AM Heresy!

[N3DRB The Derb]

geo, that tuner you got is a nice unit, nothing cheap about it. Should work FB for you.

[VE3GZB]

I visited my friend Lou yesterday (2 hour drive, one way). The tuner needed some repair and Lou had the hardware to get it done.

I brought the KW2000B and we checked to see how it performs. The bandwidth is indeed too great, so I'm going to have to work on a filter design.

Later in the day Lou loaned me his spare transceiver for 1 year yesterday (Kenwood TS-520SE). Got home and hooked it all up - including the tuner - and within 5 minutes I made a contact in Plymouth Wisconsin, AA9VP on 7150.

It's my first contact from my location on my own in over a year! It felt very very good!

Today I came back from CW lessons. Now up to 15 letters - A D E G H I J M N O R S T U W

And another ham is there besides me, also wanting to learn CW! I wish this stuff was taught in schools, etc...as a youth so one doesn't have to go through so much to find a tutor!

73s
geo

[K1JJ]

Good going Geo.

Now that you are learning the letters - the fastest and easiest way to increase your efficiency is to get a hand key and practice oscillator. Get out a book and start sending what you see. Do it until you drop every day and before long you will be sending 15 wpm. The receiving is a little harder but comes quickly from getting on the air.

To really crank, build yourself a simple keyer. They have chips that will do it for you. A paddle is easy to make too, unless you buy a good used one. Bencher is a great brand for paddles.

On the air, the key is to talk with people (in CW) that send JUST a little faster than you can copy solid. You will get enuff to carry on a conversation, but will stretch to become even faster.

T

[VE3GZB]

Yup, the fellow who is teaching me CW - VE3CQH - has loaned me a practice key and oscillator. He advised me to deliberately avoid any exposure to code literature, it all has to be an ear exercise.

So I'll get my wife to look at a book I have, tap out at random which letters I know and I'll tell her (in sign language because she's deaf) what letter I think it is. She'll let me know if I'm right.

She's watching a movie just now but I hope before bed time I can get more practice in!

If I only knew code now, I could get on 40m and make another contact. Last night was ok for a while. This evening was just awful, only the high power players running over 500W on SSB could communicate. So much noise tonight!

73s
geo

[ve6pg]

..geo...try listening on lsb on 7055...trans provincial net is there...alot quieter on that portion on 40...

..sk..

[WU2D]

Geo,

CW is fun to learn. I picked it up in the Boy Scouts and made my first contact with a VE3 way back in 1973 using a command transmitter. I was raised in Canton NY in the Seaway Valley of northern NY.

CW and low power are a lot of fun, especially on the very forgiving CW segments of the 40 and 80 M bands. I worked Steve VE7SL in BC and Louis, VE3AWA in ON over the weekend on 80M CW with my 4 Watt UX201A Breadboard. We had the annual AWA 1929 QSO Party over the last two weekends. 

Have you got any modulation out of the ART-13 Mod Tranny yet?

Mike WU2D

[VE3GZB]

Just checking messages, etc, before bedtime. Insanely busy day.

Yea, CW actually IS fun to learn! My wife is picking it up too, she's really enjoying it!

I hooked the ART-13 Xformer up, but got the screen winding hooked up backwards. A bunch of arcs off the plate RFC of the 6146 greeted me! YIKES!! 

Turned the screen winding the other way, no more arcs, 6146 is happy. But I've run into another problem, I'm trying to run RF and modulator from the same 500V supply and I don't think I can do that and still expect it to be 500V.  I need more power then!

So the real thing to do is to build a separately powered modulator, something quite a bit stronger, more versatile - the tubes for that idea, however, are tied up in Customs, they won't let them through, not for a few weeks now.

This evening was a total writeoff for doing any experimenting on a narrowband filter for the KW2000B, I had to go pickup the kids from school (in this weather, total trip was over 1 hour just for that), then get dinner on, get the chores done too.

My friend Lou VE3AWA loaned me a Kenwood TS-520SE for a year, so I don't have to be so silent while I'm working on creating my own stuff! Made a contact a couple of days ago in Plymouth Wisconsin with it, but since then 40m has started to resemble a welding shop. Must be the weather!

73s
geo