Morse Code Walkie Talkies

 I follow Mike N4FFF and Becky N4BKY (the HamRadio Duo) on YouTube for a while now. Most of their videos are about morsecode and POTA. It is really fun to watch and see that these people enjoy this hobby a lot. Today I found this video that is a link between morsecode and the 11m CB and previously the 11m Ham band. I wrote about this in a very populair article on my blog here:

https://pe4bas.blogspot.com/2022/10/history-of-11m-ham-band.html

I found their video really fun to watch and worth to publish on my blog!

#60m Burundi worked

 

Propagation was really low today. At least when I cam back home from work. I closed my station early but saw later in the evening the 60m was wide open. So I switched everything on to see lots of (DX) signals on 60 FT8. I managed to work 9U1RU from Burundi for the first time on this band.

Superstation a gamechanger for VarAC

 

Today is the first day the new Superstation "contest" game for VarAC has been released. It is a beta version so it probably contains bugs. I really think this will be a game changer for the use of VarAC.

Yes, this is a kind of contest game. The real reason this is made is to support real human to human QSOs. I just ran it for a few hours and already noticed some things I didn't expect:

1. The program knows somehow you're chatting with a real person or not, I made a QSO with 4Z1AC's AI chat assistant and she didn't count for the game!

2. You need a locator for the distance to show. The further away, the better it is. I expected the distances to add. But it is really about the longest distance (DX). Always be shure the opposite station gives the locator. To be shure give the command <LOCR>.

3. Not really clear from the instructions. The <roll> broadcasts are for others. If you do a <roll>  broadcasts other stations that run Superstation can get extra levels/points. It is also to show that you're playing the game.

If you're interested and you already run VarAC be shure to watch the videos to understand some of the game. I don't know how this is developing but I think this could be getting popular.

If you're not familiar with VarAC. It is a digital mode with a lot of possibilities. Not only chatting but you can send/receive Vmail and e-mail. You can also install an AI chat assistant. Play games like tic-tac-toe or 4 in line. It is really a fun digital mode software. If you're able to install WSJT-X and work with FT8 you can also install VarAC, easy as that.

VarAC: https://www.varac-hamradio.com/

Superstation: https://www.varacwednesday.net/superstation.html

Videos about Superstation can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/@K3JSJ

Update 18 Nov. 2025: I was not right about the <roll> broadcast. Jason K3JSJ contacted me and told me to change it to <ROLL> (Roll in capital letters). And yes, now it works. And it is not only for others but to get extra points yourself. I was toally mistaken about this.

Check out a new picture of the game:

I think it looks awesome! Rolled the dice 3 times (max. for one day) and got two upgrades!

Jason told me this first contest is held till 30th of this month. They will ask for logs and evaluate how things will develop. After that there will be another contest date announced. 

Friese 11 steden contest 2025 review

   This contest is open for international traffic but overall it is a Dutch QSO party in honour of the great Frisian 11 cities skating tour. The contest is only on 80m. Goal is to work the 11 multipliers + extra multiplier. 12 in total. And of course work as many stations as possible. Because it is not really interesting for international readers I write the review in Dutch which can be translated to english if you wish to read it. 

Van te voren al een paar keer met mede blogger PE2V Vincent over gehad afgelopen week. We hadden er zin in. Meestal is dit een feestje en zijn de contacten makkelijk te maken. Maar in het begin na 15 minuten roepen maar 1 contact (PA3JD Joop). Tja, toen was het wel duidelijk, dit ging een moeilijke contest worden. Toen ik over de 80m band draaide hoorde ik eigenlijk maar een paar stations en ook nog heel erg zwak. Terecht werd opgemerkt door Jonnie PA2JO dat dit voor de echte doorzetters zou zijn, net als de echte Friese 11 steden tocht op de schaats! Op gegeven moment was er echt helemaal niks meer te horen, alleen de eeuwige ruisvelden zoals ik dat dan maar noem. Bijna werd besloten om toch maar gewoon een pauze te nemen en te gaan eten. Maar heb toch doorgezet. Uiteindelijk 10 van de 12 multipliers kunnen werken met 33 QSO's in totaal. De signalen waren zeer zwak en er zat veel QSB op. De moeilijkste multiplier was PE1ET/P uit Bartlehiem, dat was echt net op het randje van verstaanbaarheid. Het laatste QSO was met PE2V Vincent, dat lukte ook nog maar net. Dit was echt 3 uur lang hard werken om toch nog wat QSO's bij elkaar te krijgen. Ik denk dat de meeste stations de moed al hadden opgegeven, of ik heb ze gewoon niet kunnen horen.

Volgend jaar doen we gewoon weer mee en we hopen maar dat de condities dan weer wat beter zijn.

Morse invaders top list

 I'm a huge fan of morse invaders. Since there is the RX training I really, really set my goal to get into the wall of fame. The best 10 scores. Today I finally managed to get into the list at place 7. I can tell I started at 18wpm. And it is pretty consistent, till you reach a top score, when the speed is going up to about 25-28wpm I think. At that speed I still managed to hear some words. It was a big challenge for me for shure it I feels pretty good I came this far.

From KE6EEK on the morse invaders site:

· If you make it to the scoreboard, your callsign will automatically be part of the word pool.

So if you play RX training on morse invaders expect to hear my callsign ;-)

Meshtastic experiments

Meshtastic is a decentralized wireless off-grid mesh networking LoRa protocol. The main goal of the project is enabling low-power, long-range communication over ISM radio bands. It operates at broadcast power levels which do not require a license to use. It is designed around exchanging text messages and data in off-grid environments, with potential applications in IoT projects where a decentralized communication system is needed without existing infrastructure.
  

  Since a few weeks I'm experimenting with Meshtastic. Basically this is a mesh network build with small low power transceivers that are working in at the 868MHz ISM band (for Europe). Every radio in the network is transmitting again what they receive. You can buy these cheap small radios at Amazon or Ali express or similar webshops. Of course it works best if you got one on a high point in the open air. Meshtastic is experimental. It works but not really reliable. There is also a limit to the distance you can reach. So you need a lot of nodes te let the mesh network grow and work. It is the hype at this moment and if you like some technical challenges and tinkering this is a lot of fun. For more info you can find a lot on the internet including a lot of youtube videos about this topic. The fun is that you don't need any license to operate a Meshtastic node. So you will encounter people that are not licensed radio operators but just like to tinker with this. I know people are experimenting with BBS like software/programming. And some have integrated Meshtastic with their Home Assistant system.

PE4BAS solar node

  Well, a few weeks ago I thought of stepping into this Meshtastic hype. So I bought 2 cheap Heltec Lora32 V3 devices so I could test things. I decided to make a node at my job and one at home or mobile. I soon discovered the whole node could connect to the internet. Have tried it and seen it but that's not my thing. I disconnected it from the internet again so everything purely works on-air. Soon I saw a familiar call on one of the maps, it was PE9DX Johan. He has a Meshtastic node in his car and because of his job, and drives through the province. So I contacted Johan for more info and he submitted me to a Meshtastic app group with lots of people that experiment with it. It is fun and I discovered that there are a lot of amateurradio stations that experiment with Meshtastic as well. Unfortunately there is not much activity in my neighbourhood so I decided to build a solar node and put it on a mast to extend my range. But although I received some further away stations I still couldn't get my signal be heard.

  Luckily I was able to have a nice chat via Meshtastic with someone in my area. But still, we both couldn't connect to the rest of the mesh. While thinking about it I came up with two solutions. The first one was to install a directional antenna. The second one was to relocate the solar node. I chose the second option and installed it now on top of the flagpole in front of the house. The advantage is that it really has free sight to the closest nodes in the mesh. And it worked. I can finally send messages to the provincial mesh network. My node location finally appears on the map, which is not the exact location of course. But good enough to get the idea and location for others. Unfortunately this node is only working when the sun shines. The battery cannot be charged without sun. It's the time of the year. So I might think about another solution for the time being. Best option would be a few more nodes in the neighbourhood. We'll see how things will turn out in the future.

Interesting links:

Official site:

https://meshtastic.org/

Dutch site: 

https://www.meshnet.nl/

Regional site:

https://tovvel.nl

Site planner:

https://site.meshtastic.org/

Range of my device. It is very local. Actually it is a miracle that we can just reach other Meshtastic nodes. The nearest node connected to the provincial mesh is in Appingedam. So the ranges will just overlap each other.

Be warned, this is a little addictive. Have fun!

PA-beker 2025 CW/SSB review

 This is a Dutch national contest which is quite populair here in the Netherlands. The CW part is held on Saturday and the SSB part on Sunday. Because it is a Dutch party and not much of international interest I will write this post in Dutch. Of course everyone is free to translate it to your own language.

Zaterdag: vandaag meegedaan aan de CW PA-beker. Voor het eerst met mijn contest callsign PA6G. Van te voren weer goed geoefend met Morserunner. Het opnemen van CW gaat steeds beter. En in deze contest word vaak rond de 20 wpm geseind, dat is prettig vooral voor beginners. Op 80m eerst wat S&P gedaan om zelfvertrouwen op te bouwen. Daarna een tijdje runnen. Dat ging op zich prima, alleen was er geen aanbod. Zo ie zo vond ik 80m niet echt druk. Dus maar naar 40m. Dat ging een stuk beter. Ook daar weer wat S&P maar al gauw gaan runnen want dat brengt echt veel meer QSOs op. Weer een paar bekenden gehoord uiteraard. Waaronder PA0O en PE2V. Jammer dat veel stations deze contest links laten liggen voor de WAE RTTY contest. Maar goed dat is een keuze natuurlijk. Morgen proberen we het in de PA-beker SSB.

Zondag: vandaag het SSB gedeelte van de contest. Ook vandaag weer een bijna uitgestorven 80m. Waren de condities dan echt zo slecht? Bij mij waren de signalen van de tegenstations prima. Maar goed misschien hoorde ik minder als wat er in werkelijkheid on-air was? Op 40m ging het erg goed. Maar om half twaalf had ik bijna iedereen wel gewerkt denk ik want er was eigenlijk geen aanbod meer. Dus mooi on 12 uur gestopt, tijd voor het middag eten. Ik moet schrijven dat ik wel eens een betere PA-beker heb meegemaakt. Ik had het idee dat het aantal deelnemers wat minder was als voorgaande jaren. Maar ik kan het natuurlijk ook mis hebben...

Ook dit jaar helaas toch stations die niet goed gekeken hebben naar de contest regels. De PA-beker heeft strikte regels qua frequentie gebruik. Zit je er buiten dan telt het QSO niet mee. Ik let er zelf redelijk goed op als ik ga roepen. Maar zag nu bij het indienen van het log dat ik toch 2 QSO's had buiten de contest frequenties.

Help asked investigating a feedline coupler

 A feedline coupler, an unusual name for this unusual antenna tuner...

It looks old doesn't it. But what is old? And how old could this tuner be? Let's look at the inside...

This tuner has some wiring and components that are from another century. Does anyone know when?

It is made to tune a open line. The current owner did try it on several bands and it tuned best on 15m. But I guess that's depending on what kind of antenna is used.

There is no diode inside to rectify the current for reading on the meter. In this case a heating element is used. The current owner used this with 100W and saw the meter just going up a little. According to him there should be a lot more input power to have a good reading.

More details:

You can click on the photos to enlarge them.It is a fascinating piece of equipment I think. And...so far we cannot find anything about or like it on the internet.

So I ask readers of this blog to play Sherlock Holmes. I don't know the answers but have questions:

Where was this feedline coupler used?

Is it a commercial build or is it homemade?

Why did they use a heating element?

What year was this made?

Audio enchancement trouble in W11

 

  If you work with digimodes, like me, audio settings are important. Now, with a recent upgrade of my computer I was not immidiately aware of audio input problem. For several days I had almost zero noise on 6m. I normally see some noise in the waterfall of JTDX (or WSJT-X) but not this time. At first I thought it was the change of the coax choke at my 6m antenna. But strange enough I saw noise on the IC-7300 waterfall. So after some thinking I was shure something between the radio and computer was wrong. Or some filter setting was not right. There are so many variables. So I tried some filter setting and every time I changed filter the waterfall changed to normal for 2 seconds to return to "quiet" after that. 

I played some with the audio settings in W11 but had no time this morning. I thought it was some volume problem but still the waterfall looked not as what it used to be. I tried some contacts on 10m and it went well, working and receiving 6O3T on FT8 was easy. But still on the "low" noise 6m band it looked like a noise reducer or noise blanker is "on" and disturbing the noise I normally see equally over the waterfall.

After digging into W11 soundsettings again I finally found that there is a new audio enchancement feature which is set automatically on. I quickly switched it off and everything was normal again.

I'm shure others can have this problem as well. Although you will not notice this immidiately when you are looking at a crowded frequency. The only thing you notice could be traces that look odd. But you will see it especially on an empty frequency. Just my tip of the day....just check your settings.

To find the audio enhancement settings in Windows 11, go to Settings > System > Sound, select your output device (like "Microphone"), and disable the "Enhance audio" toggle.

Morse Invaders now with RX mode

KE6EEK upgraded the morseinvaders website with RX mode!

 https://www.morseinvaders.com/

It is really a fun game to play. And you learn and can improve your morsecode at the same time.