Extreme QRPp SSB SOTA Activations using my Elecraft KX3 10

One fateful day on the 10th of January 2015 I activated two SOTA summits on the island of Lanzarote (just off the north coast of Africa). The summits themselves weren’t overly special, being only worth 1 and 2 points… but band conditions that day were.

Since I arrived on the island conditions had been pretty decent, except on one afternoon when a solar storm had affected the bands. Based on this I decided I would see just how low I could go on the 10m band using SSB. 10m was consistently open during my couple of weeks on the Canaries and I was keen to make as much use of this band as possible. As we’re on the solar decline now I’m glad I did as over the last few months it’s been rarely open.

I used a Elecraft KX3 transceiver which I use for the majority of my portable work. The antenna was a SuperStick Vertical with a homemade radial system (8 wires cut for a quarter wave on 20m – the lowest band I use with this antenna).The Elecraft KX3 has very fine power output controls compared to most rigs, you can step down from 10w to 3w in 1w steps, after this you can reduce in 0.5w steps until you reach 1w and then you can get really serious and reduce power my 100mW.

QRPp Experiment 1 – Montaña Negra (EA8/LA-010)

Montaña Negra was my first summit of the day. It’s a black, volcanic and exposed summit surrounded by lava fields and you can probably imagine it has quite an other worldly feel to it.

While climbing the summit I decided to try QRPp on 10m (this band had never been used from this summit previously), to see if I could make any contacts. This brainwave came while trying to keep the volcanic dust out of my eyes that plagues summits on this windy island.

I started my SOTA activation using the full 10-12w to gauge conditions, I was easily reaching around Europe and made several easy ragchew contacts back to G. During one of these with G4OBK (Phil) I asked if he would be happy to help me test just how low I could go. He responded positively and before long I was winding down the power in increments. Signal reports were still really good as low as 1w SSB which was quite surprising.

Dare I go sub-1w? Yes! I wound down in 100mW increments and maintained good signal reports. I finally took the plunge and went as low as I could… 100mW. I really didn’t expect this to work but G4OBK gave me a 51 report.

After finishing my QSO with Phil I decided to keep the power at 100mW and see if I could make any further contacts. G0UIH (Steve) came straight back to me after calling CQ. We had a nice long ragchew not truly being able to believe this was working so well. At this point I decided I needed video evidence to prove to myself that this was really happening:

I finished this activation with 34 QSOs while staring at my antenna in disbelief that such miniscule amounts of power could go so far.

QRPp Experiment 2 – Guardilama (EA8/LA-004)

Guardilama was my second SOTA activation of the day and this summit was a little bit greener and more like earth(!) than Montaña Negra.

I was keen to continue my 10m QRPp experiments, especially as it was just after midday and 10m would be at full strength. More crucially the US hams would have woken up as well and I wanted to see if I could make the trip across the pond using QRPp, I was feeling ambitious at this point!

The wind was quite a bit stronger on this summit and I had to anchor the vertical with several rocks at the base. My operating position was inside an overhang of the summit itself, kind of like a sheltered cave.

After spotting myself a pretty intense pileup arrived (rarely activated summit, weekend and good conditions!), so I waited until I ran this down a bit before trying any QRPp fun.

Stateside seemed to have woken up so I snagged WD9Q (Matt, Illinois) to see how low I could go. The distances are significantly further to the states so I wasn’t confident in going sub 1w. Dropping down from 10w to 5w was still an easy copy for Matt, dropping down to 2.5w was the same, next we tried 1w. This also worked, so time to try sub-1w. In the end we established 400mW was the minimum power I could use to maintain the contact at 41 to 51.

I was truly impressed by this and later worked out that this qualifies for the QRP-ARCI 1000 Miles per Watt award. In fact it easily achieves this as the distance was 4,117 miles using only 400mW, so this works out as 10,294 miles per Watt. I love QRP!

After this contact I wound the KX3 back up to 10w QRO and finished up with 70 QSO’s including 11 contacts into North America (logs below if you’re interested).

 

Conclusion

I finished this day a very happy man. Not only had I activated two rare SOTA summits but I’d also achieved the QRP-ARCI 1000 Miles per Watt award. In fact it easily achieves this as the distance was 4,117 miles using 400mW, so this works out as 10,294 miles per Watt… and using SSB. The mind boggles to think what CW could have achieved on this day. I love QRP!

Activation Logs

In case you’re interested here are the logs from the days activations.

Montaña Negra (EA8/LA-010)

34 QSOs in 56 minutes (quite a few ragchews with the G chasers!)

Time	Call	Band	Mode
11:24z	G6TUH	28MHz	SSB
11:27z	EC2AG	28MHz	SSB
11:29z	EA2DT	28MHz	SSB
11:30z	G4BLH	28MHz	SSB
11:31z	G0RQL	28MHz	SSB
11:32z	DF5WA	28MHz	SSB
11:33z	DJ5AV	28MHz	SSB
11:33z	CU3AA	28MHz	SSB
11:35z	G4CFS	28MHz	SSB
11:35z	CU3BL	28MHz	SSB
11:36z	G0TRB	28MHz	SSB
11:36z	IK1GPG	28MHz	SSB
11:37z	EA2CKX	28MHz	SSB
11:37z	GI4ONL	28MHz	SSB
11:38z	OH9XX	28MHz	SSB
11:39z	IK2ILH	28MHz	SSB
11:40z	HB9BHW	28MHz	SSB
11:41z	HB9MKV	28MHz	SSB
11:42z	OK2PDT	28MHz	SSB
11:42z	OE5PEN	28MHz	SSB
11:43z	EI9GLB	28MHz	SSB
11:44z	EA2ECA	28MHz	SSB
11:45z	M0IML	28MHz	SSB
11:47z	M0MDA	28MHz	SSB
11:48z	UA3GJM	28MHz	SSB
11:49z	M3FEH	28MHz	SSB
11:50z	EU2MM	28MHz	SSB
11:51z	UR5KB	28MHz	SSB
11:54z	DB6VH	28MHz	SSB
12:01z	G4OBK	28MHz	SSB (100mW)
12:11z	G0UIH	28MHz	SSB (100mW)
12:15z	W1OW	28MHz	SSB
12:19z	GI0AZB	28MHz	SSB
12:20z	GI4ONL	28MHz	SSB

Guardilama (EA8/LA-004)

70 QSOs in 2 hours and 40 minutes of operating (I wasn’t in a rush!)

Time	Call	Band	Mode
14:18z	N2BTD	28MHz	SSB
14:19z	GW8OGI/P	28MHz	SSB
14:23z	DJ5AV	28MHz	SSB
14:25z	G6TUH	28MHz	SSB
14:26z	HB9MKV	28MHz	SSB
14:27z	M0MDA	28MHz	SSB
14:28z	N4EX	28MHz	SSB
14:28z	DJ5WA	28MHz	SSB
14:29z	N8MAS	28MHz	SSB
14:30z	HB9BHW	28MHz	SSB
14:30z	G0RQL	28MHz	SSB
14:31z	G0TRB	28MHz	SSB
14:32z	M0IML	28MHz	SSB
14:33z	DL3HXX	28MHz	SSB
14:33z	OK2PDT	28MHz	SSB
14:37z	WD9Q	28MHz	SSB (400mW)
14:38z	M6HWM	28MHz	SSB
14:39z	DJ1SD	28MHz	SSB
14:39z	G4BLH	28MHz	SSB
14:40z	NE4TN	28MHz	SSB
14:41z	GI4ONL	28MHz	SSB
14:44z	M3BOM	28MHz	SSB
14:47z	OE5PEN	28MHz	SSB
14:48z	G0MZK	28MHz	SSB
14:51z	K2JB	28MHz	SSB
14:53z	S57MS/P	28MHz	SSB
14:55z	M0YDH	28MHz	SSB
14:56z	G0HRT	28MHz	SSB
14:58z	HB9AFI/P	28MHz	SSB
14:59z	G6ODU	28MHz	SSB
14:59z	PE4A	28MHz	SSB
15:00z	HB9CEX	28MHz	SSB
15:01z	G0SLR	28MHz	SSB
15:02z	KI4AAU	28MHz	SSB
15:04z	G3RMD	28MHz	SSB
15:05z	G0OII/M	28MHz	SSB
15:07z	I3VAD	28MHz	SSB
15:08z	OM1AX	28MHz	SSB
15:11z	IZ5ZCY	28MHz	SSB
15:13z	KC2NXO	28MHz	SSB
15:14z	EI9GLB	28MHz	SSB
15:17z	S57D	28MHz	SSB
15:44z	EA2DT	14MHz	SSB
15:45z	G4OBK	14MHz	SSB
15:46z	EA2IF	14MHz	SSB
15:47z	DD5LP	14MHz	SSB
15:48z	G0HRT	14MHz	SSB
15:49z	CU3BL	14MHz	SSB
15:51z	G0TDM	14MHz	SSB
15:52z	EA3EGB	14MHz	SSB
15:53z	OK2PDT	14MHz	SSB
15:56z	OE7FMH	14MHz	SSB
15:57z	OE8HPI	14MHz	SSB
15:59z	G8ADD	14MHz	SSB
16:11z	EA2CKX	21MHz	SSB
16:15z	2E0YYY	21MHz	SSB
16:17z	G3RDQ	21MHz	SSB
16:18z	G4CFS	21MHz	SSB
16:19z	EA2BD	21MHz	SSB
16:20z	G7LAS	21MHz	SSB
16:22z	G6TUH	21MHz	SSB
16:23z	EA2DZX	21MHz	SSB
16:24z	F/DD6DO	21MHz	SSB
16:27z	M3FEH	21MHz	SSB
16:31z	F1EBN	21MHz	SSB
16:33z	EA5YI	21MHz	SSB
16:50z	W4DOW	28MHz	SSB
16:53z	KB1HXO	28MHz	SSB
16:55z	W0MNA	28MHz	SSB
16:57z	W0ERI	28MHz	SSB