I became a ham radio operator in July of 2025 for no discernible reason. My grandfather, a World War II vet who had worked in communications while fighting in Germany, had a room in his house completely filled with radio equipment. “He never met a Radioshack bag he did not like,” was my grandmother’s favorite description of him. But he did not have his ham radio license — he preferred to listen. When I was 12, I learned about ham radio and went to the library to check out a book on how to become a ham. This was 1996 and the CW requirement was still in place. I didn’t know any other hams and wasn’t sure how to get started, so the book was returned to the library. Last summer, while on vacation with my wife’s family at Lake Gaston, on the border between North Carolina and Virginia, the thought popped into my head: “how difficult could the ham radio exam really be?” That was July 10th. I began searching around for information and fortunately came across a number of Youtube channels that were really helpful. We came home to Indiana on the 12th of July and I began studying for the Technician exam, which I took on the 14th. I passed and immediately realized that General is really where the fun begins, especially for someone who is not interested in talking on repeaters. I studied that evening and took the General exam the next day.

After I passed, I had to figure out what HF radio I should buy. I had been watching K4SWL’s (Thomas) Youtube channel because I was immediately interested in learning CW. As a loyal son of the Old North State, I also like that Thomas is from North Carolina as well. I saw this video and figured, if the FT 891 and MC 750 are good enough for K4SWL, they’re good enough for me. I bought both and made my first HF contact in August while doing POTA at US-2265, Potato Creek State Park.

If you watch K4SWL’s videos, you will note one radio that Thomas seems to favor: the Elecraft KX2. This radio became something of a grail radio for me. Thomas praised it. Forrest (KI7QCF) praised it. Everyone praised it. Yesterday, on the one year anniversary of my receiving my General license, I got my new-to-me KX2. I downloaded the Elecraft utility last night and got the radio squared away and charged for this morning’s activation at my local park, US-2265.

The conditions were…smoky. As of right now, there are over 800 fires in Canada and the smoke is finding its way down into the United States. I set up my Tufteln 9:1 QRP EFRW Antenna on my POTA Explorer 20 Mast.

I got my station set up quickly and tuned up on 40m. I heard a bit of traffic throughout the band, but there were plenty of available frequencies. I had programmed a couple of CW messages into the radio the night before and got into the rhythm of activating my CQ message.

The band was slow at first, but I had a steady pace throughout the morning and was able to get 21 QSOs in the log. There were some lulls and I did a bit of hunting and got a few P2P QSOs, but then I would come back to 7.032 and call CQ again. It’s a lesson in patience to just sit on frequency and call CQ, but my experience is that you get more consistent QSOs just staying put. Hunting while running QRP and when the bands are iffy is sort of like getting out and driving a half hour detour to avoid a traffic jam that would cost you 10 minutes of sitting still.

The smoke and heat did their job and I packed up after about an hour at the park. While I packed, I thought about how grateful I am to be in this hobby and how much I have been able to do with it in a single year. I am fortunate that this KX2 is going to join me on the next year of my ham radio journey.

 

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At a glance

Park: US-2265, Potato Creek State Park
When: July 16, 2026, 12:42-13:31 UTC
QSOs: 21
Bands: 40m

Station

Transceiver: Elecraft KX2
Antenna: Tufteln 9:1 QRP EFRW on a POTA Explorer 20′ Mast
Key: BaMaTech TP III
Power: 9W
Logging: Carrier Wave (my preferred app for logging on an iPhone)