[Elecraft] [Elecraft_K3] On CW

Tue Oct 31 06:06:32 EDT 2017

Wayne,

Long time listener, first time caller...

Your words describing your journey and your passion have pulled me into the
iPad with this mornings’ coffee...  Why?   Well, to begin with, we are of
approximately the same vintage, and had a similar starting experience to
this journey and passion..  my start at 13 was a 6AG7 / 6L6 with a single
FT243 (7008 kHz)  that I cobbled together in the cellar.

With a 300 ohm tv twin lead folded dipole nailed to the eve of our house at
the dizzy height of 14 feet, I made hundreds of contacts on  40 cw.  Damn,
it was fun...   so fun in fact, that I decided to get my license.   Yes,
you read it correct, and this is my public coming out of pirating when I
was 13, 42 years ago.   My sincere apologies to all those down the eastern
seaboard who didn’t get their C31BL card.   I picked Andorra cause it
seemed feasible where I was in the far north east of North America and
because it generated pileups with my pipsqueak signal....

Other than this passion, our paths diverged, and I still enjoy a career of
bringing innovation and learning technologies to large and small companies
around the world....

CW is, and always has been a huge passion, and though I’m certainly no
stranger to a microphone, your description of this club we belong to and
it’s unique window to it’s unique (and familiar to us) world, resonated.

I have other passions and interests, and in each of them there always seems
to be a writer that strikes a chord with me...   in cars and motorcycles,
it’s Peter Egan, in aviation it’s Lane Wallace or Richard Collins...

Your writing riveted me to the iPad and it felt like I was reading Ade
Weiss or Bob Locher, my two favorite amateur radio writers.   That’s pretty
good company to keep Wayne!

Please keep the passion strong, the innovation coming and please, please
continue to use the pen (and paddles) to share the gut felt visceral
excitement that cw and amateur radio are.

Thanks for making my morning.

Don Whitty
VE9XX

On Tue, Oct 31, 2017 at 1:17 AM Martin Kratoska martin at ok1rr.com
[Elecraft_K3] <Elecraft_K3 at yahoogroups.com> wrote:

>
>
> words that should be carved into stone
>
> 73,
> Martin, OK1RR
>
> Dne 31.10.2017 v 03:37 Wayne Burdick n6kr at elecraft.com [Elecraft_K3]
> napsal(a):
>
>
> > I find that CW has many practical and engaging aspects that I just don’t
> get with computer-mediated modes like FT8. You’d think I’d be burned out on
> CW by now, over 45 years since I was first licensed, but no, I’m still
> doin’ it :)
> >
> > Yes, FT8 (etc.) is a no-brainer when, despite poor conditions, your goal
> is to log as many contacts as possible with as many states or countries as
> possible. It’s so streamlined and efficient that the whole process is
> readily automated. (If you haven’t read enough opinions on that, see "The
> mother of all FT8 threads” on QRZ.com, for example.)
> >
> > But back to CW. Here’s why it works for me. YMMV.
> >
> > CW feels personal and visceral, like driving a sports car rather than
> taking a cab. As with a sports car, there are risks. You can get clobbered
> by larger vehicles (QRM). Witness road range (“UP 2!”). Fall into a pothole
> (QSB). Be forced to drive through rain or snow (QRN).
> >
> > With CW, like other forms of human conversation, you can affect your own
> style. Make mistakes. Joke about it.
> >
> > CW is a skill that bonds operators together across generations and
> nations. A language, more like pidgin than anything else, with
> abbreviations and historical constructs and imperialist oddities. A curious
> club anyone can join. (At age 60 and able to copy 50 WPM on a good day, I
> may qualify as a Nerd Mason of some modest order, worthless in any other
> domain but of value in a contest.)
> >
> > With very simple equipment that anyone can build, such as a high-power
> single-transistor oscillator, you can transmit a CW signal. I had very
> little experience with electronics when I was 14 and built an oscillator
> that put out maybe 100 mW. Just twisted the leads of all those parts
> together and keyed the collector supply--a 9-volt battery. With this simple
> circuit on my desk, coupled to one guy wire of our TV antenna mast, I
> worked a station 150 miles away and was instantly hooked on building
> things. And on QRP. I’m sure the signal was key-clicky and had lots of
> harmonics. I’ve spent a lifetime making such things work better, but this
> is where it started.
> >
> > Going even further down the techno food chain, you can “send” CW by
> whistling, flashing a lamp, tapping on someone’s leg under a table in
> civics class, or pounding a wrench on the inverted hull of an upside-down
> U.S. war vessel, as happened at Pearl Harbor. Last Saturday at an
> engineering club my son belongs to, a 9-year-old demonstrated an Arduino
> Uno flashing HELLO WORLD in Morse on an LED. The other kids were impressed,
> including my son, who promptly wrote a version that sends three independent
> Morse streams on three LEDs. A mini-pileup. His first program.
> >
> > Finally, to do CW you don’t always need a computer, keyboard, mouse,
> monitor, or software. Such things are invaluable in our daily lives, but
> for me, shutting down everything but the radio is the high point of my day.
> The small display glows like a mystic portal into my personal oyster, the
> RF spectrum. Unless I crank up the power, there’s no fan noise. Tuning the
> knob slowly from the bottom end of the band segment to the top is a bit
> like fishing my favorite stream, Taylor Creek, which connects Fallen Leaf
> Lake to Lake Tahoe. Drag the line across the green, sunlit pool. See what
> hits. Big trout? DX. Small trout? Hey, it’s still a fish, and a QSO across
> town is still a QSO. Admire it, then throw it back in.
> >
> > (BTW: You now know why the Elecraft K3, K3S, KX2, and KX3 all have
> built-in RTTY and PSK data modes that allow transmit via the keyer paddle
> and receive on the rig’s display. We decided to make these data modes
> conversational...like CW.)
> >
> > Back to 40 meters....
> >
> > 73,
> >
> > Wayne
> > N6KR
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> __._,_.___
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