[QCWA] Straight Key Night 2010 and the aftermath

[Jeffrey Angus]

The last time I was on HF was Straight Key Night 1997. I know,
it's been a while.

What a horror story. It took me 4 hours to make a single QSO
and that was a station 25 miles away.

Having recently moved to Central Texas (what a change from
Los Angeles) I decided to give it another try.

This time I put up a simple 20 meter dipole, 15' off the ground
from the house to the apartment towards the back of the lot.

Success! within 5 minutes (and on my first call) I worked a guy
in Princeton IL.

Well, the next day, I decided to put up the 40' tower I moved
with the other 33+ tons of stuff I brought with me. Ya know,
putting those things up seemed a whole lot easier at 25 then
it did this time at 57.

Now, what to do for an antenna? (I've always had miserable
antennas on HF.) This time, I decided to try something different.

A 102' doublet fed with 40' of open wire line and an MFJ Versa
Tuner. (Ah... old school antenna.)

Oh God, I think I broke the S-meter on my Icom IC-761. So this
is what HF is supposed to sound like?

Just playing with RX only on RTTY, I logged about 30 states and
5 countries in the first hour I had things connected.
Admittedly, it was during the RTTY Roundup contest. ;-)

So the next step was installing Ham Radio Deluxe 4.0 SP4. The
use of a few clip leads and assorted other "hay wire" connections,
I could at least receive stuff with the DM780 software and the
sound card.

Oh my, this is like waking up after being in a coma for the past 43
years.

So the past few days I've been home brewing all the "nice and tidy"
cables and an interface box to tie everything together.

It really is weird having fun with the radios after all these years of
frustration. Good thing I'm just too stubborn for my own good.

Jeff-1.0
wa6fwi