The First 100 Years Are The Hardest

For the past few months I've been joining the Sideswiper Net on Sunday and Thursday as family and work schedules permit.  The net was established a long time ago to promote the use of the sideswiper also known affectionately as the "cootie" key.  The cootie is a horizontal "straight key" which relies on the operator to form the dits and dahs versus using an electronic keyer associated with IAMBIC modes. I really enjoy the challenge of improving my CW skills in a directed net format.  My key for the SSN is usually the Titan made by Steve Roberts W1SFR who also joins the net on a regular basis. Darrel - AA7FV is usually the net control station for the sessions I join.  Allen - KA5TJS, Ron - N9EE/4, TJ - K9TJL, and Bill - WA4FAT  also join the net on a regular basis.  All are excellent, friendly CW operators and many are also members of the SKCC.    I've not had much luck hearing the DX stations on the net but I hope that will change after I add a M...

 I've upgraded my Yaesu FT-857D mobile setup since getting the new GMC Sierra AT4 this summer.  The truck has a ton of space so that I can operate comfortably from the driver seat and even better from the back.  For CW I'm using a 3D printed single lever paddle wired up as a cootie from CW Morse. The ATAS is grounded to the frame and mounted to the truck bed with a Breedlove mount.   All cables were easy to run into the cabin using one of the punch-out plugs in the backseat floorboard.  The radio, battery, solar charge controller and duplexer fit under the rear fold down seats.  New for this setup is an MPPT solar charger for the LiFePO4 battery, and a Diamond MX-62M duplexer so that only 1 antenna is needed to cover the 7, 14, 21, 28, 50, 144 and 430 MHz amateur bands.  Instead of snap on ferrite chokes I’m using a feed line choke from Palomar Engineering left over from a previous project.  I've found the ATAS tunes easier with a choke, and ...

The "Cootie" key or "Sideswiper" is a double-sided straight key known for being difficult to master, but with some practice I’ve found it easier and more natural to use than IAMBIC paddles. There are some very nice professionally made cooties. I have the Titan made by W1SFR Steven Roberts, who is also one of the NCS for the sideswiper net . Begali, the “Ferrari” of morse code keys, has the Sculpture Swing which looks like a real work of art. I was inspired to make my own homebrew cootie key after seeing so many homebrew pictures shared by members of the Straight Key Century Club over the past six months. I've put together a few kits like the Kent Single Paddle Key which can be wired like a sideswiper (mine is). But these single paddle keys just don't have the same "swinging" feel that I love in a true cootie key. This my first attempt at a homebrew. You can make one for less than $5 at Home Depot depending on what you already have in yo...

  I love my Elecraft KX3 but as I learned on a mini-DXpedition to St. Martin this summer sometimes 10 or even 15 watts is not enough power to make a decent QSO rate, even with a resonant antenna.  I know I could buy a 100w rig for travel, but I’d like to keep the KX3 and get more use out of it.  The KX3 travels nicely, and the antennas, cables and batteries all pack down into a backpack that's convenient for air travel. There are several HF power amplifiers on the market designed for portable QRP radios, including the Elecraft KXPA100, the RM ITALY MLA100 and Chinese made MX-P50M which is currently “Amazon's Choice” for what that’s worth.    After some research I settled on the Hardrock 50 which is a complete amplifier kit that is FCC approved for commercial sale by HobbyPCB.com . The amplifier is based on Jim Veatch's award winning design developed for the ARRL's 2nd Homebrew Challenge competition.  The Hardrock 50 covers 160M - 10M bands and supports...

  I have had a lot of fun building my shack since getting my license back in May 2020.  My primary rig is a Flexradio 6600, feeding an 80-6 meter off center fed (OCF) dipole multi-band antenna mounted at 35 feet.  I also have a Mercury IIIs solid state amplifier and Mercury AT automatic tuner but most of the time I run barefoot.   SSB and CW are my favorite operating modes.  In addition to RWK, I’m a member of the Old Man International Side Band Society (OMISS #13552) and the Straight Key Century Club (SKCC #25995T).  Like many of you I also actively work POTA when there’s not much else going on.  Along with the Flex I have a Yaesu FT-dx3000 and a Yaesu FT-991A.   Both are fine radios but I prefer the Flexradio.  The last time I ran the FT-dx3000 was about a year ago when I had to send the 6600 down to Austin for two weeks for repairs (the damage was self induced).   The FLEX-6000 series SDR Transceivers are great, but many function...

The RBN is a network of stations listening to the bands and reporting what stations they hear, when and how well.  This is a cool idea, the "reverse" of beacons that traditionally send automated calls  for operators to check for band openings.  I use the RBN to see how my signal propagates via CW on any given day.   Its pointless to call CQ if others can't hear you, or copy your signal.  The RBN gives you a pretty good idea if you're sending properly (especially important since I use a Cootie Straight Key), the distance and the signal strength from spotter stations.  Its also a good tool to see if any other stations have been spotted on the frequency you want to you if you don't hear anything on the air after checking QRL. It was nice to see my call spotted this morning in Hawaii, New Zealand,  Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, Cayman Islands,  and over most of the US.  When RBN doesn't pick up my call, its normally because I'm not sen...

I got outside Saturday afternoon to activate Cedar Hill State Park to practice my Amateur Radio Emergency Services (ARES) skills in conjunction with Parks on the Aire (POTA).  The map below shows the locations of the other stations/people I worked over the radio from the park. I'm a member of ARES,  North Texas Section, part of the national ARRL organization committed to providing communication services during emergencies.   My application for RACES - DALLAS is in the works, along with the SKYWARN training and completion of the FEMA NIMS IS-100b, IS-200b, and IS-700b courses.    I was able to work 101 contacts from the park using my Yaesu FT-991a rig, and the ATAS-120 actively tuned antenna that I recently installed in my truck.  The radio was powered by a Bioenno12V, 30Ah LiFEPo4 battery and still had plenty of juice after running 100w for 2 hours.   I used HRMS for logging on my $60 Evolve III notebook.  The LTE SIM card works very wel...

I haven’t had much news to share, but this is just in!   I’ve made 200 contacts (C, T, S) since becoming a Centurion in June and Tribune in July.  My quest for the Senate continues - targeting March or April 2023. I need 200 more unique C/T/S contacts to achieve Tx8 - all unique. From there,  the road to the Senate requires 200 additional contacts with fellow T and S members only.  Good thing is that duplicates from the previous 400 ARE allowed!    73 Chris de WX7V   #award Chris White, WX7V, SKCC# 25995T has achieved Tx4   #Award   From:  Phil K3EW Date: Mon, 12 Sep 2022 15:12:06 CDT  Hear Ye! Hear Ye! Gather 'round and pay heed to the news of this day! Let there be revelry & celebration for yet another Centurion has advanced to the Tribune Tx4 level of SKCC achievement !!! Chris White, WX7V, SKCC# 25995T, has achieved the coveted 2nd generation SKCC member achievement known far and wide as the Tribune Tx4 award. The Tribune T...

Update 11/19/23 - Tribute for Bill Crane, SK 10/26/23: https://youtu.be/Znyqq9f93r0?si=bxPV0zVmGN7oWo_u ++ Update August 22, 2022.   I was able to find Bill Crane W9ZN on the air by looking for his spots on RBN .   Took me a while to see the pattern on when and where he's be on frequency, but not only did we make the QSO, we exchanged cards as well!  This is one of my favorite QSL cards that I've collected so far.  Thank You Bill!     73 Chris de WX7V ==================================== Last month I asked a members of the Straight Key Century Club  what was their favorite way to warm up before sending morse code.  I got a lot of input - from, "Just jump right in" to sending the Alphabet and the Numbers 0-9.   My favorite answer is to practice sending Bens Best Bent Wire, with the letters and numbers run together so that the code produced sounds similar to a march.  Apparently this was taught by the RAF,  merchan...

For the past six months I've been using a fairly old Yaesu FT-100D rig in my jeep to make QSOs and  chase POTA from the local park up the street that has a lower noise floor than my home QTH. Even though the FT-100D is a solid performer on HF and VHF/UHF, I wanted to upgrade the rig to enable better receive sensitivity, better controls and  menu options.   One thing I never liked on the FT-100 are the small, sticky buttons-one of the main drawbacks for me on this older rig. Well, I got my wish, inadvertently, after trying to install a Yaesu XF-117CN CW 300Hz mechanical filter I bought off eBay for $135.  These old radios require careful handling, and I had to remove 3 ribbon connectors, five coax cables, and lift out the receive PCB board to solder the mechanical filter in place.    Long story short, after a week troubleshooting, I got the radio up and running again on 2M, but the radio is no longer usable on HF:  low speaker volume and no RF sens...

 Today I installed my receive only loop antenna properly on the roof, including an RCA rotor.  Nearly properly because at 18ft the loop doesn't quite have a clear line of site to the RF horizon as recommended by Larry, W6LVP who designed the antenna.    The loop covers 160M to 10M with no tuning or adjustment. At my request Larry installed a 5-pole 1,700 kHz high-pass filter in the preamp to attenuate strong signals in my area.  He also wired the loops power inserter with an F-type connector on one side (loop), and BNC connector on the other (radio).    I'm using 100ft of quad-shield RG-6 ($35 from Home Depot) from the shack to the loop.  Quad-shield RG6 is designed to protect signals from interference and has good common-mode rejection to protect your loop antenna signals.  For the rotator, I'm using an RCA VH226E from Amazon, controlled with 100ft of 18ga 3 thermostat wire from Home Depot ($0.36/ft).  The setup works great, and receive...

I recently purchased a vintage, single lever Vibroplex key refurbished by Bill, WA4DDH.   The key looks great and works very well. With serial number #264554 this key was manufactured in 1970 according to WW7P's Vibroplex serial number collectors list. I like this key a lot and have been using it extensively over the past few weeks.   I did replace the old rubber feet which had hardened and moved around the desk to much for me.    Bill rescues these old keys which would otherwise be thrown away as junk and restores them to their previous glory.  The color scheme represents his personal flare to enhance the keys, and ‘naming’ a particular group of keys for the year that they were refurbished.    Green Thunder  is the color scheme for the keys he's refurbished in 2022. History of keys & paint theme.  This year marks 12 years of refurbished/restored Keys:  2022 GREEN THUNDER (Olive Green),  2021 GRAY GHOST (Battleship Gra...

The activation that very nearly wasn’t! For SYP Weekend I wanted to do an “All Mode Activation” at K-4423 Spring Creek Forest State Preserve in north east Dallas. I don’t think this is a real thing but I wanted to do it for the challenge. I’ve never done a CW activation and I hadn’t used FT8 much at all in the past 12 months. My plan was to activate a single park with at least 10 contacts on each of the three modes supported by POTA: SSB, CW and and Data (FT8). You can look at the pictures below, or read on if you’re interested in the details. I used a Yaesu FT-991a, a fully charged 12Ah Bioenno battery. For CW I brought my 3D Printed “CW Morse” single lever paddle wired as a cootie (also referred to as a side swiper). For FT8, I bought a cheap 11.6” Ebook from Microcenter (Evolve III Maestro). It’s a nice set up, not to slow, and the price includes Windows 10, 4GB Ram and 64 GB storage all for just under $50. I had an old iPhone in the closet from my previous upgrade and inserted the ...

From Ron, AC2C —— Hear Ye! Hear Ye! Gather 'round and pay heed to the news of this day! Let there be revelry & celebration for yet another Tribune has advanced to the Tribune Tx1 level of SKCC achievement !!! Chris White, WX7V, SKCC# 25995C, has achieved the coveted 2nd generation SKCC member achievement known far and wide as the Tribune Tx1 award. The Tribune Tx1 award is earned by SKCC Centurions who work 50 other Centurions, Tribunes, or Senators. Chris's log & application were submitted to the Tribune Administrator on 10-Jul-2022. The Tribune award Analysis Team performed an exhaustive review of the submitted documentation. The process confirmed that all of the 50 required contacts had indeed been made with established SKCC Centurions, Tribunes or Senators subsequent to Chris's Centurion date. Having submitted a log and sworn statement, both of which have survived the intense tests used by the Tribune administrator, Chris White, WX7V, is duly proclaimed to be SK...

In June 2022 I went on a "mini" DX-Pedition to St. Martin as part of our family vacation. I operated a few hours a day FS/WX7V aboard the SV Pelican as we sailed around St. Martin. The Pelican is a 20+ year old catamaran, complete with generators, air conditioning and LED lights that created higher noise levels (S8/S9 on some days) than I expected. Similiar to doing a POTA activation near an RV park! I made 12 DX countries and 25 POTA References (State/National Parks). While I was initially hoping for a higher daily rate, I was very pleased with the quality of the contacts. Rig: Elecraft KX3, CW and SSB at 15 watts on 20M and 17M bands. The antennas were an MP1C vertical with four tuned radials, and an Elecraft AX1 Multiband Whip Antenna. Pictures and more are logged on QRZ :   https://www.qrz.com/db/FS/WX7V

Yesterday I received an old Navy Flameproof Key that purchased on EBay a few days ago.   Flame Proof keys have covered contacts and were used by the military in environments that may have had flammable gases present. I've made a few QSOs this morning after cleaning it up and mounting it to a cheap wooden base.  The action is smooth, and the straight key motion is easy to send clean code.  These keys have a strong following with the SKCC users.  I like sending code with this key very much!   From the Web:  8280 U.S. NAVY FLAMEPROOF GENERAL PURPOSE KEY XXX-26003A.  Made for the navy by several manufacturers whose code letters precede the model number. For instance, CJB-26003A was made by J. H. Bunnell. CTE-26003A was made by Telephonics. CMK-26003A was made by McElroy, etc. It was apparently copied from the German Luftwaffe Key of very similar design (See German Keys.). JH Bunell manufactured the Navy Flame Proof Key from 1958 - 1988.  The...