My station is crude by many standards, however, I have as much fun as anyone.
Just a quick note to anyone who thinks they might not have any fun because they can't set up a "good" station. I thought the same thing once. That's part of the reason I left the hobby shortly after I got married. We moved from apartment to apartment, and I didn't think I would be able to operate from those places where I couldn't put up a decent antenna. The fact is you can operate using an indoor antenna if you want. True, it doesn't work as well, but you will still have fun. A simple wire that you can put up outside is better. You can read my about my "stealth antenna" experience in the CW/QRP section of My Philosophy page.
Lets start with the antenna. This is the part of a radio station that too many times is an afterthought, so I figured that I'd start with it first. At home, I'm using a simple wire antenna stretched between two trees, and it is suspended about 20 feet above the ground. It is about 66 feet long, cut in the middle and connected to feed line that connects at the back of a tuner. The type of antenna is a G5RV - very similar to a dipole, but has ladder line attached as feed line that is a 1/4 wavelength long- before it terminates into a coax. It loads with a tuner from 80 through 10 meters. It is really only considered efficient at 20 meters. The antenna doesn't know this; however, so I continue to make contacts on it on all those bands!
I have two radios, but now find myself only using one. In fact, I lent the other one to another ham to use while he decides what kind of radio to get for himself. The radio I love to use is the Elecraft K2. I built it from a kit. It out-performs my other radio - a Kenwood TS-570D(g).
My radio is just the bare-bones stock radio. I have not built any options for it like SSB or an amplifier. It only does CW - and it does it very well. It can put out up to 15 watts on some bands, but I keep it at 5 watts or below, except on rare occassions. It has the best reciever I have ever work with. I have operated high-end commercial gear as a Radio Officer in the Merchant Marines, and I still prefer this little rig to those radios. It really is that good.
As I said, my other radio is a Kenwood TS-570D. It is a great
transceiver with 160-10 meter coverage, as well as a much used general coverage
receiver.
I
loved to hear
news from other countries,
before
it hits the "filters" of our countries'
news sources. It helped me to start being more critical of the propaganda we
were hearing in the USA as the lead-up to the war with Iraq. I saw through
the BS long before many of my friends (and some are still hood-winked!)
Now back to the radio. It can run 100 watts, but seldom ran it above 5 watts. The radio doesn't go any lower than that, but I'm sure my tuner and antenna are providing enough losses that I can sometimes feel no less superior than my QRPp friends!
I
love CW. That doesn't mean that I am particularly good at it. I'm learning
to become better, and I hope to always approach it with humility and the realization
that I have a lot to learn. That way, I won't ever get too
cocky and think I don't need to improve.
I take this rig to Field Day if I am going with people that don't know CW so they operate using voice. This year I am going with my son. Since we both know CW, then we only need to take one rig. It will be the K2. It draws less power (we are using solar-charged batteries, so power conservation is important).
I almost always use a headset. I use the Heil headset with the microphone pushed up out of the way when I'm running CW. The audio is much better than the speakers in the radios, and the headphones are comfortable.
Field Day Notes:
I use a "Y" connector for the headphone so the person that is logging or just wants to hear what is going on can do so. I also made a little box for the keyer input. It accepts three inputs and has one output. This allows me to use paddles, a straight key, and a PC Keyer at the same time.