Ham Radio Help Desk

Perhaps you have heard about PSK31 and the many other digital modes available to today’s ham radio operators.

You have gone the next step and know you need to, somehow, connect your computer soundcard with your radio’s speaker and microphone.

Many devices exist to help you do just that including US Interface, BuxComm, SignaLink, etc. I have my eyes set on the US Interface Navigator product to be my sound interface plus mop up a WinKey CW Keyer and rig control (CAT) in one box entirely powered by the USB port. Nice.

However, I am enjoying the digital modes today with absolutely no interface. How?
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A ham on the local Sunday Night Tech Net reported a technique that improved the reception of CW measurably.

He has a Kenwood TS-2000 transceiver. As time went by he used various adjustments while listening to CW. He was never quite satisfied with the noise levels that came in along with the desire CW signals. Variables adjusted include the RF Gain and AGC response time.
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So you have your ham radio ticket and are interested in getting on the HF bands. You are not alone. The HF bands are THE place to really see what ham radio is about. If you only have a technician license, you won’t be able to exercise phone privileges except on 10 meters. However, you do have CW privileges on 80, 40 and 15 meters. You should take full advantage of this.

Assuming you have made the investment in an HF radio and antenna, you might still be worried about making that first Morse code contact.

You may also be very apprehensive what others will think of your Morse code CW skills.

Not to worry. We were all beginners once and yours truly is still in the learning process.

The good news is many organizations exist to help you get going with CW and have several web pages full of excellent information on what to expect during CW contacts.

FISTS.ORG is one such organization.

They publish a Basic CW Operating Manual to help you get started. Here is the link… enjoy.

As you begin your adventure sending and receiving Morse code on the HF bands you will almost instantly hear a variety of short hand abbreviations. Many are obvious while others aren’t.

CW works well with these abbreviations and may even lend themselves to cell phone text messaging since both systems benefit from sending fewer characters.
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Field Day 2008 was great for us. Our wide area wireless network worked pretty well and every station could monitor progress of the whole group.

This year we extensively used the “operator initials” field in the N3FJP Field Day Network 2.8 logging software package. Operators used their call-sign as their ‘initials’ while honored guests used their actual initials.

The site-wide log offered many great analysis possibilities. One particularly interesting metric we tracked this year was QSO rates. We generated graphs of QSO totals vs. Time Between QSOs. Here is an example of the entire log…
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