Listen with your eyes closed.

 

Way back in high school one of my classes was band class, now this was not brass band but strings and wood wind. I was a cello player and very much enjoyed it but when it was time to sign it out to practice at home I had wished I picked the flute....I digress....What does the cello have to do with ham radio? Well back when I was in band class part of our testing was to listen to a recording of an orchestra playing and identify as many individual instruments as we could. Simple with violin, double bass, cello and clarinet. But the Oboe, Bass and E-flat Clarinet, Bassoon, Contrabassoon and then the Viola. Our teacher told us to close our eyes as we listened and it would make things much easier and over time it did. 

So you ask again what does this have to do with radio? For the past 6 months I have been on a mission to build up my copy speed of Morse code. I really did not like the code and had to learn it and I say "had too" because when I first went for my ham ticket the code was a requirement. I learned the code back then to later forget it once I obtained my ticket. 

I have come full circle to respecting and admiring the skill of Morse code. I worked very hard to learn the code and it's very true if you don't use it you loose it. I had lost it over time but in my mid 50's I started again to learn it and wanted to master it....have not got there yet but the challenge keeps me sharp. 

I am focusing on contest Morse code and my next challenge will be a higher speed QSO Morse code. I am at the point now (35-38 wpm contest code) that as my practice contest code programs spill the code at me I find myself typing the letter or number and looking at the screen on the PC to see if it's correct and then listen for the next letter. At 36-38 wpm looking at the letter to confirm is not an option I end up missing letters and not getting the call sign or exchange correct. 

Now at this speed of code I strongly recommend proper home row touch keyboarding and not hunt and peck the letters and numbers. As mentioned in a past post thank goodness in school I took typing and am able to touch type. As I struggled to hit the 35-38 wpm mark I remembered my music teacher...."close your eyes and listen" I did just that and my rate of copy went from 70% up to the 90's. I don't keep my eyes closed all the time and I feel it's just really helping me to concentrate on the rhythm of the letters and numbers. 

To close your eyes and listen sure does the trick for me.

A pleasing Tuesday afternoon on the bands.

The bands seem to be improving and it's a nice thing to see. Today I flipped the switch on in the early afternoon. I also loaded DX Heat a site that is my go-to as it lets me know what's going on in and around the bands. There were some nice dx spots on 15m and I thought I would spin the dial over to 15 meters in the CW section. The first station I tuned in was TZ4AM in Mali and Jeff was working split but with (that I could hear) not much of a pileup. I listened to his receive frequency (my calling frequency) to find out who he was working and how he was either moving up or down the frequency. I very soon got the hang of his operating and I called him and was in the log in no time. He gave me 569 and returned with 559 signal reports. 

A little further down on 15m I heard 7X3WPL in Algeria. I checked out the call on QRZ.COM and this is a very active club called Sahara DX radio club. I gave them a call and I think they were not working split (can't remember) but there was a bit more of a pile-up. I decided to come back in a little while and see if things had calmed down. I came back about 5 minutes later and the log jam had cleared. I worked 7X3WPL and we exchanged signal reports. 

I then came across another Algerian station 7X4AN he was calling CQ with no answers but he was just above the noise floor so I put the APF on (audio peak filter) and this helped out a great deal. I gave him a call and we did some repeats but contact was made and he was in the log. After my contact, he was spotted and the pileup began. It was good I got in when I did. 

I also had CN8KD in Morocco booming in on 15m he was operating simplex and had a huge pileup. I did give it a go here and there but the number of stations calling him made it a waste of time for me to sit there and try. I moved on but he had a great signal at my QTH. 

DX Heat was also showing 10m to be pretty active. Now up to this point, I have seen many spots for 10m and when I have always tuned there at my end it is just plain dead, no signals at all. This time there was a spot for 7Q6M in Malawi. To my surprise, he was there and with a signal of S7! He was operating split and I could hear some of the stations trying to contact him but not many. I did try a few times but no luck but just hearing some DX on 10m was a huge step! 

Well, that was my afternoon on the radio. I was using my Icom 7610 at 100 watts into a multi-band End-Fed antenna about 30 feet off the ground. All contacts were CW with filter settings at 250 and now and then using the APF. Having the 2 independent receivers in the 7610 is a great help. I have VFO A in my left ear and VFO B in my right. When operating split it's a great help to hear both sides.

There was life on the CW portion of the bands from 19:00-20:00 UTC!

20m at 19:10 during the CWops 1 hour contest

 

With the increase in sunspots and rising flux comes some solar flares and the Kp-index will have it's ups and downs. This afternoon the Kp index up was up to 5 and 6 and that does not my Mike the ham a happy person. Now having said that right in the middle of the high Kp index the bands at 19:00 UTC came alive! It was the weekly running of the CWops test, a one hour contest. Before the contest 20m was dead and at 1900 UTC life was brought to the band. Stations from Canada, U.S and Europe warmed up 20 meters to a nice glow. It's great mini contests like these happen as it shows some action on the bands. 

Another great CW contest is the K1USN SST CW contest this contest happens on Fridays at 20:00-21:00 UTC and Monday 00:00-01:00 ( which for most of us is still Sunday evening) This contest is not one of speed but slower. You will find operators sending from 10 wpm to 20 wpm and if you are not sending at 10 wpm then speed is slowed to match your speed. These are nice contests that only asks for 1 hour a week and it can get  your feet wet with contesting. 

RAC Winter contest.

 The RAC Winter contest is in the books and my second contest where I was running and not S&P.  The propagation numbers took a big leap in the right direction before and during the contest. I did find that even with the good conditions there was steep QSB on 20 and 40m. 

I find this more of a relaxed contest compared to the international contests. Most of the time, CW speeds were a bit slower. When someone you know makes contact, there is time to say thanks and 73. Speaking of someone you know, I had the pleasure of John AE5X a blogger I follow contact me, and we had the opportunity to send pleasantries to each other. Thanks for the contact John. 

I found there was the early contest jitters, but I did settle in a bit sooner  compared to the other contest. One take away was to NEVER try drinking coffee while calling CQ! Thought I had this calling CQ thing down, I decided to have a drink of coffee as the PC was belting out RAC DE VE9KK. While in mid-sip of coffee, the radio went to receive and a nice multiplier station was coming back to me! In a rush to put the coffee down my elbow was banged, coffee all over the keyboard and multi station gone! 

Overall, a great time was had. 

A keyboard is a keyboard..........but is it?

As frequent readers of my blog, you know my interest in contesting, and specifically CW contesting. Just a few weeks ago, for the first time, I called CQ in a contest and was running for the entire contest. I had a great time and also a time of growing. As with all bloggers, we have different keyboarding levels. To be a blogger, you have to be somewhat of a typist. There are single finger, two-finger and home row typists. There is a saying "mom knows best" and well in grade 7 I was not so sure about that saying. You see, I had what was called in school a spare period. It was a time slot with no class, and really it was my first one ever, and I planned it as a rest time. Well, mom knows best, and she had to sign off on my spare period and well she had other plans for me. 

She looked at my school timetable and the available classes for my so-called spare period. She found a class that fit right into the spare period time slot..........TYPING.....yup that's right typing! With my mom it's not a suggestion.....it's "your taking typing, and you will end up thanking me for it one day" I went to school in the '70s, and you know how many guys were in typing class.........ME! 

In I went and well there was a positive note and that is it was a great place to meet girls anyway I digress.  The first thing I noticed was you can't look at the keyboard to find the letters as there were no letters to be found, the keyboard was blank. To make a long story short I learned about something called home row and I can still hear the teacher calling out "AAA   BBB    EEE" and so on. I have to admit that yes, mom knows best, and I took 2 semesters of typing class. It made my university years way easier for term papers and so on. 

Fast forward to now......getting a blog post together runs along very smoothly, BUT who would have thunk that my CW contest would benefit as well? I found that when I was running in a CW contest, having the ability to not look down at the keyboard was a bonus. I can hear the calls or exchange and just look at the PC screen and enter the information. 

Here is the catch........ I can type, and my speed is ok for blogging, but typing a call sign and then an exchange at 25-34 WPM takes practice. In the past I felt keyboard was a  keyboard right ?? Well, I found over time, frustration and trial and error that all keyboards for contesting anyway are not alike. 

The keyboard of choice for the longest time was the wireless Logitech k830. It was a smaller keyboard that had a mouse pad. The keys had a soft touch, meaning not much pressure was needed when typing. Also, the keys were close together therefore no ambidextrous finger moves to hit certain letters were needed. 

When practicing with this keyboard for CW contest call sign copying at slower speeds it was good but up around 25 WPM, I found myself hitting two keys at once a lot. At 25 WPM when this happens you lose track of the next letters coming at you, and it can get frustrating.  The Logitech keyboard is not going to cut it. 

I went through my PC junk box and found a keyboard called Adesso this was a small keyboard as well, but with much firmer keys that were raised a bit higher than the Logitech keyboard. I gave this one a go and yes I was not hitting two letters at once but when the CW speed increased again there were issues but again. With firmer keys, I needed to give an extra effort to press each key and at higher CW speeds it just took too much time to enter the needed info from a contact. Once you miss a letter, your concentration is removed from the CW program and  to the keyboard and hence calls and exchanges are missed. 

I have heard it said that most times the solution is right under your nose, and you just can't see it. This was the case with the perfect keyboard. My wife was working from home during the height of the pandemic, and for some time that has not been the case. Her company PC has sat ideal at home for some time now along with a KEYBOARD! It was a full size keyboard, much different from my other go-to keyboards, but I thought I would give it a go. This keyboard is a Lenovo Pro 2 and when she requires it again I have already scoped them out online. I am thinking I will purchase one as a New Years gift for myself. 

I have been using it for about 2 weeks now, and it's amazing, the keys are the right height and key sensitivity is spot on as well. Not only that, but I am having no issues copying calls and exchanges around 33-35 wpm.  So no, a keyboard is a keyboard is not true. I found that it's a personal thing and once you get the right keyboard for you, it sure can make a differance ....in contesting anyway. 

I can't believe I did it!!

The hills are alive with the sound of music....well you get the idea. 

This past weekend, as most of you may have known or seen, the bands were alive with a CW contest, all except the WARC bands. The annual running of the CQWW CW contest was in full swing for the entire weekend.  I try to take part in most of the large CW contests, and this one was not exempt. In this contest, for the first time EVER, I did not operate search and pounce. (search and pounce meaning searching out stations in the contest who are calling CQ and trying to contact them) I was for the first time ever a running station. (run, meaning you sit on a frequency and call "CQ contest" and wait for stations to contact you)  I CAN'T BELIEVE I DID IT.....

For those of you who are not into CW contesting when you are running (for me anyway) it's a big deal, and you have to  be on your CW game. You send out your call sign (for me at 26-28wpm) and wait for the grease to hit the fan and at times it did!  Below is how it feels to be a first-time CW running contester. 

Before I begin with the adventure, just a little background. They say that preparation is the key, and that I worked on. Over time, getting my code speed up to copy around 30wpm.  Every day I practiced with programs such as Morse Runner and RufzXP.  These are both free programs and  excellent tools. I also downloaded the CWops intermediate CW course and worked through that each day.  I worked on my keyboard skills, so I am now able to copy calls without looking at the keyboard. This allowed me to concentrate on the contest program. 

Well here we go......first thing that occurred to me was a contest simulator and the real deal is very different! I was not sending code to a computer program but a real person, it's a hobby and all, but I was very nervous about the whole thing.  Out the code went, "TEST VE9KK VE9KK" I did this about 3 times and then a station came back to me........it didn't turn out as planned. 

I heard the code but my N1MM+ contest software was just met with my blank stare.  I heard the call again, and this time it was a full out fumbling act between reading the call and keyboard stumbling. Eventually the op just moved on to another running station.  Well, that was a bell ringer for sure! I took a deep breath and tried again, and this time it was worse. The next station came back to me in around 35 wpm, and I was clueless. This time I did not even attempt to answer them, they gave their call a few times and moved on. 

I decided it was time to go back to search and pounce and that contest running at this stage in the game was not for me. I took a little break from the contest with a walk, and once I got back to the operating desk, I began to search and pounce. After making a few contacts it occurred to me that  this was the first time I tried running in a contest and for sure there are going to be hiccups. Heck after all I just did not grab my first bike and started riding it, I had training wheels..........wait a minute training wheels! 

I took a deep breath and set my N1MM+ contest program back to running but this time I opened up a program called MRP40  an excellent code reading program. Now just wait a minute, I am not giving up and relying on a code reader......it's my training wheels and will be used when needed.  Well off I went again......"TEST VE9KK VE9KK" 

The contest is now in the history books and I did keep running throughout the contest except when I did some search and pounce for needed multiplies for a better score.  Midway through the contest, I started to loosen up and began to get the hang of things. Sure, I had op's get frustrated when I messed up their call and when I asked for repeats, some just moved on. 

Some highlights were: 

-The obvious one being, running for basically the entire contest. 

- Being spotted in the cluster and BOOM I'm not trying to work a pileup, I am the pile up. They were not huge pileups and did not last for long but exciting nonetheless. 

- Having the time fly compared to search and pounce where the time went slowly. 

- My highest number of contacts ever in a contest of 412 and my best score as well of  113,775.

- Depending less and less on MRP40's decodes. 

Some funny moments: 

- With N1MM+ you are able to program macros to send preprogrammed messages.  It's when my fingers press the wrong key and send thanks for the contact before the was made! 

- Finding out the hard way that the code reader is not always correct.  I copied a call in my head and then glanced at the code reader, I may have messed up on a letter. So I change it and low and behold my head was correct and MRP40 was wrong. 

- This has happened more than a few time......forgetting to change N1MM+ from search and pounce to run and send out the incorrect message. 

- Finding myself answering one call after another and sounding  to others that I have really pulled this off to only then totally screw up the next few callers.....the way the contest can humble me.

Finally, I want to apologize to those of you with whom I messed up your call or made your contact with me a bit painful. Then those who just gave up and moved on I hope next time things will be better.  

My ham radio adventure continues.

 

 Around this time last year, I registered for the CWops intermediate CW course. The CWops is a worldwide group of radio ops that support the operation of CW. On top of this, they want to help up-and-coming CW ops as well as those (like me) who want to improve their speed. As for me, I wanted to improve my speed and learn how to head copy morse code. For me, I found when receiving around  20wpm and up it's very hard to write things down and keep up with the conversation. 

So as I was saying last year around this time I applied to join the CWops intermediate CW class. With joining they ask for a commitment to 1 hour a day of practice time and once a week taking part in an online zoom style class time. I was accepted and as the time came near to begin the class COVID had my wife working from home. This meant our hobby room was also doubling as her office. This was a huge problem as she is always doing video conferencing as well as Webex phone calls. Her office hours were all over the map as she works with counterparts in many world time zones. I ended up cancelling my placement in the CWops class as I wanted to leave it open for someone who was sure they could dedicate the time needed. 

Well here we are a year later and my wife is now basically retired and I have lots around the house on the go but I still wanted to get my CW speed up and nail down this head copy biz. I ended up going to the CWops website and downloading the study material and I made a commitment to set aside time each day and go through the drills, studies and practice..... but on my own. I am happy to say that I have been going full tilt for the last 18 days and things are coming along. 

I am now starting to get the head copy gig, not a hundred percent yet but I am on my way. My other goal is to get to the point that in a CW contest I can start calling CQ contest and not have to search and pounce for contacts. My issue with not calling CQ contest at this point is I feel my CW speed is not up to par. I feel that I will just be a frustration to other operators in the contest who are trying to complete a contact with me. 

Here is a link to the CWops website. Pay them a visit and look around at the links even if your not interested in moving up the CW speed ladder. You can learn CW with them or pick up some great links to other CW-related information. 

Well, I press on in my continual CW adventure! 

Part time radio weekend.

In Canada and the U.S. this is a long weekend (Labour Day Weekend) with Monday being a holiday.  I was able to spend a little time on the radio in the late afternoon a few days of the long weekend. I was able to spend a few hours on both Saturday and Sunday.  For the most part I spent my time on 20m CW and both days the bands seemed to not be too busy. As I spent some time on the radio I found the bands were not that quiet. It was deep QSB that was working its magic to drop an S9 signal just at or below the noise floor. 

Having a radio with a waterfall is a great advantage and my Icom 7610's waterfall came in very handy showing me a signal before they would fade away to nothingness. I heard 4X6FR from Israel calling CQ and I was surprised he did not have a pile up. I gave him a few calls but he answered other stations.  Not a problem I would just wait it out. This is where the QSB kicked in and within a very short time I found only static and no 4X6FR!  The 7610 has 2 independent receivers which is a great advantage. In this case with my headphones I listened for a reappearance of 4X6FR in my left ear or VFO B. The right ear VFO A was scanning other signals that appeared on the waterfall. Needless to say, the station from Israel never again showed up on the waterfall, but he was still out there as he was being spotted by U.S. stations on DX Summit. 

As time went on the best way to describe what I saw on the waterfall was "now you see them and now you don't" When I did tune on some DX and made contact it was touch and go to make a fast and simple RST exchange and if I felt lucky I added my name and location. I was pleased with my radio time and made contact with 4O4T in Montenegro, R5AF, SP6AEG, LZ305AI, IK5OPR and finally TZ4AM from Mali which was a new one for me. I saw him being spotted on 17meters and I decided to venture there as 20m was getting a bit slow. 

The spot indicated "up 1" which meant there was a pile up and he was operating split. I skipped over to 17 meters and then landing myself on his calling frequency just to make sure I could hear him before I got too excited. There he was at S6 and I knew I had to move fast as the deep QSB had robbed me a few times from catching nice DX. I set my radio to split and dual watch which allows me to hear the DX and those who are calling him. BUT strange thing no one was calling him and my waterfall was void of signals. It could be the QSB playing games with me. So when I heard him call CQ I put my call out and he came back to me on my first call. TZ4AM was in the log and I was happy. Very shortly after the contact the deep QSB took the signal from the waterfall. 

It's Monday today and I was busy getting some household chores done throughout the day. Maybe this evening I will be back on the radio and see how 40m treats me. 

ARRL international CW contest.

The bands were alive with CW today even with the not-so-great-sounding solar forecast. 

 

Parks on the air or POTA

 I toddled into the radio room this afternoon and flipped on the radio and most of the time I have my PC on and head over to DX Summit spotting network to see what's happening on the bands.  I did notice right off the bat the RTTY contest was up and going fast and furious. I did notice some spots for POTA (Parks on the air) I headed over on my PC to the POTA website to see how many active POTA stations there were. I found some that were operating CW and I spun the dial to see if I could hear anything. I first tried KD3D he was in Allegany National Forest in the state of PA. He was around 559 coming into me and I gave him a call and was answered on the first call. We made our exchange and he was in the logbook with that I thought I would give a few other POTA stations a go. 

I saw K4SWL was spotted and the call rang a bell so I looked him up and he has I blog that I follow and read regularly.  I followed him around as he moved from band to band but I just could not hear him and if I did he was way down in the noise floor. I did hear other stations calling him and sending their reports. I did not want to try a call if I was not able to really hear him. 

I then went after AI6ZD who was in California on Bolsa Chica State Beach.....it's -18 C here and just to think here is a ham on the beach in sunny California. Sometimes I feel the U.S/Canada border should have run north to south and not east to west! AI6ZD signal was down at the noise floor but now and then he jumped up to about S5. I hung on for a while and his signal slowly crept up and I was able to make contact and get him in the log. 

I then noticed K4SWL was on 80m and I thought that could be my chance to make contact but it was not meant to be for today. 

Do you remember your first?

 

I was doing some cleaning around the house the other day and came across a QSL card of the very first contact I made.  It was June 6th, 1989 and I was pounding out CQ with my Bencher BY-1 Iambic paddle. I had a script all made up with a step by step CW QSO contact information. As I very well remember things did not go as planned.  I now know I just was experiencing what any new green CW op would experience. I was listening to the code that was being sent and writing it down on paper but then I missed a letter and started to concentrate on the missed letter. This meant I missed even more code and was lost in no time. I had to do I mental reset and carry on. At some points, I fell into the bad habit of counting dits and dahs and not hearing the rhythm again it was panic setting in. When it came time to send I wanted to for some reason send just a bit faster than I was receiving well that did not work out too well when I was receiving and the code was coming back at me just a bit faster! While on the subject of sending I did find myself messing up letters and having to send words again. Then frustration set in which made it worse, but I did complete the QSO. As stressful as it may have seemed I was thrilled and could not wait for my next contact. 

At that time my station setup was the Icom IC-745 it was second hand but I loved it and had served me for many years.  My antenna was the Crushcraft R4 vertical antenna which for my location was the best solution. I did not own the house I was living in so a tower and beam were out of the question. Also, the lot was small so no room for ground radial. The R4 answered my needs as it did not need ground radials and had a very small footprint. As stated earlier I had the Bencher BY-1 key.

Can any of you remember your first contact and the gear you were using at the time? 

CQ WW CW 2020 contest is on the books!

 This past weekend was the CQ WW CW contest which if I can I always partake in.  This year I made it a point to set aside the time to indulge.....well I'm retired now so it's really not all that hard to set the time aside. But this time around it was going to be a toss-up whether the monitor troubles I was having were going to give me issues.  In a nutshell, if the monitor was turned off it was a 50/50 chance I could be greeted with a black screen. If that was the case I then had to play around starting and restarting the PC and turning the monitor off and on to get it working again. My solution was during the day when I took a break from contesting was to leave the PC and monitor on. This seemed to work very well and it was only when the PC was turned off at night did I only have one time with issues trying to get the monitor up and working. 

 I was really looking forward to seeing how the new upswing in the solar conditions treated me with my 100 watts of power into a mediocre Endfed antenna. I did have plans to hit the airwaves on Friday evening but Julie and I decided to have a date night COVID style at home with a home-cooked meal and a movie. On Saturday and Sunday, I was able to spend a good amount of time in the operating chair. The new solar conditions made the contest a pleasure!

 There was really no dead bands from 10m to 80m in my case. The highlight for me was making contact on 2 occasions with Hawaii both times on 15m. There were other possible opportunities with some exotic places but the pile-up was that of a DXpedition. I did not want to waste valuable time to make or not make the contact. 

It was a pleasure to see 10m meters open and it had me rope some contacts in South America and Europe and well as the U.S. I also gave 80m a shot as I can use my external tuner  (AT200Pro II) to get a decent SWR. This opportunity netted me some U.S contact points. 

My score for sure is not going to be in the CQ WW CW record books but I really enjoyed this contest and the propagation brought even more joy and really had me staying in the radio chair to make contacts. 

Below is the score breakdown: 

Contesting at QRPp levels!

Yesterday I dabbled in the OK/OM DX CW contest for about an hour and a half. This time for some fun and interest I entered QRP level but lowered my power to just one watt. Propagation has been surprisingly nice over the past week or so and I wanted to give the new solar flux a test run. My radio is the Icom 7610 and my antenna is a slopped Endfed antenna at about 25 feet. I stayed on 20m as the radio gods seemed to be smiling on me there. I made only 10 contacts as I was not in the contest for scoring just to see how the fishing was with one watt. I was only asked for repeats regarding my exchange twice other than that the 1 watt made it through. 

Because I was operating at only 1 watt I also wanted to take the loss of my SWR into account. I checked with my antenna analyzer and the CW portion on 20m my SWR was 2.3:1. According to the power loss at various SWR readings chart at 2.3:1, I was in around 15% so this took my 1 watt down to 850 milliwatts. 

Below are the results of my QRPp contest efforts: 

Band     20m 

QSO     10

Score    300

Contacts and Miles per watt using grid square to grid square for millage  

1. OM7M        3720 miles  4376 miles per watt at .850 watts. 

2. OM3CGN    3795 miles 4464 miles per watt at .850 watts.

3. OL3Z           3515 miles  4135 miles per watt at .850 watts. 

4.OK7K          3503 miles 4121 miles per watt at .850 watts.          

5. OK1DOL    3478 miles 4091 miles per watt at .850 watts. 

6. OK5Z         3601 miles 4236 miles per watt at .850 watts. 

7. OM7JG       3773 miles 4439 miles per watt at .850 watts. 

8. OM5ZW     3755 miles  4418 miles per watt at .850 watts 

9. OK1RI        3462 miles 4072 miles per watt at .850 watts. 

10. OM2VL    3714 miles 4369 miles per watt at .850 watts. 

CWops club

CW ops in action

Greetings to all my blog readers I think it's safe to say that a majority of you 6 months ago never thought we would be where we are today! Life is so fragile along with our environment my hope and prayer is that all of you stay safe. I am so thankful that up to this point Julie and I are doing just fine without any COVID 19 issues. I'm retired so I can stay at home and Julie is an essential service and has to go to work but she may be able to work from home soon. I am so so so thankful that I have a pension income and that Julie is still working my heart and prayers go out to those who I can't even for a second imagine what you are going through. To all the essential workers such as medical, grocery store, pharmacy, truckers, call centres, the essential trades, border patrol, military, firefighters, EMS, police, public transit and please forgive me if I missed your type of work that helps the wheels turn during this time. Thank you thank you very very much!

Ham radio is a very good way to pass the day and I was thinking today how ham radio can play a key roll in this time we are in. My radio time was very simple yesterday basically turn on the radio and see what is going on out there. My wife works these crazy shifts and Friday is never Friday and for the next 6 weeks, our Friday is Tuesday. So we both just say thank god Friday is coming and when it's it's actually Tuesday so when it's Wednesday it's our Saturday. Having said that yesterday when I flipped the radio on and 20m was dead and I thought why is it dead on a Saturday........WRONG it's really Wednesday.

All of a sudden the band became very busy with CW traffic and I was not sure what was going on so I ventured over to WA7BNM contest page which is a fantastic site for contest goings-on. It turns out from 1300 -1400 it was the CWops mini CWT contest and WOW was it ever busy.

The CWops or CW operators club has only been around since January 2010 and according to there website now have over 1000 members and I would think that to date it's more than that. Even more exciting is that in 2012 the CW academy was founded within CWops. The CW academy is for those who are interested in learning code to those who want to improve their speed and then at the top end those who want to head copy the code! CWops also have a morse code trainer page this is a very detailed page and I can only imagine the hours that were put into its creation. With the spare time that has been unexpectedly placed upon our lives and if your interested in morse code or want to improve your code the CWops page is the place to go. I have enrolled in their intermediate coarse and opted to start in the fall as I am not sure I can put the time aside that is needed during the summer. 

Taking steps forward.

My last post of December had to do with some goals I wanted to get working on in 2020. It's now 2020 and as has happened to me in the past I soon will be looking back on 2020 seeing my goals worked or did not work out. One of my goals was to improve my CW and get involved with the CWops CW academy program. At this point in time, my code is not to my satisfaction. On the internet, the other day I came across a very interesting document entitled " Improving Morse code proficiency Tricks of the Trade Overcoming common problems". The author of the document is W0UCE.
He highlights 12 common problems and how to overcome them so please if you want to improve your code read over the document and see any issues come to light.
Of the 12 common problems, I was able to identify with 6 and they were:

1. Anticipating what is being sent. This is done when you copy with a pencil and paper and copy one letter at a time and not by the rhythm of a word. For example when you hear someone calling CQ most of us don't write down the letter C and Q. We know the rhythm of CQ and know the word. I have to learn the rhythm of CW and not writing letters. Learn the code as a language.

2. The inability to copy behind. This was a new one for me I never really had heard of it. You hear one or two letters and let them float in your head once you hear the 3rd letter you write down the first and second letters. In the past, if this happened to me I would panic as I figured I was getting behind in the copying.

3. Unable to increase my speed. I hit a plateau and become frustrated. The suggestion is to increase the code you are receiving by about 2 wpm above your plateau speed.

4. Lack of confidence. This for sure has been an issue with me I have found once a contact gets rolling I can get lost because of some of the issues mentioned above. Once this happens I just want to pass along 73 and TU and end the QSO.

5. Not able to hear complete words. This is just done with the practice of copying complete words and not each letter.

6. Writing each letter as it is heard. This for sure is an issue with me. I find as the speed increases I just get lost as I can't write things down fast enough. I have tried using a keyboard as I can type very fast but I have found that at a certain speed the letters are coming at you so fast you get lost between hearing the letter and then transposing it to the keyboard key.

The bottom line from what I have been reading is I have to learn how to put the pencil and paper away and copy in my heard with just writing down selective information. I really believe it's retraining your brain on how CW is understood. I relate it too when I first was learning to type and when I was to type "the" I would type "t" "h" "e" but now I don't even think about it.......well it's more like I think it and it appears on paper. I am not even thinking of were my fingers are going on the keyboard. I have to train my brain this way regarding morse code.

 The CWops is a very popular program and spaces fill up fast and at this point in time, the class enrollment is for April/May or Sept/Oct. I am trying to see if the April/May works out for me. Until I am accepted into either time slot for the class I wanted to work on my code. So I am going to work on the above issues I have mentioned.

CQ WW DX CW contest 2019

No lack of action

The CQ WW DX  CW contest this weekend was the first contest as VE9KK unfortunately, most of Saturday and into the evening I was not feeling well at all. I gave the contest an off and on again effort during this time. Sunday was a very late start as I wanted to get my rest to get over this bug I had.  In summary, the weekend went as follows:

        Band     QSOs     Pts  ZN   Cty  Pt/Q
           7       6      18    3    5   3.0
          14      10      29    6   10   2.9
          21       2       5    2    2   2.5
       Total      18      52   11   17   2.9


            Score: 1,456

I found Sunday to be a tough one my signal was just not being heard and I am guessing it was just the propagation? The few times I was on the radio on Saturday I had no issues making contacts. Some of the bonus things here at VE9KK were:

- The new Astron power supply worked just fine. 

- I was able to work Europe on 40m which never happened at the old QTH with the MFJ 1788 antenna. 

- Speaking of antennas it was a joy to use the End fed antenna, I was able to change bands without returning. The magloop I used for so long had to be re-tuned on the same band and for sure on band changes. 

- On Saturday (when I was on) I was able to get into Europe, Central America and South America without issue. 

During my time on Sunday during the contest I was greeted with an on screen message that N1MM+ stopped working as it was not able to communicate with com3. Com3 is my CAT control for the Icom 7610 and in a nutshell, this meant I was having RFI issues with one or more of my USB cables. I thought I had solved this issue already with snap on chokes?? I had a fast glance at the snap on chokes an noticed some had "un-snapped". I shut things down and spent well over an hour to fix the situation once and for all!! More on that later this week in another post. I restarted the rig and software and did a few tests and I was good to go, but the bands did not seem to want to co-operate. Having said that the bands sure were alive with opportunity. I heard nothing from the south pacific or Asia. Overall, I had a great time while in the chair at the radio and am looking forward to other CW contests. 

A new "touch" paddle for the shack.

About a month ago I received a new morse code key, the 9A5N solid state CW paddle. I chose the all black twin lever model and from the get go Neno 9A5N was in contact with me. The paddle arrived from Croatia within 3 weeks of me ordering it. Most of the 3 weeks was the key being slowly moved through Canadian customs or it would had been here sooner. It was very well packaged and Neno advises that you keep the shipping box if ever you need to store the key for a move. The uniqueness of the solid state paddle are:
 
- No moving parts to ware or make a clicking noise.
- You just turn it off when not in use so no accidental dit's or dahs sent when inadvertently touching    the paddle.
- There is not maintenance (other than changing the batteries) no periodic mechanical adjustments.
- If you have owned a iambic key there really is no learning curve just turn in on and away you go.

The only adjustment that you may want to do is adjust the touch sensitivity with the key factory set at 10 grams and adjustable to 50 grams in 5 gram steps. Seeing this is a touch paddle depending on your "touch" you may want to increase or decrease the sensitivity. I seemed to be happy with were it was factory set to at 10 grams.

The nice thing about this paddle is it's not bang your head on the wall menu driven. What I mean by this is I have owned ham radio electronic devices that can drive you crazy with long and short holds of buttons and or combination button holds. Then there was the count the short and long beeps and so on. With the 9A5N paddle to adjust the sensitivity you simply turn the paddle on, then hold the on/off button in the on position until you are greeted with 3 LED blinks now release the button and your ready to adjust.Then simply touch the left paddle to increase and right to decrease. If you hit the top end (50 grams) or bottom end (10 grams) the LED will blink 3 times to let you know. To save and try a new stetting either wait 15 seconds or push the power button once.
The only other menu change you can do is place the keyer in contest mode and what this means is the keyer will not time out and turn off on you. Normally If you forget to turn the paddle off it will do so after 40 minutes of non operation.
To enter contest mode make sure the key is off then push and hold the on button until the LED flashes then release the button. So in a nut shell to adjust the key paddle touch sensitivity start with the key turned on and hold the power button. To put the key in contest mode (meaning it will not turn off on it's own) start with the key off and hold the power button. 
The key is very well made and the base is 1.8 kilo's so it's not going anywhere on your desk as you use it.
The last item I wanted to mention was yes it does take batteries (2 AAA) according to Neno's instructions the battery life should be up to 800 operating hours. The blue LED which is on during operation will indicate low battery life when it gets dim. So you do have an indication when its time to change out the batteries. Finally the paddle is warrantied for 24 months from date of purchase.

CW key dilemma

Well here we are it's almost the end of 2017 as I was out for a pint with my Ipad and looking at some of the blogs  I follow. I came across PE4BAS's blog and after reading his post I checked out the blogs that he follows to see what else was new in blog world. As I scrolled down I came across the blogs that have not posted in over a month. Low and behold there was VE3WDM.....it has been over 4 weeks since my last post!! I have to be honest this is not the first time I have gone for a month without posting. There was a time when I was posting twice a week and for sure once a week, since our move to Toronto I have not been on the radio as much as I would like. In the evenings  after dinner I just feel too tired to get on the radio. Anyway......I did get on the radio this weekend and found the RAC Canada Winter contest in full swing. I was not prepared to give the contest a full out go but I was able to make a leisurely 7 contacts. With my modest setup I was able to contact CW coast to coast in Canada and a station in France. What I like to do is have QRZ.COM going in the background on the computer as I make a contact I look them up and read about their station.

Some time ago I purchased a Begali Key, the Contour key. I have read lots about having a good key, of how it makes sending the code an art. I have to say that from day one the Contour key and I have had a love-hate relationship! The craftsmanship of the key is next to none as are all of the Begali keys. I am not sure if it's just this key or the contour keys but for way to long when ever I use this key I send extra dots and dashes or the spacing gets screwed up. I used to think it was just me and my sloppy fist until I did more portable op's and used the Mini Palm paddle.  I just never seemed to miss a beat with this paddle there was no extra anything and the code was very smooth all the time. I have contacted Begali and exchanged many emails about adjusting the key, cleaning the contacts on the key and spacing the contacts on the key. It just seems to be the same old frustration with the Contour key. When I got on the radio today for the RAC contest I started out with the Begali key and after sending some very simple but very embarrassing exchanges I switched to the Mini Palm Paddle and exchanges were sent with not one error. I would put the Begali key up for sale in a second but it has my call engraved in it. I still think nothing can be said for a good quality key but it seems the Begali Contour is just not for me.

I just can't believe the weather we are getting for it being half way through October. The temperature today was 22C with clear skies and just a gentle breeze off the lake. This is a great time to grab the KX3 and head out for some portable op's. I check the contest calendar to see what was happening in the way of CW contests. I found the NYQSO party and Worked all Germany (WAG) contest were going to be in full swing the same time I was out. I checked to see what the contest report was supposed to be, contesters can add lots of contacts to a portable op. I set up beside the lake (Lake Ontario) with a nice breeze and in the shade as the sun was out and I did not want to overheat. I made 20m my band of choice and it so happens that it was alive with WAG contesters. The band was in great shape and lots of German stations looking for DX stations to fill their log! I was using my Elecraft KX3 at 10 watts and my Chameleon mag loop antenna. I was set up in 10 minutes and on the air searching the band for contacts. I was on the air for about an hour and had the following contacts:
DF0DW           WAG contest
IQ1GE             DX calling CQ

DJ0SP              WAG contest
DL5HIA           WAG contest
DF8AA            WAG contest
W2RR              NYQSO party
DJ6OZ             WAG contest
DL0DA            WAG contest

As you can see the WAG contest dominated the bands and it turned out the NYQSO party participants were just not making it over the German WAG contesters. I did not include the signal reports in the above list as it was a contest so the standard 599 was sent. I knew I was no were close to 599 as the German stations asked on more than one occasion for a repeat.

NAQP CW contest.

On Saturday the NAQP CW contest was on and it's a great what I call "mini contest". For me it started at 2pm local time which is great as it allows me to get some things done before I get on the air. This is a 10 hour contest unless you are a multi-operator station then you can work  the full 12 hours. As I said the contest began at 2pm local time but I never got started until around 2:30 as I was BBQing lunch for Julie and I. I entered this contest as QRP and with it being basically a North American contest even with the propagation conditions being low there was lots of contacts to be made. Most of the code is sent at a decent contest speed but there were there those that were just pounding it out. I just skip by those and look for slower speeds (15-25 WPM) I find the time I take to figure out their call and exchange I could had made at least 2 other contacts, so I opt to make the other 2 contacts and let the high speed CW contester work those who can copy them. This year I only spent an 1.5 hours in the contest and netted 12 contacts. With my setup here at VE3WDM I'm thrilled to just get on the air and make some CW contacts. For this contest I used N3FJP's contest program and it was great, in the past I have always used N1MM+. Nothing against N1MM+ it is a great program and by no means did I stop using it because of any issues. I found N3FJP's contest programs easy to navigate since I have been using his logging program for ages. With my simpler station since I had moved I really don't need all the bell's and whistles N1MM+ has. So with my 12 contacts all on 20m my humble score was 120. I still submitted the score cuz you never know!!