days , you know we , even with normal antennas , we can have a bad day with propagation . So it's just kind of hit or miss and I just take what I get and move on to the next project .

If you haven't seen it yet , definitely subscribe to it . It's great channel he's . His videos are not like a lot of POTA videos tend to be . They tend to draw on a lot and you see a lot of contacts . He very much keeps you entertained but at the same time he just like inspires you . So I had to say you know , definitely go over there and check it out .

One of the things that a couple of things he's kind of done , is the wagon train dipole . That was a big one , that was a . You know there were the grain wagon trains , right , correct ?

But yeah , I hooked them up as I had two identical grain wagons old day con wagons and I put the tongues together and I hooked them up with some ladder line into a dipole configuration and and I started hunting some parks on the air guys and they started hearing me and giving me good signal reports with five Watts and I was just surprised , as everybody else .

That was a fun , fun video and a experiment . To do those , of course , you know everybody gives me , gives me a hard time . You know , fill it with corn and then make some popcorn . You know , turn up to a hundred Watts and make some popcorn 1500 Watts .

I was like , don't buy the crick and I was like , okay , I'll go with you too . And so you were just down there and you're like I got to take this seven foot tube , you know plastic tube , and put water in it and we're going to make it out of 10 out of it .

I'm like you got to be kidding me really , and you know you made contacts off that that was like you know that was just mind blowing in my . It's like where I'm , like at the beach and I'm worried about putting my ground radials into the water because I don't want to get them wet .

You know you're you're busy literally using water as a way to see a transmit RF .

The water was leaking out where my wire was sticking up through the bottom . So I had to improvise and figure out how to stop this leak and that took me a little bit . But once I got that working , you know you're in a quick bottom , you're in the low part of the land area and my antenna was just barely high enough anyway . So I was surprised .

I think I hit the Texas station and maybe one or two others that day , but it was pretty weak . But yeah , it did . It made the calls but it was a struggle there but it was a lot of . That was a fun experiment . My brother came down and we had lunch there on the show with hot dogs and a fire , and it's just a fun experiment and having fun .

So you know , that's pretty , it's pretty impressive , I mean especially , I mean even if it's not as clean as you might want it to be , the fact that you've taken all these objects and made them made contacts . I mean that's just , it's crazy , right , who would have ever thought ? You know , you go through and you learn about all antennas .

I can park next to a silo , hook up to the ladder , and I can make calls without anybody even suspecting that I'm on the air , on ham radio or anything like that . So it's you can remain pretty pretty quiet out there and nobody knows or even suspects what you're doing , and you can be on the air and play in ham radio .

But yeah , the silos and whereas is a good for prepper type situations , things like that that are going to be around that probably won't be destroyed in a windstorm or something like that , where my wire antennas would fall down , I can still get on the air with some no , kevin , just out of curiosity .

You know the resonant frequency for you know the silo and this is the resonant frequency for you know my wagons and you know just kind of seeing like how your data plays out and what you know works better .

And I have done some whisper tests lately .

I started , I found out I can get a whisper on my app , on my phone and and I'm going to a little echo here , so sorry but I can actually now look at the radiation pattern around , around my , around my antennas to see how they're propagating and how far they are and is it omnidirectional or is it the one direction .

So I've been using the whisper and that's kind of not the only . Yeah , I've been using that for just to experiment with that . But just to add to that , I'm not a resonant guy either . When I use wire antennas , I don't care what length they are , I just I just put them in the air and I find a tuner and match it and just go .

I don't cut wires to make sure that they're the right length and resonant . I haven't got that point yet .

So so obviously I was introduced through and actually Todd and I should say we're introduced when we were on Ham radio clubhouse to you from iso . He had mentioned your QRP net and from there I had bookmarked it , but then at the point , you know , got super busy and didn't really get involved .

But then I wanted to reach out to you and I think we kind of had open up conversations and then you introduced me again to the net and got a chance to obviously be part of it . So kind of share with our audience a little bit .

You know a little bit of what it was because we did , you know , mention that earlier in the show but talk a little bit more about that and you know , maybe we can get a little bit more interest in those folks that might be interested in trying to do QRP and and you know they can understand the format a little bit because it's it's really fun net to be

part of and and it's very you know , we'll say casual in terms of its nature , so it's not like you have to have , like a emergency net or have a you know special , you know format to follow and it's definitely a you know fun , fun experience to be part of . So , you know , maybe talk a little bit about that .

So we started there and it just started out and next thing , you know , we're on the air and guys are calling in hey , what are you doing ? And we're just playing QRP radio and and seeing how low we can go .

So it kind of turned into a a every once a week net and basically what happens is I call , you know , for check ins , and and we work everybody right away . So there's no , there's no wait line , you're not logged . And then we come in and start at the top of the list . We work you right away when you call in , and so what we do is we just find out .

You know who you are , where you're at , and I use net logger to log the calls . So I know , you know where they're at , what their name is and and they , so we , we talk about you know what antenna they're using , because a lot of folks are interested in in what antenna people are using .

And then we then we decide , and then we go down and see how low you can go before I lose , lose their audio . So they may start out at 10 Watts and work their way down to five Watts and I give them a report . So , yeah , you're an S three or S five or whatever .

They are great audio and they keep working as low as they can until I finally lose them and that's kind of there . It's a good , good way to test your antenna .

Make it , make it work for every , every water out that you can give it , and and then the the folks , they can go back and listen to their audio and listen to how they sounded at five Watts and and four Watts and two Watts , and it's a good learning experience for them as well . But it's a lot of fun . I really enjoy it .

You find a lot of folks that are hundred waters . They'll stop by and they're like I've never done QRP before . I didn't know that . You know , I can't believe that you're here in me at five Watts and we're carrying on a conversation and they kind of decide . Well , you know , maybe I should turn my power down more often than just experiment with this stuff .

So that's kind of how it started and that's what we do today . It's once a week and , like I said , you just check in and we work you right away and then you can , you know seven , three , and then we move on to the next person checking in . I usually ask for QRP stations when I'm running the net .

There's two of us myself in Iowa here , and then there's Steve , a good friend of mine , out in South Carolina , so we're he's the control of the net as well , so we share our time . I'll take calls and then I'll hand it off to him and then he'll take calls that he can hear and work them down too .

And it's all on the , on the , on the YouTube live stream where everybody can hear it . And we just finally got our audio , our audio , to where it's feeding out of our radio . So the audio is a little better quality for everybody so they can hear it better and it's it's a lot of fun , we have a good time , so we'll welcome anybody who wants to stop by .

We had a guy check in with a thousand Watts here a while ago and he turned off his amp and went down . I think he got down to five Watts , and he was having a good time with us as well . So it's it's all in fun and anybody's welcome to stop by and give us a call .

So now , now I'm curious , like what's going to happen if I turn the power down ? So yeah , I'm definitely down for one of your nets , for sure .

And I got , I think last night or night before I got in Nevada station . He said I was really strong out there on and it was on this 40 meter net on Ole Miss . So yeah , it's a lot of fun . I'll look forward to looking , looking for that Tpy call sign coming in one of these days . You too , todd , I know you're not a QRP here .

Most it's , and a lot of times I don't even announce it if I'm calling a DX station , if they're , if they're , you know , calling CQ , and I answer them and I get in . I typically don't tell them I'm QRP unless they ask me . I actually had the guy in Canary Islands I don't know how , but the Canary Islands station I worked the other night .

He repeated my call sign . He says are you QRP ? And I'm like yeah , I'm QRP , five Watts . And it kind of threw me back because I was like how did he know I was QRP ?

I don't know , but I mean , 20 meters usually isn't open that time of day and he had beautiful audio and he heard my five Watts . It was just kind of one of those rare moments where 20 meters was working in the middle of the night like that . But , yeah , that was fun .

If I hear some of you out QRP and I get , I normally try to get the QRP's in there first , just because I know they're really working hard .

Well , I want to again thank you again , kevin , for coming on , as it was truly inspirational to me and I always keep myself , like I said , finding looking at metal objects in totally different ways . So I know that sounds a little wrong on many levels , but you know you guys get my drift there . So you know again , thanks , kevin , for coming on the show .

I appreciate you for taking time to do that and just kind of want to give an opportunity . How can people reach out to ? If they're interested in reaching out to you to learn more , either about your channel or , you know , give you a couple ideas to try , or or , or , you know , for any reason , Right .

There's a picture there me on the bike and so basically that's kind of you where you can find a lot of information about the channel and stuff like that . So , and then I , like I said , my QRP channel is is a ham radio QRP and my call sign so you can find all the videos there .

But QRZ is probably the , the , the easiest place to find me and get a hold of me .

As always , it's definitely some awesome stuff over there and we keep adding more to the corral there . And you can connect with us on social media for the latest information , shows and content . So you always follow us QSO and you can support our show through Patreon and bias beer links in our show notes , as every bit helps us and support the show .

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