On Saturday, August 3, 2024, my wife and daughters drove to Edneyville, North Carolina, for an annual family get-together/reunion. It’s always a lot of fun catching up with my wife’s extended family. And, I must say, the food is always spectacular. I’m talking every amazing Southern dish you can dream of!
After the gathering, my wife and I dropped off our daughters with some of their friends for the afternoon. We’d planned to head back home and catch up on a few things, but I (fortunately) glanced at Google Maps and saw that I-40 was closed west-bound which meant that instead of a 30-minute drive home, we were staring at 70+ minutes. It was a busy weekend, with a lot of tourists in town, and traffic was at a standstill.
Lemons to Lemonade
I proposed to my wife that we go in the opposite direction of everyone else–up the very winding 151 to Mount Pisgah. She looked at me and knew I had activating on the brain. She happily agreed.
I knew hiking to the summit of Mount Pisgah for a SOTA (Summits on the Air) activation was unrealistic because we didn’t bring hiking gear and, frankly, the weather was a little too dodgy with pop-up thunderstorms forming.
Instead, I had the Mount Pisgah Picnic Area in mind. It’s a brilliant spot with numerous options for setting up a POTA station. It took us all of 35 minutes to drive there.
Hazel was happy to jump out of the car.
I’m sure she was on bear alert because the last time we were here, she spotted a black bear. She never forgets a bear but she always forgets how small she is compared to them.
There are numerous spots to set up a station at this particular parkway picnic site. We found a table off to the side where I had easy access to trees (i.e., wire antenna supports) if needed.
Based on all of the recent reports I’d been receiving from other POTA and SOTA activators, I knew such a modest antenna might make things challenging (foreshadowing alert), but by not deploying a wire antenna, I could pack up super quickly should we get caught in a downpour or thunderstorm.
I set up the KH1, prepared my logs, and got ready to hop on the air!
Gear:
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It’s funny how sometimes one small accessory can have a huge impact on a field radio kit.
When I first learned about the Elecraft KH1 (basically, the day I was invited to join the volunteer testing group), I felt like Elecraft had designed my ideal QRP radio. The KH1 is super compact, weighs 13 oz completely loaded, covers my favorite bands, and has features I would expect in much pricier radios. It reminded me of my beloved KX1, but even more portable with more features.
The KH1 caters to handheld or pedestrian mobile operating–at least, that was the overarching design objective. It accomplishes this amazingly well. It’s so easy to operate handheld, and there’s nothing else quite like it on the market. I suspect that when others copy the design (I’m sure they’re already doing so–!) it won’t be as versatile, functional, and lightweight.
At the end of the day, though, I feel like I’m only using the KH1 pedestrian mobile about 30% of the time I have it on the air. Of that 30%, I’d say that only 10% of the time I’m pedestrian mobile while activating, and 20% of the time I’m doing little impromptu radio sessions in parking lots, ballparks, while visiting family, and even on my own mountain property.
While handheld operating is simply a game-changer, I knew I wouldn’t do this 100% of the time with the KH1. It’s for this reason that my very first bit of proper KH1 feedback to Elecraft, well before I had my hands on a prototype, was that a right-angle adapter for the whip antenna would truly round out the KH1’s field prowess.
This would basically give my KH1 the same functionality of my beloved KX2 and AX1 antenna combo, but in an even more portable package.
Turned out, Elecraft already had a right-angle adapter on the design board!
Fast-forward to present day…
Last week, Elecraft sent me a prototype of the right-angle adapter to test and evaluate. They’ve given it the model number KHRA1.
Full disclosure: Elecraft also gave me permission to post a video and article about this new accessory even though (at time of publishing) it’s not even showing up on their website. I will, however, link to it here as soon as Elecraft makes it available. This is an item I would otherwise have tested in private–thanks, Elecraft!
The KHRA1 is a simple adapter. Other than metal attachment hardware, most of it is lightweight and 3D-printed from a durable material (I assume the same material they use in the KH1).
Attaching it to the KH1 is very easy.
First, you unthread the large metal thumb nut from the KHRA1. You will need to hold together the remaining KHRA1 components (legs and attachment bracket) so that they don’t come apart before you attach them to the KH1. This is actually pretty easy to do, but users should know to follow the KHRA1 instruction sheet. If these parts fall apart in the field, it might require a bit of searching the ground for the pieces.
You simply thread the large thumb nut onto the KH1’s whip antenna antenna port, then thread the rest of the KHRA1 bracket/legs onto the large thumb nut.
Check out Elecraft’s illustration:
I then position the KHRA1 legs as shown above, then tighten the KHRA1 adapter so that everything is secure.
It’s super simple to do, and you can see this process in my activation video below.
Speaking of an activation…
On Saturday, March 2, 2024, (yes, only two days ago) I had my first small window of opportunity to squeeze in a POTA activation and test the KHRA1.
That day, my daughters and I had a number of errands to run, then a three-hour round-trip drive to pick up my wife. We were on a very tight schedule, but I had a 30-ish minute window of opportunity to fit in some POTA radio therapy.
I set my sights on the easiest-for-me-to-hit POTA site on the Blue Ridge Parkway: the Folk Art Center.
Amazingly, I discovered that morning, that the KHRA1 fits in my Pelican M40 Micro case along with my KH1, whip, counterpoise, key, spare N6ARA key, and earphones.
With the KHRA1, this means my M40 field kit can do both pedestrian mobile and tabletop operating. Woo hoo!
The weather that morning was simply glorious. A very wet front swept through the previous day leaving behind clear skies and warm temps. Frankly, it was a bit odd activating without wearing a jacket or hoodie.
Gear:
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Setting up was quick and easy, even though this was my first time using the KHRA1 in the field.
I hopped on the air and started calling CQ. Once spotted (for some reason the RBN auto-spotting feature wasn’t working again), the contacts started flowing in.
I worked a total of 18 contacts in 16 minutes. It hardly gets better than that for a CW activation!
I had to call QRT after my 18th contact. Even though I had a 30-minute window to POTA, nearly 14 minutes of that was taken up with my intro and summary for the activation video.
I called QRT with a small pileup still in place. I really hate doing that, but I had a schedule to keep!
QSO Map
Here’s what this five-watt activation with a 4′ telescoping whip antenna looked like when plotted out on a QSO Map:
Activation Video
Here’s my real-time, real-life video of the entire activation. As with all of my videos, I don’t edit out any parts of the on-air activation time. In addition, I have monetization turned off on YouTube, although that doesn’t stop them from inserting ads before and after my videos.
The KH1 works amazingly well as a tabletop radio when combined with the KHRA1 adapter.
At the end of the day, the KHRA1 is a very simple piece of hardware, but it effectively transforms the KH1 from a handheld radio to a tabletop.
Of course, I’ve used the KH1 numerous times with wire antennas in a tabletop configuration (I’m a massive fan of wire antennas) but the ability to use the 4′ whip antenna and internal KH1 loading coils means that I can operate anywhere I have a surface.
Herein lies the thing I love about my KX2/AX1 pairing as well. It’s just with the KHRA1, the KH1 makes for an even smaller, lighter-weight field kit.
Any negatives? The only one I’ve come up with is that the KH1 is so lightweight that I realize I need to carry a small piece of shelf liner (something like this) to provide the KH1 with a bit more grip on a slick park table, especially those composite ones.
Again, I will update this post when Elecraft announces KHRA1 pricing and availability.
Thank you
I still can’t believe the entire kit fits in this small case. Even when I put the KHRA1 thumb screw on backwards!
Thank you for joining me on this quick little tabletop activation!
I hope you enjoyed the field report and my activation video as much as I enjoyed creating them!
Of course, I’d also like to send a special thanks to those of you who have been supporting the site and channel through Patreon, and the Coffee Fund. While certainly not a requirement as my content will always be free, I really appreciate the support.
As I mentioned before, the Patreon platform connected to Vimeo make it possible for me to share videos that are not only 100% ad-free, but also downloadable for offline viewing. The Vimeo account also serves as a third backup for my video files.
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I proposed to my wife that we go in the opposite direction of everyone else–up the very winding 151 to Mount Pisgah. She looked at me and knew I had activating on the brain. She happily agreed.
I’m sure she was on bear alert because the last time we were here, she spotted a black bear. She never forgets a bear but she always forgets how small she is compared to them.
There are numerous spots to set up a station at this particular parkway picnic site. We found a table off to the side where I had easy access to trees (i.e., wire antenna supports) if needed.
Note: All Amazon, CW Morse, ABR, Chelegance, eBay, and Radioddity links are affiliate links that support QRPer.com at no cost to you.
I hopped on the air and started calling CQ POTA with fingers crossed.
Then…silence.
