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?

Simple.

I was given a small computer microphone. This one is the type that is meant to sit on the table and pick up conversations nearby. I have it sitting directly over the speaker hole of my Icom 746. I fire up my MixW and easily decode the PSK31 signals in the waterfall.

What about transmitting?

That’s a little less polished, but functional. All I did was take the voice microphone off its stand and lay it next to my laptop. The computer’s internal speakers provide more than enough sound to send a PSK31 signal literally over the air in the shack to the microphone and out the radio. In fact, I had to turn the audio gain of the transceiver down a bit to make sure I was not over-driving the modulation.

I use my foot-switch to put the rig into transmit and then tell the software to begin sending PSK31.

From Virginia I have made easy contacts with Mexico, Kansas and Indiana using PSK31 in just two nights.

So if you are saving your money for a built interface or collecting ideas for a home-brew approach, GREAT, but go ahead and get on the air now using your rig’s microphone (TX) and a cheap computer microphone (RX). Remember to keep the transmitted audio levels lower than you think are needed. If you don’t you will splatter your signal all over the PSK range.

I am quite surprised how sturdy PSK31 is to make a trip in the air of my shack, but it works remarkably well.

Coordinating the foot-switch with the computer program transmission is getting old quick, but for the low price it buys you time and gets you into digital modes today.

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.

He achieved what he thinks is the best low noise performance from his TS-2000 by turning the AGC completely off and using only the RF gain to “tweak” a particular CW signal.

There is certainly more to this than meets the eye, but the moral of the story is if you have a Kenwood TS-2000 and are looking for improved signal reception on CW, try turning your AGC off and play with the RF gain.

I am told the Kenwood TS-2000 is a pretty amazing radio and this might just be one way to get a little better result from it.

Good luck.

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.

CW works well with these abbreviations and may even lend themselves to cell phone text messaging since both systems benefit from sending fewer characters.

Below you will find Prosigns and other abbreviations. The Prosigns you hear a lot and are well worth learning fast.

CQ – Calling any station (does any ham *not* know this one?)
AR – end of message
K – go, invite any station to transmit
KN – “(” go only, invite a specific station to transmit
BK – invite receiving station to transmit
BT – Pause; Break For Text
R – all received OK
AS – please stand by
SK – end of contact (sent before call)
CL – going off the air (clear)

ABT – About
ADR – Address
AGN – Again
ANT – Antenna
B4 – Before
BK – Break, Break in
C – Yes
CFM – Confirm
CUL – See you later
ES – And
FB – Fine business
GA – Go ahead
GA – Good afternoon
GB – Good bye
GB – God bless
GE – Good evening
GG – Going
GM – Good morning
GN – Good night
GND – Ground
GUD – Good
HI – Laughter
HI – High
HR – Here; hear
HV – Have
HW – How; how copy
LID – A poor operator
MSG – Message
N – No
NIL – Nothing
NR – Number
NW – Now
OB – Old boy
OM – Old man
OP – Operator
OT – Old timer; old top
PSE – Please
PWR – Power
RIG – Station equipment
RPT – Repeat; report
RX; RCVR – Receiver
SED – Said
SEZ – Says
SIG – Signal
SKED – Schedule
SRI – Sorry
TMW – Tomorrow
TNX – Thanks
TT – That
TU – Thank you
TVI – Television interference
TX – Transmitter
UR; URS – Your; Yours
VY – Very
WKD; WKG – Worked; working
WL – Will
WUD – Would
WX – Weather
XMTR – Transmitter
YF; XYL – Wife
YL – Young lady
73 – Best regards
88 – Love and kisses

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…

QSO Rates of Entire Club Field Day Log

We are able to further parse the QSO data by operator, mode, band and any other parameter recorded by the very nice N3FJP Field Day Network logging software.

This year was especially cool because many operators who are not regular contesters made an effort to come by and operate. This is fantastic. We had high hopes to make our 4A Field Day operation inviting to all our members young and old. Indeed young and old came out and had a great time.

What I noticed about some of the older operators was their desire to use pen and paper to record call-signs and exchange information of a QSO and then move to the computer keyboard to record the QSO. This frequently resulted in several dupes since these folks were not capitalizing on the logging computer’s instant dupe checking.

There are many reasons to not use pen and paper, but I wondered if the overall efficiency might be one of them. Since I know which operators used paper and since the wonderful N3FJP software records each operator’s identity all I did was add a field to the database and marked the QSOs initially recorded on paper.

Here is the graph of the very same Field Day results of the operators who logged straight to computer…

QSO Rates of Computer Loggers

…and here is the graph showing the performance of the paper users…

QSO Rates of Paper Loggers

It seems at least a little clear that jotting down QSO information on paper in a contesting environment places an obvious obstacle to operator efficiency. If you look at the graphs above it is clear that most of the QSOs made were not only made more efficiently, but in far greater numbers by the operators skipping the use of paper.

Many good Ham Radio Contest Logging software packages exist to help the Amateur Radio operator record those all important QSOs. Good titles to consider include N3FJP, DX4Win, Ham Radio Deluxe, N1MM. Prolog2k, Winlog32 and WriteLog. Instant Dupe Checking alone should make you want to remove paper form your logging flow.

There are many reasons why data is different between groups of attributes like paper and non-paper QSO loggers. Is it jumping to conclusions? You be the judge.