I was pleased to hear yesterday that I had been nominated and sponsored for membership in CWops. I’m member 2903.
I’ve been active for the past seven weeks in their CWT (mini contests that run every Wednesday at 1300, 1900 & 0300Z (actually Thursday in the states). I suspect that helped to get recognized.
Since I love teaching, and their mission is education and getting folks involved in Morse Code, I am thinking of helping this fall.
From time to time I will post my LotW counts as a record of what has been going on over time. The last time I posted was in January of 2020, when I had reached 8,000 confirmations and August of 2019 when I had 11,000 entries.
By the way, LotW had 1 Billion QSOs in the database in December of 2018. So in the 28 months since then, LotW has added another 350 million QSOs, a rate of about 12.5 million QSOs a month!
So here we are in April of 2021, and I’ve added another 2,000 QSOs, and 1,000 Confirmations:
The CWOps group runs a mini contest called CW Test (CWT) on Wednesdays. I’ve participated in the last five and have found a slow but steady improvement in my score. So far I’ve been in the Search & Pounce mode, but I’m starting to recognize call signs of those not running 40 WPM and up the first time. I still get thrown a bit by the short-codes used for the membership numbers like A=1, T=0, N=9, etc.
No matter what, it’s a bunch of fun and I look forward to it each week. I’ve managed to bump into N3JT, Jim Talens, CWops member #1 in the contest a few times now (my hand starts to shake when I work him). Someday I will try the 0300Z event to see what 80m and 160m are like.
Edited: I actually tried the 0300Z CWT last night for the first time (it starts at 11 PM local time on Wednesday night). I was amazed at how busy 40m was. 80m was not quite as productive, but there were still plenty of stations to work. I used my Flex6000M with the Maestro remote head in my bedroom and headphones to avoid waking my wife up. I was scribbling calls, times, membership numbers, and frequencies down fast and furious. Sort of fun to run a contest in my jammies!
After completing an activation of two new parks on April 13th, my RI park count increased to 40, earning the Platinum Activator Award
With the advent of nice weather, the number of outdoor things that have been taking up time have reduced the amount of time I can spend on POTA, but the goal still remains to do 50 of the state’s parks by year end.
It’s nice to have a hobby like Amateur Radio in retirement as it can keep you very busy. There is always something new to do, or you might rotate through various aspects of the hobby as your interest comes and goes.
Such is the case with my local HotSpot, which went off air late last fall following some unintentional renovations to the shack (like so many hams, my gear is in the furnace room). I finally got around to setting things up again, but once I got things going I quickly discovered that my version 3.4.17 software was out of date, and DMR was no longer working.
The DMR issue turned out to be a need for a personal password to be setup with Brandmeister (theyve been having issues with folks spoofing callsigns using the default password). Even after doing that, things still didn’t work, so I took the steps to upgrade the firmware to version 4.1.4. That required setting up a complete new microSD card with the latest image. It was easy to do with the help of Toshen KE0FHS’s excellent website. Rather than try to restore things from my backup (I did have one), I figured I would just set things up from scratch. Within an hour or two I had things running. In addition, I enabled YSF, which I had turned off.
I now remember why I turned off YSF — the FCS002/90 Americalink is VERY busy, so it is back off for now, but at least it works!
I have been using DXLabs for my log for years (after giving up on HDR for many reasons). My Elecraft K3s was the first radio I used (I love its full break-in on CW). My Yaesu FTDX-101MP followed quickly (fairly typical COM port setup). But I never added in my FlexRadio 6600M until today.
The process turned out to be very simple and completely documented in Dave’s excellent Wiki. I just made sure to start SmartSDR running, then followed the instructions. Within a couple of minutes, I was connected.
I immediately noted that the sensitivity of the Flex dropped — like another radio had been added (and in fact, that’s what happened). I shut down SmartSDR (killing the panadapter on the PC screen) and everything was back to “normal”. After that point I didn’t have to restart SDR, even as I started and stopped DXLabs or power-cycled the PC. I haven’t tried shutting the FlexRadio down yet (bitter experience has taught me that shutting the Flex down can sometimes do nasty things, like corrupt an internal SD card), so perhaps the SDR software needs to be running to establish the initial connection, and isn’t required subsequently (at least for DXCommander and DXKeeper’s purposes).
I decided to sign up for the CWops CW Academy. They have small, instructor led classes that meet for an hour twice a week, for eight weeks. In addition, there is an expectation of an hour of practice sending/receiving each day, so it is pretty intense, but a lot of fun. My instructor, Joe KK5NA, makes it enjoyable and fresh.
With all that CW practice, I have radios and keyers all over the house now (bedroom, den, and of course shack). I’ve started to run out of paddles. I broke into a box that I received 7 years ago – A 100th Anniversary ARRL Commemorative Vibroplex paddle to hook up to my Flex-6600M.
I’ve always been rather ham-fisted when it comes to sending Morse Code. Not so much that I squeeze the paddles so much they bend, but rather I knock the paddle all over the table. It’s hard to send a “5” when the paddle is moving! Some of that is age and some of it is lack of practice. After acquiring a UR5CDX CT73 MB-L, “travel” paddle, the problem was amplified due to its light weight.
A friend of mine, Bruce NJ3K, had discovered DXengineering’s “Paddle Pad” and suggested I try one out. They come in two sizes (the photo below is the larger size). Both the bottom and top of the pad is sort of sticky (but not in a messy way). Sure enough, when I put the paddle on the pad, it no longer moves. Thank you Bruce!
The company that makes the sticky pad for DXengineering is HandStands, which sells through Amazon and other dealers for about the same price (without the pretty DXengineering logo of course).
This past Tuesday, my wife and I (and our lab Jaclyn) headed out to the three RI parks furthest from our house: Simmons Mill, Sapowet Marsh, and Haines State Park. It was about an hour to the furthest one, and we were back home about six hours later. One station, WB4KTU, Loyce in Alabama, managed to work me in all three parks. Another hat-trick!
With 36 parks completed, I’m in position 45 (Top 5%) for 2021, and in the top 7% since the program began.
From time to time, some beautiful work or art, that is also a Morse key, catches my fancy. I recently purchased a small dual-lever paddle from UR5CDX, for about $150 including shipping (surprisingly fast too — about a week via international post).
At home I go big and heavy to deal with my ham-fist which knocks keys all about the desktop. But when traveling (like POTA), size/weight becomes an issue. I haven’t used this key on the road yet, but I fully expect I’m going to have to hold it with one hand while sending as I do other small keys. That said, it’s almost too pretty to use.
UR5CDX CT73 MBL (the “B” means Brass, and the “L” means smaller/lighter base)
