AmateurRadio.com

Special event, “K3Y,” the Straight Key Century Club’s annual January celebration, commemorates the Straight Key Century Club’s founding in 2006 following the American Radio Relay League’s “Straight Key Night” (SKN). A small group of participants wanted to extend the fun of SKN throughout the year. The Straight Key Century Club (SKCC) is the result.

For the first three years, the club’s founders used the special event callsigns of K1Y, K2A, and K3Y as the celebration’s special-event calls. But, someone cleverly noticed that a ‘3’ is nothing more than a backwards, curvaceous ‘E’. This “KEY” event has operated under the special event callsign of ‘K3Y’, ever since.

The on-air party is open to members and non-members alike. It runs from 0000 UTC Jan. 2 through 2359 UTC Jan. 31. It’s a great time to introduce others to the joys of hand-crafted Morse code using straight keys, bugs, and side swipers.

In this video, you can “sit in” with NW7US, the control operator of the regional activation of special event station, “K3Y/0”, during one of the many shifts during January (2015).

+ The SKCC website is at http://skccgroup.com

+ The K3Y special event page is http://www.skccgroup.com/k3y/index.php

+ The NW7US website is at http://NW7US.us

+ Some more CW/Morse code resources can be found at http://cw.hfradio.org

See http://www.gqrp.com/

Many times before I have said that SPRAT is the last magazine I would give up if I had to. GQRP Club membership is very reasonable indeed and I highly commend it to you. They now sell a DVD which has the first 160 copies of SPRAT on it.   If you join the club, the DVD is very inexpensive plus you get the next 4 SPRATs with the subscription. SPRAT is always filled with good stuff and always plenty of projects to build.

Go on, join!

Why do I bother on 6m WSPR? Apart from G6AVK (78km) with whom I exchanged spots more than a week ago I have had no success at all on 6m WSPR out of the Es season.  I get plenty of success on 10m with less power.  I go on 6m WSPR because I can do so at the same time as being on 10m. I get far more success on 630m with an ERP of just 5mW. I think I am going to give up on the “magic band” until April or May. Maybe I really do need 100W and a big yagi up high in the sky to make the band “magic” at this time of the year. My 1W ERP from a V2000 vertical omni antenna just isn’t enough or maybe all the activity is on other modes?

Shack – operating position Jan 8th 2015

As many of you know, I had a cerebellum brain bleed in Sept 2013 which was operated on. I am steadily recovering, but my voice is still poor so I much restrict operations using voice modes for now.  The picture shows the operating position in my shack. As shown, I am using 500mW on 10m WSPR (WSPR-AXE-CW beacon) and 5mW ERP on MF WSPR via a homebrew transverter (just below the clock) and the earth-electrodes in the garden.  MF uses the PC and FT817 whereas the 10m beacon is tiny and needs no PC. The loading coil (above the power meter) is not used with the earth-electrodes. It is used when on MF when loading up miscellaneous other antennas. It is not in use at all currently.

When fit again, I intend to resume field experiments.

Not shown are any of the optical, 136kHz or VLF kit or the bench used for building. The latter is currently awaiting better health again.

My first ever RX outings on 2m were with a derivative of the CQ2 super-regen RX circuit from Practical Wireless back in the late 1960s. The very first signal I ever heard on 2m was G3VEH/P on Caradon Hill in Cornwall. I was located at Kingsbridge in South Devon. I used a small crystal earpiece and a 19 inch whip. The same receiver was later adapted with the addition of an RF amplifier in my Fredbox AM transceiver. These were the days when AM was still king on 2m. The best DX contacts with the 10mW Fredbox were impressive.

A few years ago, I rebuilt my Fredbox and had a few local QSOs on 2m AM. It still works well for something this small and simple. More details of the Fredbox are on my website. Follow the link above.

At the moment there seem to be several competing digital modulation schemes First there was ICOM’s D-star system, then C4FM from Yaesu, and of course DMR, which is gaining ground in the commercial PMR world.  There are even a few experimenting with TETRA, as used by the public services. Like Betamax and VHS, the best system may not win in the end.

At the moment, I am just not interested. I’ll wait to see who wins in the end. My bet is DMR will win in the end as there will be a plentiful second hand market from PMR. This will never be so with any proprietary system. DMR is an open standard, so there will be plentiful radios around and at decent prices before too long.

Hi All,

This is Bill direct from my hospital bed here in Los Angeles. As some of you many already know, I was involved in a household accident and am now in the initial recovery phase.

I do not know how long I will be here but I suspect it will be another week or two. During that time it will be hard to produce the weekly Newsline bulletins but we will resume operations as soon as feasible. But for now its just rest, take my medicines and recover.

My thanks to all for your good wishes and a very Happy New Years 2015 to all. Ill try to post here as time nd health permits.  In the meantime you can find late ham radio news posted by our moderators on our Amateur Radio Newsline page on Facebook