My quest to learn CW (30)

  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...

Concentrating on random letters + numbers + .?,/ codegroups doing lesson 40. Training goes up and down. Overall I get a score between 70-80%. Speed now is 28/20 wpm. I wish I could do this with a score of 80-90% but it doesn't happen. Today I'm at 156 attempts in 101 days. I guess te only thing I can do is going on. It will happen some day.

Plain text training and word training is more important. I see a slow improvement in the last weeks. With a speed now of  28/22 wpm I reach between 70-100% score. Depending of the words used. I pick up more and more words, also longer words like "never" and "over".

After 445 attempts I reached an average accuracy of 86,1%. I promised myself I will go up in speed (28/24 wpm) when I reach 90% average. Last month I was on 85,4% so the improvement is really slow but at least it happens.

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.

Beetsterzwaag radiomarket 2026

   I did notice I didn't write about this radiomarket (or in some parts of the world it's called radiofest or radiorally) for a few years. But actually I attend this every year. Since a few years with my colleague and fellow radioamateur PD8HW Herman. It's not about buying all kind of gear but more about the atmosphere and meeting old and new friends. And of course we met a lot of them and after all I missed some. Sometimes I didn't even know because I've never seen them before and we were so close and probably seen each other but didn't meet. This happened with Jim PA8E and PA3KL Kees both participants in the CWops intermediate at the start of the year. I also met some people from the Netherlands Telegraphy Club and had a nice talk with them.

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. 

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.

A lot of vintage stuff as well. Notice the coil sets they used in radios 100 years ago.

 

#6m #4m propagation last 24h @PE4BAS

 

 

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.

The Jesse H. Bunnell Triumph steel lever key

    First post of a series describing the morsekeys I got from the estate of PA3BCB Gerard. I bought a box full of keys as I wrote before in one of my posts. The plan is to restore and clean them one by one and then make at least one contact with each of them. 

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.

Hamradio future radio equipment?

   Sometimes I've the feeling I'm doing my hobby with outdated equipment. Yes the Icom IC-7300 is a SDR radio. But the options and configurations you can have and do on such a radio are limited. I've been writing before about Hamradio in the future in 2011, at that time a radio controlled by a tablet and with touch screen was a novelty.  I predicted that in the future radios would be much more configurable. PD2TW Tjip, a neighbourstation, did direct me to something I've not really seen before. Actually software SDRs are around for a time but it didn't interest me a lot. They were expensive, you needed a fast computer and a lot of time to configure everything. May be I have been sleeping but hamradio equipment has evolved! A very popular transceiver these days is a BRICK 2 SDR which is doing a great job together with software called Thetis and a Chinese made RS-928 150W solid state amplifier. If you have patience you can order some of these at the cheap AliExpress, Bangood or whatever sites and have a real bargain. You end up with an excellent 150W HF radio for under 1000 euro which is still much more capable and a lot cheaper as a IC-7300. With such a SDR you have a transceiver that has pure signal capabilities and two independent receivers. Obviously you need to connect it to a good fast computer with enough memory because the radio needs the computer to work. But then you have endless configuration possibilities with the Thetis software or similar. You can also remote control everything via internet with any phone, tablet or other computer. Since everything is configurable the software is updated regularly with new features for the SDR radio. If you like to tinker with these kind of radios it is really worth to figure things out.  Personally I don't like to tinker with endless configurations and tune ups till a radio works like you want. Am I getting old? Or bored? I don't know but I get the feeling this technology is too fast and complicated for me. But for others this is a way of enjoying the hobby with new things, features, possebilities.

Personally I prefer to get back to the basics of transmitting with a morsekey and CW without the use of any computer. I don't feel any magic watching and clicking on a waterfall and/or a computerscreen. Although I enjoy digital modes a lot and still use them to make contacts. But I also like to listen and wandering over the band just by turning a dial. I wonder how radio will evolve in the future? I've predicted this kind of radio 15 years ago. But don't clearly see what is coming in next 15 years. Will there still be "analog (SDR) equipment" or is it just a (cheap) black configurable box SDR you buy. What about you? What would you like in 15 years? What would you prefer? Is the SDR black box something that attracts you?

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...

#6m worked Burkina Faso

 

First 6m band new one of 2026. The season started...

Blogroll/bloglist maintenance

     Once in a while I do some maintenance on my blog. This time I have removed inactive blogs from my blogroll. Some well known blogs from operators like VK4DX, PH0NO, NY4G, PA0K, PA3HHO, PA1T. Some are still active on the air I guess but not posting anything in their blogs for a long time so I removed them. With some of them I had some nice interaction but time goes on I guess and interests move, fade away or life goes on another path. Blogging is not as populair as some years ago although my blog still attracts a lot of readers. If you know a good amateurradio blog well worth reading, which is not yet in my blogroll, let me know.

Online morserunner

 

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.

VERON request for temporary use of 40MHz in the Netherlands

     It has been a few years ago I wrote about 40MHz in the Netherlands. So far no one here has made a request to the local authorities to have a permit for 40MHz use, as far as I know. But now the VERON is researching to make a request for a temporary 8m band use. They will request 3KHz of space and a power of 5W ERP. I guess the 3KHz will be around the FT8 frequency used on 40MHz (40680KHz?). I'm not shure if and when the request will be made. I hope it will be this year. I'm really interested. It will give some new experimental opportunities.

Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8-meter_band