[AMRadio] Cw

Sun Sep 22 18:41:11 EDT 2013

Hi Rob,

Yes indeed, contesting has moved well beyond the realm of paper logs, pencils,  & dupe sheets, bar none...!

I got a good taste of it a coupla years ago at Field Day: I never once had to touch the key on our 15-meters CW station! The function keys on the computer & the K3 did all of the work for me...

...And took away all of the fun, too!

I'll wager that right now, somewhere, there is a computer-to-transceiver link / programme that will do EVERYTHING for you (remember "Dr. DX" for your Commosore 64 years ago...?). The Big Guns simply do NOT want the rest of us mere mortals to know about it...!

~73~ de Eddy VE3CUI - VE3XZ

On 2013-09-22, at 5:40 PM, Rob Atkinson wrote:

> The lack of interest in vintage rigs in the CW world is made obvious
> by simply looking at who advertises in ER vs. CQ and QST.   I paged
> through the display and classified ads in ER looking for Vibroplex,
> Bencher, and other CW related businesses and found nothing.  But in
> QST and CQ, I found those two plus ads for key books, a key museum and
> a code practice oscillator museum (no joke; both on line) and CW study
> materials and probably one or two other things I've forgotten.
> Obviously these folks know that most CW operators think they have a
> vintage station if they're running a J36 with an Elecraft rig.  If CW
> ops were all running vintage tube rigs in numbers matching AM
> operators, there would likely be CW product ads in ER.   I hope CW ops
> recover what most of them have lost before it is too late and the
> knowledge is completely gone.  The Classic Exchange is a big help I
> think.  I operated this morning for about 90 minutes on 40 with my
> Knight T50 running at most 25 watts, WRL755, TO Keyer and 75A-3.
> Worked W8TM running the Heathkit SB twins and another ham who's call I
> now can't remember (sorry about that) who was running a HB 813 rig and
> HRO 7.  The WRL755 is almost like a rock.  I can zero beat a modern
> synthesized rx to it and come back two hours later and find the 755
> has drifted so little the rx is still zero beat to it.  (The secret is
> to never turn off the 755.)
> 
> When I got back on the air 13 years ago I thought I'd try contesting
> again because back during the first few years I was licensed, I envied
> the "big gun" stations and figured I could make something happen in
> North American contests at least.  I proceeded to read up on the
> Sweepstakes rules, and ran off copies of the log  and dup sheets.
> Sharpened a few pencils and all that.  The contest started and I was
> overwhelmed.  I simply could not keep up.  The pace had tripled since
> the '70s, with the average 3 QSOs/minute.  That used to be a rate that
> was super hot with a QSO (I learned the in-crowd call them "Qs" --
> saying three letters is too much trouble and evidently un-cool) per
> minute being more typical if I big station is CQing.  I gave up on
> logging and quit after a while, very disappointed.  Then I learned
> that in the years I had been QRT, the world of contesting had vastly
> changed.   The previously enormous stations were now average with some
> hams sinking millions of dollars into their stations if you add up the
> cost of the land, buildings, antennas etc.  There's a guy in Canada
> who owns a _crane_ so he can work on his 80 meter yagi.  On top of
> that, I discovered it is more about crafting robotic stations--they
> have computers running two stations on two bands at the same time,
> computer logging, rotator control, packet radio data, QSL generation,
> log submission via the internet, everything.  If you get into that,
> you seem to spend most of your time fiddling with the automation (read
> computer).  I found it absurd and almost anti-social for ham radio.
> 
> Todd, tnx for signal report--when I first started out I was only
> running 50 watts--amazing.
> 
> 
> Rob
> K5UJ
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