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| Spot on 075745 GMT |
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| Received by ZL1RS |
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| ZL1RS received by |
Very spotty propagation across the Atlantic Ocean. Signals fading in and out with lots of QSB. But at least I was heard in east coast Canada and Florida USA. Made only 1 QSO to WB2REM. Other stations I saw have already been worked B4.
Earlier this week I've seen some Argentinian stations. This time there were plenty PY stations with signals till +1dB on FT8 at sunset. I've also been spotted at D4 (Cape Verde). Of course it was very busy with a lot of callers. I've managed just one QSO with PY and one with CU2 (Azores). This is the time you should monitor the magic band more often, especially in the greyline times. I hope some propagation to the USA/Canada will occur soon.
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| All the contacts made. After all some DX was workable. |
Already my number 30 blogpost about learning CW. I wonder when I will be at a point I don't find it important to report about it anymore. I'm in my 3th year of learning and still train almost every day. Most times with LCWO but use other software as well. Once and a while when time permits I make CW QSOs if I feel confident enough to make them. Sometimes QSOs are going very well and at other times I mess up completely. I still can't follow a normal CW QSO when listening on the bands. Only a few words and that's it. Although I have the feeling I'm doing well in LCWO. How is my training going now...
This weekend there is the CQ WPX CW contest. Time to make some CW exchange QSOs. This time I will use my own call since it is more unique as my contestcall PA6G. Luckily I can choose. I will try to participate for a few hours on Sunday.
This year I bought two jackplug adapters. A mono one and a stereo one to connect various morsekeys to my radio(s). Most old keys have a 1/4 inch (6,35mm) jackplug. But newer and QRP radios mostly feature the 1/8 inch (3,5mm) jack or phone connector. This one solves it.
Lots of old gear seen. A lot of garbage as well. With a lot of OM that go SK there is a lot of items sold from estates. A lot of it is homemade. Not always the best looking. But those items have a story if you know the OM personally. Without the story it's worth almost nothing.
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| A few years ago they displayed one. But it seems there is a whole family. |
Well we had a great time and with this being the biggest hamradio market left in the northern part of my country I guess we will go there next year as well.
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| A lot of vintage stuff as well. Notice the coil sets they used in radios 100 years ago. |
It seems not every contact has been picked up by PSK reporter. But it is a nice overview of the propagation on 6m and 4m. the 4m band briefly opened, dark red spots are on 4m.
At the left the J.H. Bunnell Triumph steel lever key. Date of manufacturing unknown but I guess it is somewhere between 1920-1950. The circuit close switch for telegraph use is missing or was never there? The wooden board is grey and stamped CAKU 26032, the same number is engraved in a aluminium plate around the cord. The cord was old and insulation gone and connector was a 6,3mm jackplug. I decided to replace the cord and jackplug for a smaller 3,5mm one which I use here in my station. It was time to clean everything...
A fun procedure and a lot of work to clean and polish everything using an old toothbrush and some brass polish. The result is a nice and shiny key.
At the time I was ready with the key I was on a short vacation. So I had no transmitter brought with me and if I did I wouldn't have the time to test it. It took some weeks before I was able to finally make a short video from the key in use making a contact. It is not the best ever video but it gives an impression. Personally I think the key is working very well, it feels good and is very light in use. However if you don't like the "clicking" sound it makes this is not the key for you ;-).
Watch me working SX20RCK on 17m.
I've been searching for information about this key on the internet. I found that J.H. Bunnell & Co does still exist and even has a own website:
http://jhbunnell.com/bunnellcohistory.shtml
Jesse Bunnell is the inventor of the steel lever key. An interesting article about the history of the Triumph key can be found here:
https://www.telegraph-history.org/bunnell/
I got another J.H. Bunnell key which doesn't have a steel lever. It might be older. It is slightly different apart from the lever which is brass on this model. It also has another knob and is not mounted on a wooden base. This will be the next project. So if you have any other information about this "older" key, please let me know.
PD5L has a detailed page about the equipment described above:
https://pd5l.home.blog/brick-2-14-bit-sdr-transceiver/
ON7OFF has everything about the Thetis software on his channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@ON7OFF
I very nice implementation of a Hermes Lite 2 and Thetis in the video below...
I came across this one: https://fritzsche.github.io/WebMorseRunner/. Works well. It is not the only one on the internet. And I'm certainly not the only one wrting about it. But it was a lot of fun using this. I will add it to my dedicated CW page.
Ik keep on going with training on LCWO. Plain text training with 25/22 wpm is still hard but goes better, have done 305 attempts now. Word training (abbreviations used in CW QSOs) at 30/30 wpm almost every time 100% correct.
Hardest is still the lessons 5 mixed characters in rows for 1 minute at 25/20 wpm. I did well till this week.
I made some QSOs this month but have a different strategy. I'm still not able to decode a CW QSO faster as 10-12 wpm,. But most operators are calling and make contacts on a much higher speed. I don't want to wait for an operator that keys on a suitable speed for me and hate to ask everyone to QRS for me. I want to make QSOs on CW as well but not being familiar enough with the "lingo" it is almost impossible if I want to do it only with hearing and decoding it in my head. I just miss too much of the code and panic. So I have CW skimmer to back me up. It helps a lot. I try to decode most of it with my ears and head but if I loose it I can read it at the skimmer screen. Keying of course always by hand. This way I don't miss it when someone is asking me something and I can answer like it should be. It also builds confidence this way. I'm shure at a certain point in the future I can do it all with my head. But for normal QSOs I will do it like this for now. By the way CW skimmer is not always reliable, especially not when a straightkey is used. Luckily straightkey keying is most times below 20 wpm so I can still decode by myself at least most of it.
Talking about straightkeys, I bought a box full of those keys from the estate of PA3BCB Gerard (SK) a while ago. It also includes a homemade single lever key a keyer and some militairy keys. The keyer has been used at the CWops CWA course. I want to check and clean the keys one by one. Of course the results are published on this blog once and a while.
This was a tough one. I got a lot of atmospheric and other interference on 60m during the longer daylight days we have now. The QSO almost happened yesterday evening but I didn't get a RR73 and was not in the log. Luckily it happened today. Receiving FT8 with such low signals is only possible with JTDX, I don't think WSJT-X is able to do that. I had SWL mode on with 3 decoding cycles. This helps a lot during such bad conditions.
I got the message that fellow CWops CW intermediate course participant PA8E Jim has passed his CW exam last weekend. You can read his adventure here: https://pa8e.nl/morse-certificate/
I never fully understood how to get "CW included" on your license here in my country. Since you can't do any CW exams here in my country. I knew there was a way going to Belgium for the exam. When passed the exam ask for a "CW included" on your license showing your CW certificate to the Dutch authorities. But how? My assumption was always that you needed at least do the CW exam for 12 wpm. But it seems that it is not needed. If you passed the exam with 5 wpm it is enough. However 5 wpm is not really 5 wpm but 5/12 wpm, so it is a little faster. Not expected but I learned that besides the 26 letters/10 numbers you need to know the questionmark, the slash and 6 prosigns. The prosigns are BT, AR, AS, BT, HH (error correction) and SK.I've listened a example soundfile and dicovered that they used a lot of QSO elements in the text. Like QRG, TEMP, CQ, PSE, 73 etc. This makes it easier of course, though you don't know when those words will appear... You also need to write while decoding, I've tried this and found it difficult. I'm used to typing in LCWO and writing while decoding needs another mind setting. Something I should train more often.
With this info in my mind and now written here in my blog I might do the exam some year in the future. The CW exam in Belgium is only held once a year.
It has been a long time ago that I did some WSPR tests. Since I still got the 160m inverted-L up I wanted to do some range test with 1W WSPR.
Below the stations that reported me. No DX but not that bad.
Rig: IC-7300 @100W
Antennas: Inverted-L (160-40m), Inverted-V (80-40m), 10m LFA beam, 3-band experimental Halo V2.0 (20-15m), Gainmaster 1/2 wave (10m).
I have been looking at my last years effort in this contest. Last year was on top of the solar maximum and way better compared to this year. Not that there was no DX, but the signals were weak at times and it was a struggle to get a contact. I didn't even manage to make a decent pile-up on 80m, something I never experienced before. Sometimes I wondered if my antenna was still up? I did build my inverted-L for 160m again before the contest and made some 160m QSOs again this year. I used my contest call PA6G which might be not a good choice in a WPX contest as most contest stations here use PA6 as prefix. PE4 is more unusual and will show up as a new multiplier for many. I wonder if this choice has an effect on the total score. There was almost no propagation to the USA/Canada on 10m this year, I did make some contacts but it was only 2 or 3.
Well, I can complain about the propagation but there was a lot of DX that could be worked all over the world. Especially the 10m and 15m were interesting and some of the really interesting DX stations have been worked on 2 or 3 bands. Some examples are: HD8R Galapagos Isl. 40,15,10m - 9J2RO Zambia 15, 10m - S21WD Bangladesh 20,15,10m - 3W9A Vietnam 20, 15, 10m - ZM4T New Zealand 20, 15m - VL4A/VK4A 20, 10m. Not very often I manage that.
I started Saturday morning on 160m and 80m, propagation on 80m was very reasonable and a lot of USA could be worked on 80m. With every contact counting for 6 points the score was quickly building. After 80m closed I gave 40m a try and worked some nice DX, then up to 20m which opened to Australia, I moved to 15m to hear some DX on the band. KL5DX from Alaska had a good signal with the usual polar flutter. But it was hard to get through. After a long time calling I catched his attention in a quiet moment. It took several tries and a lot of patience, certainly the most difficult DX I made this contest. His comment was priceless: "Can't believe I pulled it out, thanks for hanging in there". But at least we made it. Up on 10m it was only opening just before the afternoon, signals building but weak. Although some stations were very strong like S09S from Western Sahara, but the pile up was huge and I didn't make it. Sometimes you really need to go on and work others instead of hunting the same station for too long. In between I saw ZD9BV spotted on 10m CW, so I quickly changed mode and plugged my Begali keyer in. A few moments later I made the contact. I've worked ZD9BV before but not on CW. 10m opened late in the evening to the real DX. Worked HQ9, J62, TO7 and HK1 all in a row.
Green=160m, Purple=80m, Blue=40m, Yellow=20m, Brown=15m, Pink=10m, White=Multiple bands
And the CW quest goes on...
During the CWOps CWA Intermediate course I had trouble getting CW into the mike with the keyer of my IC-7300. During the video meetings my CW had some echo sound and it was difficult for the others to read. I still had an old K1EL keyer from the estate of PA3BCB. Had to find out how it should work. In the end I found some documentation and a power supply. I got the thing working but the sound was not too loud. I didn't want to dismantle to whole thing to solder the sounder off the printboard to extend or amplify it. So I drilled a hole just above the sounder and took a stiff hose which I put into the hole. At the other end of the hose I mounted a half part of an fuel filter to amplify the sound a bit. Then I put that on the mike as you can see. Everyone was happy now and this is how I transfered my CW sound into the mike for the video meetings.
One of the team members OY1R Regin has been visiting me years ago. I really hope to work him on CW or SSB on this DXpedition. But the chance to do that will not be very high I think.
I heard 3Y0K on 20m SSB yesterday, they had a good signal. But the pile-up was huge, so I kept listening. Most times working a DXpedition like this is just waiting for the last days of it, when most big stations have worked them and the smaller ones like me get a chance. I hope for a CW or SSB contact but for insurance a FT8 contact will do. So I heard them on 15m FT8 this evening, quite strong but unable to get in the log. I switched over to 20m FT8 and found them with a real strong signal and 5 or 6 streams. My S-meter was on about S7 in peaks, which is really strong. I decided to call them but had to leave the computer since other chores were calling. Suddenly my phone went crazy as others saw 3Y0K calling me and warned me with messages. I switched over to remote on my phone and saw that 3Y0K gave me a report but no RR73. So I went upstairs in my shack and changed my calling frequency slightly. I called again and...
