Are we still safe in Europe?

   Recently there are reports in the news about a new OTH radar being build by Russia near Kaliningrad. I wonder if this will have another impact on the amateur radio frequenties as we all know OTH radar QRM on 20m and 10m and several other bands. 

Picture made with AI

I'm starting to get a little concerned about what Russia does with such an radar installation. From what I read on the internet they can detect missiles, jets etc. from a distance of 3000km which is in fact covering the whole of Europe. Of course you could do this for defense, but who is kidding who...

I'm living near a big seaport with large datacenters and one of the biggest power plants in our country. It is a very strategic site. And I repeat, I live very close to this. Recently they report unindentified drones flying over the area at night between one and eight O'clock. Especially in the weekends. And not only in this area but at a few strategic areas in my province. It is very disturbing and I'm a little concerned about this as well. It could be anything of course, but I don't like it at all. No one knows were the drones are coming from but since I live close to the coast it could be they are launched from a ship.

I'm sure this is not only happening in my area but in other (strategic) areas and countries as well. I wish I could do something about it but for ordinary people this is impossible. We can only just wait and see what happens. Hopefully the world and our area will not be on fire in a very soon future...

Winslow J-37 Signal Corps trainingkey

    The third straightkey in my series about the keys I got from the real estate of PA3BCB Gerard. This time a J-37 key from the cold war era. Earlier keys in WW2 from this type had a steel or nickel lever, Winslow Tele-Tronics Inc. went over to fabricate the keys with matte black coating to prevent reflection and corrosion between te 1950's and 1960's.

The baseplate with the 2 bananaplug connectors is typical for use at training sites. That way they could quickly connect the keys to telegraphy boards and networks at the trainingbase. The baseplate is formed like that to wind the cord on it. It is really made for quickly connect and disconnect. Wind the cord and put it in you pocket.

Of course I wanted to clean the whole key and disassembled it. Here you see a detail of the strain relief made with paracord. A special gutter in the baseplate is made for this. Although I didn't keep the complete old connection cord I decided to keep this strain relief detail.

Use of the Winslow J-37 at the US Signal Corps

The AN/GSC-T1 Code Training Set: This was the definitive standard for Morse code training systems in army barracks. The system consisted of a central console for the instructor (who could generate Morse signals or interference) and dozens of student desks. The desks and audio distribution boxes (jack boxes) were equipped with banana plug sockets, allowing students to quickly connect their own J-37 keys. [1, 2]

AN/GTC-T1

The EE-81 / EE-95 Morse Instruction Sets: These were more compact, portable units designed for teaching Morse code in the field.

Modification ("Mae West" style): In the post-war years, the Corps of Engineers or technical services manually modified many J-37 units. A wooden or Bakelite baseplate with sockets was attached to the bottom, and the wiring was securely fastened using army-green lacing cord (the green string) to withstand the rough handling by hundreds of students. 

Many thousands of service members toiled for hours using setups exactly like this to earn their Morse code qualification in the cold war and Vietnam war era.

Polished and shiny J-37 straightkey ready to use.

Of course this key, as a cold war key, should be used to work at least one Russian station.

Friction-maxxing

   Click bait, click bait.... yes I have to admit. And I stole the word from the excellent blog of KE9V, sorry Jeff. The main reason is that you cannot directly comment on Jeff's blog and I wanted to bring this topic up as well. Read the original article here: https://ke9v.net/2026/09/17/friction-maxxing.html. 

“Friction-maxxing is the practice of intentionally choosing less convenient options in daily life to build tolerance for discomfort and reduce reliance on technology-driven ease. It’s often described as adding small bits of effort back into your routines to help you stop autopilot and improve focus.”

It's my opinion humanity needs friction-maxxing. All this new technology makes life easier, too easy in some ways... there is just too much tech. Sometimes technology is a good thing but these days with the development of AI everyone can make and program anything. You just need an idea and  AI makes the photo, video, story, essay, program, software, firmware etc. etc.. Not only for the good but also for the bad things. Look what is happening in several wars around the world. I'm sure drones are already made with AI since a few years. Personally I'm involved in installing robot lawnmowers. And I can tell the development including AI technology in these mowers is developing fast. We are not far away from mowers that you put on a field and just tell them to mow the grass without even really installing them. This same tech is used in drones, cars and other machines not only for peaceful intentions. 

Yes, above might be a bad example. But in our hobby you see AI doing the work. Lately websites and software for hamradio use are growing like mushrooms. Anyone noticed they all look the same? Even if they are for different applications you already see that sites and software are made with AI. Not that it is directly a bad thing, it makes life and the hobby easier. Too easy...

Too easy is not always a good thing, although because of technology some things are getting unnecessary complicated. Jeff already gave an example in this post. No wonder people get mentally ill because of this. Not everyone can keep up with the rapid changes of technology. Young people might keep up faster as old people.

I know people think different about this topic. But personally I'm sometimes thinking about downgrading my station. Not that I have the most tech advanced station but I just have too much digital mode software I use for making contacts. It is so easy to let the computer do the work, you just click your screen and the radio goes to the right frequency and the digimode does the work. When was the last time you just listened to radio without switching on your computer? For me it was not long ago, when on vacation in Denmark. I really enjoyed the simple setup I had. Just a (tr)uSDX, an homemade endfed antenna and a simple small plastic paddle. Yes, I logged on my phone, but a paper log would do. I make thousands of contacts every year but I only remember the ones that took real effort. This is one of the reasons I finally am seriously learning CW and make CW QSOs. Yes, even AI can decode morse and you can all do it with a computer. But real people make mistakes, a computer does not. This evening I had a contact with HA7RJA Rob on CW, and yes we were making mistakes but we loved it. And we knew there were real people on both ends.

What is your opinion about the fast growing tech and your daily life?

I like gardening. Doing work with my bare hands. It's the small things in life you don't need technology for. It's the simple things that make you happy. It's the things you do and build without needing technology and take real effort. And yes sometimes we have to learn that the hard way. How about you?

OZ/PE4BAS paper QSL cards

    I am not really a QSL card collector anymore but I know others do. So for my activation from Denmark last summer I made some paper cards to send around. The photo is made on the last day activation when testing out the lightweight endfed which did very well in the end. The complete card was made with the help of chatGPT. According to my XYL I do not look like that. The AI engine also changed the radio and other stuff. But actually I don't really care. It's just the idea. And most of the cards are ending in the bin anyway. For those that like the paper QSL I hope you appreciate it. Unfortunately

 I lost the FT8 log since I cannot start the laptop anymore it is completely broken now. Cards are only send out to all the CW and SSB contacts I made. But if I receive a card from a FT8 contact made I will reply.

My quest to learn CW (34)

 

Time is my enemy. But I try to practice CW everyday. With the speed going up it is like starting all over again. How many days will it take to get at 88% or above again?

The random 5 characters per line in 1 minute training for accuracy is with 28/22 wpm even more difficult. I noticed I got about 20 faults average. But once I was lucky and got only 5 faults. Good days and bad days!

I had some interesting CW QSOs this month. Most intriguing was with VE3SPY. I was intending to do a short QSO just before dinner. But the operator kept asking. After the QSO and dinner I search for him on QRZ. An amazing story... and now I know why the SPY.

I had a short discussion about CW contesting with top CW contester PA4O  on a club evening last friday. I told him I wanted to focus on contesting a little more especially for the CQWW CW in November. He recommended rufzXP training software to me as that is what he does training with. I have been doing rufzXP before and last weekend I tried a few times again, a lot of fun!

#6m #4m ES-season 2026 review

 A small review about the magic band(s) this year. I didn't have much time to monitor all the time and so I probably missed some DX. I know of one evening there was strong propagation to Colombia and Ecuador but although I saw stations with very good signals I was not able to make any QSO. The propagation was widespread across Europe so I was certainly not the only one calling at that moment, sometimes some spotty propagation is better if the spot is right at your QTH. Well, there is always a next time. 

Photo from M0OXO.com

13-May-2026: Quite early in the ES season I worked the first 6m new one this year, XT2AW from Burkina Faso. What can I tell. Signals were reasonable strong and the contact was easy. Working stations on 6m from Africa is always kind of unique.

On the first day of June we had some propagation to South America. June is always the best month for the ES season as far as I know and experienced.

8-Jun-2026: Almost as expected I worked OE3FVU as my only new one on 4m this year. The signal came up, we made the contact and as fast as it appeared it went into the noise again.

20-June-2026: Second new on 6m. This time FS/K9EL from St.Martin. It shows the importance of watching the greyline. Most of my DX has been made at evening greyline including this one.

27-June-2026: A warm day full of good propagation. In the end I managed to work Haïti which was my 3rd and last 6m new one this year. 

Overall there were some DX possibilities but as always it is the magic that has to happen at the time that we are on air.

Bloggers blogroll still broken

 

Some of you probably noticed that something is wrong with the blogroll at te right part of this blog. After Mike VE9KK wrote me an e-mail I noticed that it is not updating with new feeds. Mike and others with a "blogger" blog experience the same problem. Unfortunately it is a problem that google has to solve. We cannot fix this ourselves. I hope this will be solved soon.

Update: It seems blogroll is back at least since last week. I don't notice anything wrong except that it is a little slow in getting the latest feeds.

Online hamclocks for browsers

 Originally the famous HamClock was invented and hosted by Elwood WB0OEW. You could build one yourself and use his software to run on for example a small RaspberryPi. You could also buy a ready to use device. Personally I made my own version a while ago and ran it via Wifi to view it on any computer or tablet. It was a fun project but I loved it and hated it. I never got it stable and as soon as it need an update I had to start the RaspberryPi again. I also barely looked at it actually. Unfortunately Elwood died at the start of this year and his hamclock back end server would stop. Luckily quickly there were several projects to get another back end server online, probabely openhamclock is the most wel known one now.

These days there are also very nice online hamclocks online which work well in your browser. Some are very good usable some are less usable. It's just what you are looking for. I recently made a list of some interesting online hamclocks to use on any computer with a browser and internet connection.

One of the monitors featuring hamdash

Recently I got a few HP Pro 3520 computermonitor with build in computer. They came from my job and they wanted to throw them away. They are not the fastest computers with Intel Core i3 processors and old harddrives. But fast enough to run a linux version with all features on it. Including of course the famous FireFox browser. I tried several linux versions but found Ubuntu the best and the most complete. Since I want the screens controllable with only a mouse I needed an on screen keyboard which is not always an option in every linux distribution but is standard in Ubuntu.

Here is my list of interesting online hamclocks:

https://hamclock.me/

https://openhamclock.com/

https://hamdash.com/

https://dxclock.com/web.html

https://dxlook.com/

Personally I have no room for another monitor, so I want to sell them if anyone is interested. They could be used for anything of course. Not only as a hamclock.

Jesse H. Bunnell Triumph education key

   This is the second in a series of posts about some straight keys I bought from the real estate of PA3BCB Gerard (SK). You can find the first one here. I recommend to view the last photo in that post. It showed my second J.H.Bunnell key in very bad shape. I managed to get it in better shape and it is shining in my shack now. I will not show the step by step process since I've done it in my first post. The nice thing of these keys is that you can completely disassemble them to clean every little separate part. This key looks almost the same as the first J.H.Bunnell key but is different.

   Obvious is the big knob with the flat round beneath it. Did you know that originally this was made to protect the operators from the high voltages and currents when they used keys on spark and tube transmitters. These knobs are also called "navy knobs" after international treaties required spark transmitters aboard ships after the sinking of the Titanic. 

I personalized my key engraving my call just below the button.

  The main thing that is different is the lever. It is made of brass and not from steel like the key in the first post of this series. I was wondering why and I found that this key was only used for education purposes.

It also features a different contact. Not sure if this is silver plated or tungsten. It seems you could get these keys with both type of contacts. This contact is bigger as on the other Bunnell key. The sound is when closing the contacts is also different which is obvious.

I like the feel of this key, I don't really know why. Could be psychological? I really like keying with it and feels completely different compared to the other Bunnell key. Could it be the key is choosing me as its operator? See the Bunnell keys together on the picture. What a lovely couple :-)

And of course I made some QSOs with it already. The first one with AM3MERCE for the video. Then I made QSOs with SV9/S53R and EA4IBF. The last one came back on my call which I made in slow morse to attract other beginner CW operators. 

Update 9-Sept-26: After viewing the video on several computers/phones I realized the audio is not good at all. I deleted the video and tried to amplify the audio in the original file. I hope it will be better now. Recording live morsecode seems not to be easy, like the tone gets filtered out.

My quest to learn CW (33)

 

Finally after 930 attempts I managed to get a 88% accuracy training english proverbs with a speed of 28/22 wpm. I promised myself to go up in training speed. I will delete all my attempts and start over on 28/24 wpm.

I will also increase my speed in the "lessons" or in other words the random 5 letters/numbers signs which are given for 1 minute. My training speed was 28/20 wpm and will now be 28/22 wpm.

The blue line above is at approx. 70%. You see that it is an up and down process. Some days are good, others are bad. Overall it went better I think. Still random signs are difficult. 

Am I on the right path? Some will say yes, some will say no. I've got fun and like the training and that's important. However after 33 months of practice I still have difficulties to decode morsecode. On the computer with perfect code is not as difficult as on real air. People make mistakes, you need to figure out words and abbreviations that are not really familiar.  I make a lot of mistakes and most of the times I really don't know what to key. When I key it goes wrong half of the time. But never have had a problem with any station at all. It seems every CW operator on air is happy there is a new CW operator active, and it doesn't matter whatever you try to key, they understand.

I'm now at a point that I want to make as many CW QSOs as possible. I look out for easy to work POTA stations and DX. Most of the time it is a 5NN TU report. But sometimes I will throw out a CQ and hope the best of it. Today IK0PIC Luciano came back to my CQ on 12m. I hope he understood what I tried to key since it was not without errors. At least he got my QTH which I managed to key well, which he repeated. Then I saw 10m could be open to Africa. I didn't hear anything on the band so I made a few CQs to wake things up. Surprisingly I heard a very weak HA coming back. It was barely audible. I suspected it was HA7RJA Rob and I was right. I suddenly heard him a bit stronger and was able to get my report and he got my report before the signal disappeared into the noise. A few minutes later I worked 3B9FR from Roderiques Isl. That was a very nice experience today and a lot more fun as making world wide contacts with FT8.

NTCQP August

 

NTCQP setup

   Love this one hour CW QSO party. It's all about fun and you can operate different ways. This month the challenge was QRP. 5 points for every QSO made with QRP power.  So I took the (tr)uSDX for this task. And this time I wanted to do the mechanic section for a change. So I connected my Jesse H. Bunnell steel lever straightkey.

One hour of searching, calling and sweating. It was difficult at times. Calling CQ did not get any response on both 40m and 80m. Most stations I heard were called by many others so most of the time I did move to see if I could work someone else which was difficult. At least I worked 6 stations, 5 on 40m and 1 on 80m.

First QSO was with PA3GPX Rene, I was glad he recognized me imidiatly. Last QSO was with PA3HEN Theo which I met personally on the Beetsterzwaag radio market in spring. I think he recognized me as he did QRS (slower code) for me which I appreciate very much.

QSO:    7033 CW 2026-08-20 1905   PA3GPX       599  RENE       260      

QSO:    7034 CW 2026-08-20 1910   OK2BVX      599  DALI       209      

QSO:    7022 CW 2026-08-20 1919   OK2KKI       599  PAVEL     NM       

QSO:    3556 CW 2026-08-20 1939   DF7DJ          599  BERT       235      

QSO:    7034 CW 2026-08-20 1957   PA4N            599  FRANK   295      

QSO:    7035 CW 2026-08-20 1959   PA3HEN      599  THEO       3   

 I think I discovered something else. The J.H.Bunnell key is not my thing. It is way too light and for people with sensitive soft hands. In the heat of the CW game I have a very heavy fist like they call it. I felt so sorry for the nice key which behaved like a frog when I was keying the code :-). It really looks nice and it is screaming for a gentle operator which I am not. I think I have to choose another key from the keys I still have to restore. Probably a militairy bulletproof key is better for me hihi. Till the next QSO party . .

Updated my Meshcore devices

 Updates

 The plan was to finally update my repeater and repeater antenna. This went well. But did it really make a difference? I don't really know. I will have to measure some day.

Some photos from the repeater hardware setup here. See the difference between antennas. The old black antenna is visible left of the new one.

12V is coming out of the solarpanel and 5Ah battery setup originally ment for outdoor cameras. I convert the 12V to 5V with a very cheap car battery charger. A powerbank will not work here because the Seeed studio Xiao nRF52 lora device is using very little power and it would switch off.

The situation at this moment is:

At home: Repeater: PE4BAS Roodeschool - Roomserver: PE4BAS BBS/Room (Antenna height 10m)

At the job: Repeater HB Uithuizen - Roomserver: HB BBS/Room (Antenna height 5m)

The distance between the two repeaters is 6 km. 

According to the Meshcore app I have a huge range. But in reality I'm not so sure about that. I think the app does not take buildings around the antenna in account. I've also updated the repeater on my job and since I suddenly could not access the roomserver there. I updated that as well. Then I came home today and my roomserver at home was not working as well, so I updated it to the newest firmware. 

So far I am not able to directly connect to the roomserver at my job and from my job I am unable to connect the roomserver at home. I hoped the new antenna would be adding extra dB to reach it but it doesn't. The plan is to replace the antenna at the repeater at my job. I might have to look for a better place for the repeater there. My opinion is that this link between my home and job repeater should be reliable. At this moment it is only possible to connect under special circumstances. This happened only 2 times.

Roomserver bug?

I don't use the Meshcore system all days since the whole thing is not really reliable. Once and a while I update all my devices to see if there is any progress. But features stay almost the same and I don't see any use in the new features build in. For a long time I have an issue with the roomservers. The problem is that messages left on the server from my phone with the heltec V3 connected are perfectly readable by the same system. But if I connect to the same roomserver with my standalone TDeck I can't read the those messages. I can only write and read messages that are left from the TDeck. Like the roomserver has two rooms with a wall in between. This issue appears on both roomservers and probably it is a bug. However I cannot find anything about it on the internet yet? Am I the only one with this issue?

I think the roomserver is the most important station in this mesh network. I wrote about that a while ago. If you're in an emergency your first need is water, shelter and food. When you are busy looking for that you can't be on the phone all the time to read messages. Your phone and companion device might run out of power and you're disconnected from the network. In that case the roomserver on solarpower shines. It stores the messages from others till you're able to retrieve them.

However, I feel the roomserver firmware has issues. And I think the roomserver needs some more development. What and how? I don't know. I am no expert. But at least the "separate rooms" issue should be solved first.

Future plans

Not really. I will leave everything running. I hope to play it once and a while. You never know if you'll need this system. The only thing I will change is to power the roomserver at home with solarpower. Hopefully there will be some more repeaters in the neighbourhood. Experimenting with these LoRa devices is not that expensive and everyone with a little tech interest can do this. 

International Lighthouse and lightship weekend.

 This weekend there was the lighthouse and lightship activation. Have been hunting for it before. This time I was looking for OZ1NBG since one of the participants Kees PA3KL was one of the activators there. And of course I love Denmark.

Pilsummer lighthouse By kaʁstn Disk/Cat - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11868935

Tried many times to hear OZ1NBG on several bands, But only heard them briefly at 40m SSB. I managed to break the pile-up and made the contact. Would like to work them on CW as well but have not heard them since, A list of lighthouses and lightships I worked below.

Groote Kaap lighthouse

V55LH Diaz Point NA-0004

DA0DH Dahneshoeved DE-0003

PI4WAL Westkappele high NL-0017

OJ0YL Market Reef FI-0011

OR5R Westhinder 1 lightship BE-0004

TM22LH Bodic FR-0027

DL0EM Campen DE-0048

DA1HW Plau am see DE-0119

PD0FSB/P Den Oever NL-0041

PA0XAW Groote kaap NL-0037

Nordborg fyr (lighthouse)

OZ1NBG Nordborg OZ-0006

PA/DA1MT/LT Zoutelande NL-0046

DK0MAR Fehmarbelt lightship DE-0018

DK0OC Pilsum DE-0066

DL6WWM Heidkate DE-0038

GB2LG Mull of Galloway UK-0086

Fun contact was with the station at Pilsummer lighthouse. It is almost visible from here and signals were very strong. Some laughter when I told my location.

Small experiment during eclipse

Photo made by my daughter

   We had an eclipse yesterday. The moon covered the sun for about 88% for a second. I've been watching but didn't find it spectacular at all. During the eclips I had my radio on 80m WSPR for a small experiment. It was interesting to see that during the eclipse the amount and distance of spots increased.

Some pictures made with the excellent WSPR watch app on my iphone.

Spot amount

Spot distance

You can easily see that around 18 UTC when the eclipse occured there is a peak. Then it goes down till after the sunset.

Denmark vacation

 

   It has been a while ago I posted something. And yes, I'm still alive. Though I was on vacation in Denmark for two weeks and these days it is not safe to post something about that on the internet that can be read by everyone. Particular because there have been a few thefts in the neighbourhood the last few weeks. Anyway, this is a post about how I was active from Denmark as OZ/PE4BAS. Yes I was portable but not moving so I left the /P out of the call. We hired a small house close the bridge over the Sallingsund straight to the Island of Mors. Close to the city of Glyngøre, were famous cyclist Jonas Vingegaard lives. I tried to be on air everyday. But in reality this wasn't always possible. I brought my (tr)uSDX QRP radio, my PE1BVQ made endfed, the K6ARK lightweight endfed and the Superantenna MP-1. The radio power supply was a 12Ah Li-ion battery which I also used last year in Sweden. 

I also brought my laptop to do digital modes but when I arrived in Denmark I had two challenges. First the laptop battery died and second the laptop didn't see the local accesspoint. It didn't bother me as I wanted to do most QSO's with CW. But I got questions why I was not on FT8, since that would be so much easier. I found a solution by leading the coax through a window and got it to the laptop which worked with the power supply. As accesspoint I used my iPhone hotspot which was detected  by the laptop. I made some FT8 contacts in the end and was even heard in the USA and Australia. Most of the fun though was with CW and a occasional SSB contact.

First day I tried the lightweight endfed but although it worked well, I didn't like that it pulled on the radio, since there is no coax attached, the endfed is connected directly to the radio. I made one contact with OK2BVX on 40m CW and decided to hang the other endfed with 5m H155 coax like I used in Sweden. It worked well and SWR was reasonable. Output of the (tr)uSDX showed about 3,5W, real QRP. It's incredible that I made so many QSOs at all.

See below screenshots from the excellent HAM2K Polo logger I used on my iPhone.

To be honest some of the QSO were arranged via skeds. Like the QSO with PA1PRD on SSB and PA4O also on SSB. I later made a sked with PE2V which didn't work out well in the morning, but it went well in the evening. Most of the QSOs were in the evening since that was the time with the propagation on its best for short distances. At some days dutch radio amateurs sound as strong as local stations in Denmark (although I worked only one station in Denmark which was OZ9MM, and he was not local). HA7RJA Rob from Hungary was worked 4 times both on 40m and 20m. He has me in HamAlert and was soon listening as soon as I was calling CQ. It was great to do some CW training with Rob and he also did provide me some useful tips. I did try the CWops Tests on wednesday evenings but most of the stations were way too fast for me and few were receiving me, it might be fun for the more experienced CW operator but it wasn't really for me. 

I also had some skeds on FT8 with some friends at home. That went very well as expected from FT8. We arranged the contacts on another frequency as the standard one which is very convenient. Signals were strong, most time in the + dBs. Of course I did some other FT8 QSOs as well to see what I could reach. Below a picture of the efforts. Best DX was TF4M from Iceland. But as mentioned before I was heard in the USA and Australia as well.

FT8 is a lot of fun and it's so much easier to make worldwide contacts with QRP and a small antenna. But it isn't really a challenge. CW is a challenge for me and a lot more interesting. 

Last evening of our vacation I decided to test the K6ARK light weight endfed again. I wanted to see if a block of wood, which I used to fix the antenna on the table, would affect the SWR and how the antenna works. It didn't affect the SWR at all and receive seems to be ok. I just tried it on 40m and made some excellent contacts to SO5CW, OZ9MM and PA3GPX with CW. Of course the block of wood was a little unconventional. I think a piece of wire can be used as well to fix the antenna. Building this endfed was fun and using it from Denmark was interesting.

Can you spot the antenna?

We had a great vacation and have been driving and sightseeing all around the northern part of Denmark. It really is one of the most beautiful parts of the country in my opinion.

My quest to learn CW (32)

 

I concentrate on text training mostly. Trying to recognize words, but it still is difficult. However the accuracy is still going up. My goal was 90% but I forgot that that it will take more time when the number of attempts is increasing. Of course I don't score 100% all the attempts. So, this month there was no full percent increase. I'm thinking of changing my goal now and increase speed when I reach the 88%. At that point I will delete all my attempts and start all over again at a higher speed.

Above in the graphic you can see my efforts doing random letters & numbers training with 28/20 wpm. It is still increasing and there are days that I only have 5 errors. Some days are better as others.

Most important is that I make a lot of CW contacts these days. And it slowly gets better. Sometimes a QSO goes like a breeze. And sometimes I don't know what to key and it ends in a disaster. It doesn't matter since I still have fun. And I see this as a real challenge which I really like. I never met an operator  on CW that gets mad because I make too many mistakes. Actually most ops are really patient, friendly and encouraging. That's the fun of CW.

Almost world wide propagation on 6m

 

I wished for a few new on band ones. But it didn't happen. You can't have it all! The DX was almost world wide.

NTCQP July

 

    The Netherlands Telegraphy Club QSO party was on yesterday evening. 1 hour of CW fun. Completely different from the mainstream big contests since you need at least to give report, name and ntc number (or NM if no member). The fun is that there are 2 categories. Automatic (paddle with keyer or computer) and Mechanical (bugs, straightkey, cootie). Till now I'm doing automatic but I want to try mechanical one of the next QPs as well. I was only active on 40m this time and almost only running and listening. Actually I didn't hear much S&P so only running was an option. I used N1MM as logger and some of the names were already in it, but worked also some that were not in the system yet. I had some trouble decoding SM7GVF and did correct it in the log later. Same for OK1LZ for the name. I saw PE2V spotted in hamspots so I quickly found Vincent en made the QSO. Rene PA3GPX was worked in the last minute of the contest.

I'm getting better in this. It's not a top score. Every new start is difficult. But I have fun. My keying though needs a bit more practice, it is really a mess sometimes. It's like I haven't got the (fast) motor skills for paddle use. So I also practice with a straight key and this goes a lot better in my opinion. I might do the mechanical keying category next time.

K6ARK ultra light endfed antenna

 After I finished the micro match I finally had some time to build the actual antenna. I took about 21m very thin insulated copperwire and fit a coil of 10 windings (coil form supplied with the kit) in on about 1,8m from the micro match. Everything is described on K6ARK's website. Then I cut the wire back till I had the best match on 7,1 Mhz, the center of the 40m band. This is the final product on the red cutting board, see picture on the right. I had to cut back about 1,5m in total. The black cable tie is a reusable one, I found it excellent to mount the wire to a low tree in my garden. Below some pictures of the SWR/R/X. Big surprise was the SWR in the CW part of the 10m band which is a surprise for me. I can now use this antenna on 4 bands without a tuner.

I had the idea to saw a antenna wire winder from the red cutting board. But it would be a lot of work on not nearly as effective and light as the UL antenna wire winder that can be 3D printed with the print files from K6ARK. But I haven't got a 3D printer! However I know another HAM (PC3EK Eddy) in my neighbourhood who builds his own 3D printers. So I asked him if he was able to print a UL wire winder for me. This was asked at 8:20 this morning and he delivered the printed product for free at my job 2 hours later. Wow, I was impressed and grateful for his help. The final final product is shown below.

Look at the incredible weight of this 4 band endfed. Only 93 grams. This is truly ultra light.

Now I need to test this antenna. Not sure if it will be at home or in the field. It will be a surprise.