New to CW or looking to improve your skills? This easy 36 hour contest this coming weekend is a good place to stop by and make few contacts. If your at 2 or 22 words per minute, the other ops will usually match your speed. 
Check out https://www.skccgroup.com/ for the details abut the Weekend Sprintathon as well as other activities.
Hope to make a CW contact.
  73 de ve3fp

I made a wooden mic styled after a Kellogg candlestick mic. Walnut and Birch with a shellac finish and an electret cartridge. Anyone else making sawdust out there?
73 Don ve3ids

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There is one question you will rarely hear during a CW QSO: “How do you spell that?” CW (or Morse Code as it should be more correctly called) is always sent letter by letter, number by number, prosign by prosign. Unsurprisingly CW exposes spelling errors much more readily than SSB/phone just because of the way it is sent.

I first learned Morse Code when I was a kid. A neighbour and I would send messages to each other using flashlights. When I restarted my CW journey, as a ham, rather late in life, I was told that if I practiced hard enough I would eventually be able to hear whole words. I’m not there yet. In fact I’m not sure if I will ever be there. The logic of the premise defeats me. If we spoke to each other by spelling out the letters of each word I would find it very difficult to understand what somebody is saying.

When I first got my licence it was necessary to pass a Morse Code test in order to gain the privilege of working the HF bands. I attended a class run by an old-timer (now SK) who taught us the required 5 words per minute using the Farnsworth technique. This involves sending each letter at a much faster speed but with big gaps between letters. After a few weeks, as we gained proficiency, our instructor told us his good friend, a certified examiner, would be sitting in on the class to monitor our progress. And, to make us comfortable about eventually taking the test he would be conducting a “mock CW test” that evening. At the end of the evening we were told we had all passed the test and could now apply for our upgraded licences. A cute trick to get us over the nervousness of being tested!

Ah yes, nervousness! I still had to face the ultimate CW test of getting on the air and making a CW QSO. Would my brain freeze? Yes, and it still does sometimes. CW operators are notorious for bad sending, especially for trying to send too fast and running letters together. I remember being completely stymied by one op who kept sending “nag?, nag?”. Eventually I figured out he was asking me for my name. If you know Morse Code you will understand why.

We are currently in a very deep solar minimum which makes HF communication more of a challenge. One of the things I enjoy most about the hobby is experimentation with RF propagation techniques. There are various ways to help get a signal out when propagation is bad and I spend a lot of time trying them out. One of the easiest ways is to use CW. It can be shown mathematically that 5 watts of CW is equivalent to 100 watts of SSB/phone, so 100 watts of CW will have the same punch as about the legal maximum.

I have played around with digital modes, but since my real passion is operating outdoors I don’t want to have to carry a computer around in my backpack. My most basic portable CW station will all fit into a very small, lightweight bag and that includes enough batteries (I use homemade Li-Ion packs) for several hours of operation.

Learning Morse Code and becoming a proficient operator takes time and practice, but for anybody willing to undertake the journey it is very rewarding. Decades ago, the military took raw recruits and turned them into high speed Morse Code operators in as little as 2 weeks. The most famous military Morse Code operator was the legendary, late country music star Johnny Cash. He claimed he found it easy and seemed to possess a natural talent for it. For us mere mortals the journey can be a little longer. It is taking me an equally long time to become proficient at the guitar – sorry Johnny; I do admire both your CW and your music. If only ... if only!

When it comes to erecting an HF wire antenna the conventional wisdom is “the higher the better”. For many wire antennas that is good advice. But sometimes a very low wire antenna is actually a much better alternative. Let me explain.

I have been using a long wire antenna, both at my home QTH and out in the field (where I prefer to operate in the warmer months) that is approximately 132 feet long and only 12 feet high! It works very well on 20m, 40m and 80m and, theoretically, on 160m too (although I have yet to try it on top band). The low height is not a compromise; it is actually absolutely essential to the operation of the antenna!

I am mostly a CW operator and I needed a NVIS (Near Vertical Incidence Skywave) antenna for my weekly check-in to a 80m CW net in Shelburne, Ontario. I also wanted the same antenna to be usable on my other regular bands of 20m and 40m. A wire that is 132 feet long, erected in a straight line, at a height above ground of only 12 feet checks all the boxes in my needs list. It is a half-wave on 80m and radiates an almost perfectly vertical signal which is reflected by the ionosphere’s F2 layer back down to the ground over a radius of about 400km.

But, how does it work on the higher bands, 20m and 40m? The answer lies in both its length and its low height above ground. On the 40-metre band the wire is a full wavelength long. On the 20-metre band the wire is two wavelengths long. A wire that is at least one wavelength long behaves quite differently to a regular half-wave dipole. A dipole erected high above the ground radiates broadside to the wire. A long wire (sometimes called a “wave antenna”) radiates off the ends of the wire. As the wire is brought lower to the ground the take-off angle decreases. As HF operators know, a low take-off angle is good for DX contacts. An added bonus of a low wire is that it doesn’t pick up as much noise, making weak signals easier to copy.

The downside is that, as the wire is brought lower, ground losses begin to increase rapidly. The U.S. military used wave antennas as low as 1-metre during the Vietnam war. They are very easy to erect and hard for the enemy to spot. Ground losses also limited the range of communication sufficiently to lessen the chance of unwanted enemy signal surveillance.

Hams are generally interested in longer range contacts so ground losses are undesirable. Although even long wires laid directly on the ground actually work (I have QSOd myself with a 148ft long “Grasswire” antenna and only 5 watts of transmitted power), raising the wire up to 12 feet strikes a balance between ground losses and directionality. I have successfully used my home QTH antenna for DX contacts as far away as Europe with less than 100 watts of transmitted power.

It is essential that the wire is run in a straight line for operation on the higher bands. 132 feet of wire just fits within my suburban Owen Sound lot but, of course, length is not a concern when operating from a park in the summer. The wire is fed from one end and that presents a challenge. The feedpoint impedance can be thousands of ohms but that is taken care of by a 49:1 transformer wound on a large ferrite toroid. It is fed by 100 feet of coax and the coax shield acts as a counterpoise. Performance has been outstanding as evidenced by the contacts in my log. NVIS, short range contacts on 80m, mid-range contacts on 40m and long-range DX contacts all from a simple single wire antenna. It is stealthy too which is a bonus when the curiosity of neighbours and Provincial Park rangers is to be avoided!

John Corby, VA3KOT

Name here is John, callsign VA3KOT. I'm a new member of the club but I've been an active ham for 20 years and an active SWL for many years before that. I was previously a member of the Peel Amateur Radio Club and the York Region Amateur Radio Club. My passion is operating ham radio in the great outdoors and I have spoken on that topic at meetings of both my previous clubs.

One of the great advantages of outdoor ops is that you can find a really good location for radio signal propagation and, best of all, you escape all the noise generated by all the electrical devices in your home and elsewhere. For several years I have been operating QRP (5 watts) on the HF bands. Recent poor propagation conditions caused by the current deep solar minimum have made QRP even more of a challenge so I invested in a new portable radio (a Yaesu FT-891) that will allow me to boost power when needed.

There is a tradeoff between QRP vs QRO when it comes to portability. Higher power rigs consume more battery power. If you want to operate from a location such as Skinners Bluff (one of my favourites) you don't want to carry very heavy batteries in your backpack! My lightweight portable QRP rig is a Hendricks PFR-3 CW only kit radio that will run for hours on a small Li-Ion battery. Li-Ion cells require some care but they have high energy density and can be obtained very cheaply (hams are cheap by nature).

Those of us who live on small lots have restrictions on the size of antennas we can use. But, out in the great outdoors you can find locations where you can put up whatever kind of antenna you wish - as long as it is simple and portable. I operated from Kelso Beach Park in Owen Sound a few years ago using a 250ft long wire stretched along the low trees at the edge of the parking lot.

There are organizations supporting outdoor operating activities. For example Parks-On-The-Air (POTA) is very popular. Several local parks are available for "activation". Posting your plans to activate a park will usually result in a lot of contacts.

Of course, outdoor ham activity is most enjoyable in the summer. I like to go camping in my travel trailer between May and October and always set up my portable radio equipment at campsites. But operations in winter are also possible. Just set up your rig in your car, throw a wire up into a tree and key up!

Give it a try, or join me on my of my day trips. Ham radio in the great outdoors is a whole lot of fun and we have so many great locations right on our doorstep in this beautiful part of the province.
John, VA3KOT

i recently found this site https://www.hamsphere.com on the air through your computer

Page last updated on: Friday, October 18, 2019
Will a Beginners licence cure the slump in new radio amateurs?

The number getting their UK Foundation licence has slumped in the past 13 years. In this YouTube video RSGB VHF Manager John Regnault G4SWX discusses his proposal for a Beginners Amateur Radio Licence

1892 newcomers gained their Foundation licence in 2005 but there were only 1366 in 2018 a drop of 28%. At the same time the RadCom Silent Keys column shows the death-rate of amateurs has increased. Take into account the natural churn in the hobby as people leave to pursue other interests and it's clear the number of newcomers is insufficient to cover those being lost - the hobby is in decline.

It has been suggested we need at least 2,000 newcomers each year just to maintain current activity levels and even now the VHF/UHF bands can be very quiet most of the time. To grow the hobby and increase activity at VHF/UHF we need many more than that.

Watch A beginners UK amateur radio licence?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYGAmtClfzc

New UK Entry Level Licence proposed
http://www.southgatearc.org/news/2019/oc...oposed.htm

Read the report on the Future & Growth of Amateur Radio presentations given at the RSGB Convention on October 13
https://www.essexham.co.uk/news/rsgb-con...-2019.html

Japan's Class 4 ham radio licence
http://www.southgatearc.org/news/2019/oc...icence.htm

Can online ham radio exams improve accessibility?

http://www.southgatearc.org/news/2019/oc...bility.htm



Ham Chat UK - Discuss the future of amateur radio
https://groups.io/g/HamChat

Hi all.

Our Club has has been approached to support a charity fundraiser. It is this coming Sunday October 6th. We're looking for volunteers. The more with cross band repeat ability, the better. I don't have a lot of details to offer at this time, but I will have more in the very near future.

73
Tom
VA3TVA

From Dayton Daily News:
The Fair Board in Greene County has struck a long-term agreement to keep hosting the Dayton Hamvention event at the county fairgrounds. Officials confirmed today that the board and the Dayton Amateur Radio Association have reached an agreement on a five-year deal to continue hosting the annual amateur radio convention at the fairgrounds in Xenia.