K2AS Ham Radio

When I was young, my Dad built several Heathkit projects; a stereo amplifier, stereo tuner, a 23 inch color TV, and others. For a Christmas present when I was 10 or 11, I got one of those 101 Electronics Projects kits. I loved putting that together and learning about electronics. From there I got a GR-64 shortwave receiver, that really got me started into ham radio. Heathkit catalogs arrived in the mail a couple times a year, and I poured through them, and dreamed of having an SB-101. My first ham transmitter was homebrew, and my first receiver was a Hammarlund HQ-110, but the Christmas after I got my novice license, I got a DX-60B transmitter. A few years later after I got my first part-time job, I bought a HW-101. I did get to use the Heathkit SB line at WB2GNR, the MCC club station. I had several ham related Heathkit accessories: SWR meter, digital clock, wattmeter, electronic keyer, etc, but I never had a Heathkit rig after the HW-101. I had seen this before, but a few weeks ...

I don’t operate CW as much as I used to, so my skills have diminished a bit, though I am pretty good at 18 wpm or so. My weak point was often copying all to paper, especially over 15 wpm. So I have started to do it all in my head, which sometimes works and sometimes does not. Practice makes perfect, but finding time is an issue. CW Decoders have probably been around for 30 years or so. I tried a PC based one in the late 1990s, which was not great. My FTDX-101D has a built-in decoder for CW. It works pretty good, not great, but you have to adjust your keyer speed control to get proper decoding, not an ideal setup. A year or two ago, I saw mention of a new one in QST, and downloaded it. It is PC based, and you need audio from the radio getting to your PC soundcard. If you do PSK or FT8, you are all set. It was created by Grant Connell WD6CNF, and can be found at https://wd6cnf1.software.informer.com According to the QST article, the WD6CNF CW Decoders adapts to the oper...

Recently I was listening on the CW portion of 20 meters, and heard many stations call CQ SST. I assumed it was some kind of sprint, a short mini-contest of some sort. I have heard others on the air before, maybe by CWOPS or FISTS, often in the evening. But they were usually 25-35 wpm affairs, not so friendly to casual CW operators. I wasn’t sure what the SST was about. So I Googled it. It is a twice weekly event sponsored by the K1USN Radio Club. SST is short for Slow Speed conTest. It is described as CW below 20WPM, (though 20 WPM is not slow to a lot of people) and the required exchange is short, just name and state (or DX country). The idea is to build cw skills with short, easy exchanges. All the info can be found here . It is one hour on Friday afternoon, and another hour on Sunday evening. I have found the typical CW speeds are close to or at 20 wpm, though you can hear some slower. But as K2OID often says, speed doesn’t matter as much when you know what i...

If you haven’t seen this yet, an interesting presentation on radio monitoring activities and equipment leading up to and during WWII.