Stephan Paukner :: syslog

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He who does radio communication has stories to tell: During the time as an active a ham, memorable stories are accumulating. I want to document these for me before I forget the details. I’m licensed since four years now, and during the last three years I was using CW almost exclusively on the air. In this short time I was collecting (only) a few special moments which I want to share here.

Under the radar

The count and variety of HF band intruders has risen since the Russian invasion in Ukraine this year. One really annoying case are over-the-horizon radars sending in ham radio bands, as these transmissions always consume a remarkable frequency range. These radars can be recognized clearly due to their buzzing sound and tremendous signal strength, so it is pointless to attempt anything over these blockades. (Some hams however try to deliberately disturb these transmissions, but that’s comparable to a bird yelling at a bulldozer.) This April I was in the middle of a QSO with a Briton on the 30 m band, when suddenly a radar burst in, with us being exactly surrounded by noise. It kicked in during my transmission. I was puzzled when I heard it (I use full break-in to receive between my characters), but I had no choice other than continuing my message. It would be hopeless, I thought, to catch any response from my fellow. But, alas, his CW beeps could be clearly distinguished from the buzzing radar noise! I quickly launched Audacity and recorded the rest of our QSO. Try to hear for yourself: (Warning: Noisy!)

G4GUA_OE3SPR_under_radar.mp3

(I tried to enhance the audio later by filtering around 700 Hz, but every attempt made it worse. CW can be distinguished best from the full radar spectrum, interestingly.) I also made a picture of my SDR receiver’s waterfall diagram after one of my transmissions. You cannot make out my friend’s signal visually, though:

So, despite this heavy QRM, we could continue and finalize our conversation, thanks to the powers of morse telegraphy.

QSL via e-mail

I really enjoy exchanging paper QSL cards, especially receiving them from DXpeditions or DX stations. I decorate my shack’s wall with the most picturesque of them. While it makes past QSOs special by having them materialized in paper form, these processes are mostly automated: The prints are generated out of the log program and a common greeting is added. One kind of extra mile and appreciation of a recent contact, however, is an almost immediate personal e-mail after the QSO. For example, I answered two Brits which appeared to be beginners and to have one of their first HF sessions in each other’s company. I had a nice QRS QSO with each of them, and both of them thanked me kindly via e-mail soon after. I also received an e-mail from a young Indonesian after our QSO on 10 m this April.

One very thankful e-mail was again from England. Usually, the weaker signals are most interesting: Is it from far away? Is the station using low power and might thus not get plenty of answers? Will they be able to hear me at all? Well, it turned out, he was QRPP, sending with only 1 W, but easily bridged the 1200 km between us. He later sent me a picture of his setup on the kitchen table, where his TRX was powered by a 9 V battery. I was almost embarassed by me blowing out 100 W. It might have been interesting if I could have turned my output down to 5 W and still have this QSO.

Easy DX

We are three years into the current solar cycle with DX conditions having clearly improved this year’s summer term. Previously, I operated from a garage where I could use my hex beam in a portable-like setup. Since the pandemic I mostly operate from home, using home-made full-size wire loops for 20 m and 30 m and a home-made end-fed for the lower bands. These aren’t directional antennas, though, but I can use them more often, and they are good enough—good enough to have remarkable DX stations reply to my CQ calls: This May I did an unexpectant CQ call on 20 m, and then someone replied with a crystal clear signal... from Indonesia! We had a very nice QSO with hardly any fading. Sadly, I don’t have a recording. I should systematically record my sessions from now on.

Return at first attempt

This is actually just a side note what difference a directional antenna makes compared to a long wire. What positively surprised me during my first hours with my hex beam continued to be awesome whenever I used it: Often, when I joined the pile-up for a DXpedition or DX station with my 100 W rig, only one or a few calls were necessary on my side to already hear the DX station repeat my call! This was already the case when I did SSB. But also my wire loops enabled me to experience these first-attempt successes, since the solar condx are improving.

Getting licensed close to a solar minimum has the advantage of positive surprises for years to come.

... on ham radio TRX like Yaesu or Kenwood

The Begali HST III morse key is a single-lever paddle that also has a sideswiper mode built in: By flipping a switch on the key’s base, one can operate it as a sideswiper. But why actually is that switch needed? Well, a single-lever creates electric contact on either of two sides, which have to be distinguished, because one side tells the keyer to emit dots (dits) and the other to emit dashes (dahs). That’s why a stereo jack is used to connect to a TRX, because that jack can carry those two channels. When using the single-lever as a sideswiper, though, both sides are equivalent and should simply trigger a key-down. Straight keys can be modeled using a mono jack only. So, for using the Begali HST III in sideswiper mode, both contacts have to be routed the same way, while in paddle mode, they have to stay separate. That’s what that built-in switch is for.

On my Kenwood TRX though, I was disappointed to notice that sideswiper mode of that key doesn’t work: When I plug it into the straight-key socket of my Kenwood TRX, a continuous key-down is emitted! It looks like Begali decided to make both contacts equivalent by shorting them. But thinking of the design of mono jacks, where most of the jack consists of common ground while only the tip carries the channel, that means that if that stereo jack is plugged into a mono socket, a part of the body and the tip are short-circuit, which simply means: key-down!

So, after wrapping my head around this and getting in touch with my CW Elmer, Heinz OE3LHB, he told me he’d gone through that before, with his first-generation Begali HST and his Yaesu TRX. He sent me this sketch of the original wiring and the sketch of the wiring that is needed for sideswiper mode to work on those TRX that expect a mono jack on straight keys:

So, instead of shorting upper and lower contact, both contacts should be routed to the tip. If you look closely, you notice that the 2-pin on/off switch has to be replaced by a 3-pin on/on switch. The 1st-gen HST came without wiring, the YL/OM had to do the wiring themselves, so, this mod wasn’t overly complicated to do. But the HST III comes with the wiring realized on a PCB:

The procedure to implement the desired wiring is:

1. Find a 3-pin on/on switch with the exact same size specs of the original switch. I soldered the original switch out and made measurements with a caliper, it should resemble a 5×8 mm rectangle when viewed from the top. I found a matching switch here.
2. Make a third hole to be able to fit the third pin of the switch through the PCB.

   

3. Place the new switch on the PCB and screw the PCB back in. Only then start soldering the outer pins of the switch to the respective conductor paths. Take care to leave the middle pin isolated from those. (Maybe you should do #5 before this.)
4. Disconnect the switch from the bottom contact (BOT) by scratching through the conductor path. That is, only keep contact with the RING.
5. Connect the middle pin of the switch to the bottom contact (BOT) using isolated wire and a soldering eyelet. (You could also paint a conductor path at the left border of the PCB, if you can do this.)

By this, sideswiper mode finally works. I sent this mod to Bruna Begali and explained why we needed to do that, but I didn’t receive a reply. Maybe they use TRX that work with the original wiring, or that key is rarely used in sideswiper mode. I never use it as a sideswiper anyway, but at least I restored that option for me.

Since I prepared to get licensed as a ham one year ago there was always this CW (morse telegraphy) topic coming back to me. My impression was and still is that CW is where the elite meets. It is one of the oldest modes of operation, so performing CW is also about the preservation of historical knowledge. (I also admire technicians who still know how to maintain, build and troubleshoot steam engines today, for instance.) Building a CW transmitter is way easier than one that modulates voice, because in the first case you just have to switch on and off a constant frequency carrier, while the latter needs higher bandwidth and a tremendous signal processing logic, be it analog or digital—so, CW looks like a good opportunity to get into more advanced home-brew electronics, which is one of the things at the root of ham radio.

Another aspect that resonated well with me was: It is easier to do DX (contacts over large distances) in CW, because the human mind can decode weak CW signals easier than a weak voice in the noise, and the other way round: Using the same antenna and output power, you can reach farthest by operating in CW (ignoring advanced and “highly digital” weak signal modes like the current fad FT8 that have their roots in astro-telemetry). It resonated well with me, because I realized I won’t be one of those hams that have a permanent antenna installation on a lattice tower, I also won’t be one of those hams that operate a 2 kW PA. But CW, I noticed, is one thing I can enable myself and one “expert tag” I could tack onto myself.

Even another aspect is: For doing CW, you have to master something. In contrast, you don’t have to master being a “shopping queen” (buying rigs and antenna towers—but probably you have to master aquiring the money for that, hi) or using your voice or a digital signal as information carrier (ignoring how you learnt to speak or operate a PC). Learning CW requires effort, endurance and conviction over weeks and months, just like learning a musical instrument, a foreign language or any new craft. Your path consists of 1,000 hours of practice, period—there is just no way around that. You cannot just go out and buy yourself CW knowledge! (This is also a motivation for me to ignore phenomena like FT8, where the mastering consists of handling a desktop software that constantly breaks backwards compatibility. In addition, in emergency events I’d be glad to not also having to deploy a PC for off-grid communications.)

So, that topic was always in the back of my mind, deciding I’d give it a shot if I ever got note of a CW course in my surrounding. Since there wasn’t one, I decided to try my first steps on my own using LCWO.net. But even learning the first three or four letters, just using that site without any guidance of an experienced CW operator, turned out to be a bad idea: I was totally overwhelmed by the (imo) high default speed, and gave up soon.

Luckily, last fall I finally heard of a local CW course and immediately registered for it. Meanwhile, I know that choosing the initial listening speed has to be considered carefully, including terms like Farnsworth spacing. Also, typing on a keyboard is heavily distracting the learning process (unless you are really fluent in the ten-finger system), because you’re training a new reflex—and there are numerous other considerations and advices for copying that only an experienced CW operator (or Elmer) can give. This is even more true for learning how to send CW. For instance, the first long learning path is to actually know all characters (letters, digits and some punctuation), recognize them in a sequence of “random character garbage”, write them down while you’re already hearing the next character, and find your way back into the flow if you were stumbling—a huge brain trainer. Adding a new character into your learning pool might be a “one step forward, two steps back” procedure.

I was quite quick in learning all characters (that are relevant for the federal CW exam), what took me from November to February. (I use my daily train commute to listen with headphones and write down onto paper, using this Android app.) This means I’m a few months ahead of my fellows: I already practice listening with 18–20 words per minute (90–100 characters per minute) full-speed, that is, with zero Farnsworth-timing—and not just random garbage, also English words, which appear way faster due to CW’s Huffman coding. According to our time plan we’d reach this level (at 16 wpm!) in June, and—sadly!—only after that we’d get to start learning how to operate straight keys and paddles—a yet different and complementary learning phase. We’ll see if I’m allowed to take a short cut, because I’m greedy. (However, I won’t be able to practice this during my train commutes, unless I want to do so under weird looks.) Although I’m not there yet, I get already recognized by my fellow hams, what I enjoy, because, as stated above, I won’t ever get recognized as “the ham with the fat rig”.

All in all, it seems to take about one year until we’re finally up to getting on the air. So, hopefully I can do so this fall or a bit earlier. A positive thing is that the federal CW exam is indeed a checkpoint in this course. I’d actually only need that if I’d intend to operate CW in some non-CEPT countries. (Since 2004, CW is no longer mandatory for taking the ham radio exam in OE.) But, it shows the corresponding federal ministry that there are still hams eager to take this exam and that this mode of operation is still alive.