My quest to learn CW (8)

 

I'm still at 28/11 wpm. For those that didn't read my previous posts. The letters are send with 28wpm, the real speed is 11wpm due to some extra spacing between the letters. Still this is very hard. It actually is way too fast for me but I'm trying to push the limits. Some days I'm better compared to others. I keep practising everyday, progress goes very slow.

In the mean time, thanks to PA4O Peter,  I found another nice program to do callsign training. It also has a kind of highscore list. It's called CW freak and can be downloaded here: https://web.ji0vwl.net/cw_freak_net_e.html

It's nice to push a little harder every time. I'm shure I will get better in time...

Finally SuperHound

 

Heard a lot of complaints about the new superfox mode. Lots of trouble when there is QRM on the fox frequency. So far I did not hear K8R anywhere although I was very curious about this new superfox transmission. I got a tip from PB7Z today that K8R had a big signal on 15m. So I thought I give it a try. I quickly installed the newest WSJT-X beta version (rc6) and gave a couple of calls. You see, third time it was no problem at all. K8R indeed had a big signal here on the experimental squalo.

3BMOX antenna overhaul (1)

 This 3 band "7 element" yagi has an important advantage. It has no coils or lineair loading. It is full size with a moxon as the 20m part.

This antenna would do quite good in my tower. However, I find it too big and too heavy (20kg). But I would like to see how things are constructed and do an overhaul because some parts seem to be damaged and/or worn. I started with cleaning everything today since the color of most of the parts were brown and green and that was no paint!

I quickly took this photo after the cleaning. It started to rain so no further progress was made. I found a heavily worn tube which I will replace. Like the previous EA VHF 3 band antenna I rebuilt there are parts made from POM which are getting brittle. Moxon isolators seems to be glasfiber which was not protected by tape, coating or paint, they seem to be usable but I wil certainly wrap them with tape. Hopefully the weather will improve a little this summer...