so ive been going back and forth on getting a dedicated QRP rig for portable work for probably two years now and i finally just bought a KX2 a few weeks ago. been running it in the backyard mostly but took it out to a state park last weekend with a random wire antenna and a small lithium pack.

honestly surprised how well it does with just 10 watts. i worked a guy in germany on 20m SSB which i did not expect at all, took a few tries but it happened. the built in ATU is a lifesaver for field work, i was using a pretty janky end fed situation and it just... tuned it up no problem.

my only gripe is the knobs feel a little small and fiddly when youre cold, like i was out there in october and my fingers were not cooperating with the filter bandwidth knob. minor thing but worth mentioning if youre someone who does a lot of cold weather ops.

anyway if anyone is on the fence about getting into QRP portable stuff i dont regret it. curious if anyone else here is running a KX2 or KX3 and what antennas they use for parks on the air type stuff

the KX2 is a great little rig, been using mine for about three years now mostly for SOTA. for antennas i usually pack an end fed half wave cut for 40m, works decent on 20 with the ATU. light enough that it doesnt feel like a burden on the hike up. i tried a linked dipole for a while but honestly the EFHW with a small 9:1 unun is just so much easier to deal with in the field.

the cold finger thing is real by the way, i've thought about getting some of those thin liner gloves but havent bothered yet. you get used to the knob layout eventually and kind of do it by feel. one thing i'd suggest is turning the key repeat rate down if you find yourself hitting menus by accident, took me an embarrassingly long time to figure that out.

Germany on 10w SSB thats really cool, ive been thinking about QRP but always assumed i needed at least 100w to do anything useful on HF. maybe im wrong about that. does the built in battery last very long or do you pretty much always bring an external pack?