First CW Contacts

Saturday, January 9, 2010

First CW Contacts

I don't have a way to hand key CW on this TS-180S so I built an interface that makes the RS232 CST/RST signals key the radio. Once I figured the VOX delay was too short (it was dropping into RX after every letter) and made adjustment to it I was off to the races.

The CQNA contest was in full swing with lots of CQs on the band and short QSOs. That was just perfect for me to test the rig out. I made 25 contacts, 13 on 20m and 12 on 15m.

Now to get a key and get a 40m antenna as I work days and 40 is all I have in the evening.

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About AJ4UU

Rewind time - vintage 1980s.
I grew up with my Grandpa N1FGC(SK) listening to ham radio and watching him tinker with electronic projects. I had wondered where I got my interest in taking radios apart to see how they worked from. I dabbled in CB radio for a while when I was in high school while living in Arizona and when my Grandpa would visit from Maine during the winter we'd construct antennas so he could listen to the ham bands. One year I found some scrap aluminum tubing and built a 1/4 wave CB antenna. With 5 watts we could talk from Apache Junction to Globe on a good day. Sure beat the Firestick whip on the back of the truck. Our first project together was when we went to a ham fest or some electronics store in Phoenix and bought 3 Motorola CBs. These were top notch models with digital tuning and memory scanning and storage. They all had something wrong with them, but we managed to get 2 working good enough with parts from the 3rd. They had no micro phones so we had to figure out how to switch channels with push buttons on some mics we picked up. That was a fun time and I wish i could have done more of it but with school and them only visiting in the winter our gadget time was limited.

Forward time circa 2000.
One day back in the fall of 2003 something hit me and made me decide to get my ham license. I had always put it off because I had too many hobbies and only had a budget for a few. Music is a passion and I have had several electric guitars and bass' over the years. Most I had to pawn to put some food on the table during the lean years (late 80s early 90s) and it wasn't until after I joined the Air Force and made enough rank that I could again afford to buy some instruments again. After a few more promotions we were financially stable again and I could afford to buy a VHF FM Transceiver (ICOM 2100H). It's a great little radio but I found the range limiting. I found a bargain deal one year and bought a used ICOM W32A HT. With the dual band and cross band repeater that radio really was packed with features. Then I heard of Echolink and soon had the software installed and a simple homebrew interface built. Now I was world wide while walking around the neighborhood with my HT. Being in the electronics field in the Air Force it wasn't too foreign to me when I looked at the questions in the General and Extra pools. The biggest challenge for me was to remember what bands and frequencies I could or could not operate on. That and the formulas for series/parallel LC circuits. Once I had those down the test was passed and soon had the /AE after my call. I'm now in the process of learning CW and I can recognize a CQ while running up the band.

Forward to present time.
Currently rigs are Flex6400, Yaesu FT1200DX, Yaesu FT897D. Current antenna is Terminated Inverted V all band dipole. 2MHz - 30MHz less than 2:1 SWR on all bands. Gain -16dB low bands to -2dB on the high bands. Love the bandwidth on this antenna but the ERP is horrendous. Even so this antenna does real well with FT8. I plan on an antenna with less loss or even some gain in the near future.