K9OZ ham radio blog

New Years's Eve is Straight Key Night for hams. We all get out our old radios and straight keys and relive our youth. I was running a 70s era Novice radio, the Heath HW-16, and using an old military straight key from WWII. We get spoiled by the modern radios with selective filtering and electronic keyers that make sending Morse code much easier, but it is a blast to get the old gear out and pretend it's 1965 and I'm a 12-year-old playing with radios in the basement.

Looking in the log a couple weeks ago, I realized I had nearly been off the air this summer. So I tried to get on the air for some simple cw QSOs a couple weekends ago, and it was nice to hear CW again. Last weekend I ran the North American QSO party for a few hours. I did a couple hundred contacts, mostly on 40. 80 meters was just too noisy to deal with. This weekend I messed with the Worked All Europe DX contest on Saturday night on 40. I could hear a few EU stations, between all the US stations calling CQ Test. I managed to squeak out 25 contacts on 40 meters last night, but that's less than an hour on good band. As the weather changes, I'll get more active on the radio and more active on the blog, I promise.

Ok, this is the first post I've tried to make by actually typing on the iPad. It works, but is going to take some getting used to the keyboard. The iPad is an interesting toy, and I've almost got it sete to where I can control a radio remotely and stream audio back to the iPad. I don't have the audio part working yet, but I'll figure out my mistake soon. This morning I made a nice QSO with Pete K4BKD, who I've talked to multiple times. It was a good saturday morning cw chat, we talked about weather, radio, dogs, radios, cars, and pollen counts, all at 25 words per minute using Morse code. Fun. Location: Lincoln Ave,Lisle,United States

I had a co-worker over to the house the other day and he saw the radios and started asking questions. Unfortunately, over a three-hour drive, he kept asking questions and never understood what ham radio was, or why I would have all that stuff. He kept relating it to CB radio, and never could get out of that mode. This morning's activity is a good example of a nice contact, or QSO. I called a CQ, which is a general call saying I'm looking to talk to anyone. I was answered by K2AOP, John, in Phoenix, AZ. We traded names, locations, and started experimenting with comparing signal strenths with different antennas. We both had both a vertical and dipole antenna, and we tried vertical to vertical, vertical to dipole, dipole to dipole, etc. It was ineteresting. Then we started talking about jobs, and he asked me for more detail on what I did. I went into some detail, and he had good comments. It was just a nice, randon QSO with a nice guy in the other side of the country -- all done a...

Last weekend was the CW Sweepstakes, probably the biggest and most challenging of North American contests. I had planned on making a major effort to work a clean sweep -- all 80 sections -- but discovered I had an old friend and his wife visiting over the weekend. It was hard to tell them "No, don't come, I have a ham radio contest." So instead I did a very modest effort -- in about 2.5 hours of operating I made roughly 140 contacts. I had a good run going on 40 meters Sunday morning, and did some search and pounce just to listen around the bands. Actually, it was a little liberating not to have to try to beat last year's score and make that clean sweep. Maybe next year. Meanwhile, there are plenty of other contests coming up this winter. Maybe I'll make a big effort on the 160 meter contest next month. Phone Sweepstakes is two weeks away, and I'll dabble in that a little, but I just don't see the challenge of working a phone contest. Maybe if I had a bett...

I finished my road trip today, and worked more DX. I was working an East Coast station on 20 CW while driving through Des Moines, and SP5SA (Poland) broke in to see if he could get that county. I gave him that county, and we kept talking until I reached the next county line and he got Jasper County as well. He thanked me profusely. All this while I was driving 80 mph on I-8o. Later I heard LZ50KA (Bulgaria) calling CQ and answered him. He came right back, and that was another good contact. Not bad for using an ATAS 120 antenna on the back of the Mini Cooper.

This week I took a 900 mile drive to visit a friend in West Nebraska. That gave me a lot of mobile time. Here are some highlights. Early on the trip Monday I had a long contact with someone (his call escapes me) who I've talked to a few times from Pennsylvania. While we were talking he viewed this blog, and commented on the photos of the mobile setup. That's how it's supposed to work. Shortly after that I was calling CQ on 40 meters and W7AAZ/m came back to me. It turned out he was about 400 miles ahead of me on I-80, also heading west. We talked for about an hour, largely about mobile setups -- his was in a Corvette -- then both stopped for lunch at the same time. A half hour later I called him again, and we went for another half hour or so. Great mobile activity. Today I started the eastbound trip. This morning I was having no luck on 40 meters, so listened to the I-pod instead. Then this afternoon I switched to 20, and was still having minimal luck. So I settled in on a ...