​Reprinted with permission from:
Wayne Burdick, N6KR
CTO of Elecraft, Inc. 
and friend for 45 years


I find that CW has many practical and engaging aspects that I just don’t get with computer-mediated modes like FT8. You’d think I’d be burned out on CW by now, over 45 years since I was first licensed, but no, I’m still doin’ it :)

Yes, FT8 (etc.) is a no-brainer when, despite poor conditions, your goal is to log as many contacts as possible with as many states or countries as possible. It’s so streamlined and efficient that the whole process is readily automated. (If you haven’t read enough opinions on that, see "The mother of all FT8 threads” on QRZ.com, for example.)

But back to CW. Here’s why it works for me. YMMV.

CW feels personal and visceral, like driving a sports car rather than taking a cab. As with a sports car, there are risks. You can get clobbered by larger vehicles (QRM). Witness road range (“UP 2!”). Fall into a pothole (QSB). Be forced to drive through rain or snow (QRN).

With CW, like other forms of human conversation, you can affect your own style. Make mistakes. Joke about it.

CW is a skill that bonds operators together across generations and nations. A language, more like pidgin than anything else, with abbreviations and historical constructs and imperialist oddities. A curious club anyone can join. (At age 60 and able to copy 50 WPM on a good day, I may qualify as a Nerd Mason of some modest order, worthless in any other domain but of value in a contest.)

With very simple equipment that anyone can build, such as a high-power single-transistor oscillator, you can transmit a CW signal. I had very little experience with electronics when I was 14 and built an oscillator that put out maybe 100 mW. Just twisted the leads of all those parts together and keyed the collector supply--a 9-volt battery. With this simple circuit on my desk, coupled to one guy wire of our TV antenna mast, I worked a station 150 miles away and was instantly hooked on building things. And on QRP. I’m sure the signal was key-clicky and had lots of harmonics. I’ve spent a lifetime making such things work better, but this is where it started.

Going even further down the techno food chain, you can “send” CW by whistling, flashing a lamp, tapping on someone’s leg under a table in civics class, or pounding a wrench on the inverted hull of an upside-down U.S. war vessel, as happened at Pearl Harbor. Last Saturday at an engineering club my son belongs to, a 9-year-old demonstrated an Arduino Uno flashing HELLO WORLD in Morse on an LED. The other kids were impressed, including my son, who promptly wrote a version that sends three independent Morse streams on three LEDs. A mini-pileup. His first program.

Finally, to do CW you don’t always need a computer, keyboard, mouse, monitor, or software. Such things are invaluable in our daily lives, but for me, shutting down everything but the radio is the high point of my day. The small display glows like a mystic portal into my personal oyster, the RF spectrum. Unless I crank up the power, there’s no fan noise. Tuning the knob slowly from the bottom end of the band segment to the top is a bit like fishing my favorite stream, Taylor Creek, which connects Fallen Leaf Lake to Lake Tahoe. Drag the line across the green, sunlit pool. See what hits. Big trout? DX. Small trout? Hey, it’s still a fish, and a QSO across town is still a QSO. Admire it, then throw it back in.

(BTW: You now know why the Elecraft K3, K3S, KX2, and KX3 all have built-in RTTY and PSK data modes that allow transmit via the keyer paddle and receive on the rig’s display. We decided to make these data modes conversational...like CW.)

Back to 40 meters....

73,

Wayne
N6KR

I like to keep up with my previous QSO Today guests to keep their biographies current.  

Don Keith, N4KC, my guest in Episode 39, has a new book out and available in Amazon called, Dial Dancing. Don says that it is a book of ham radio short stories that are dramatic, funny, and hopefully entertaining.  He has one story about what African American amateurs had to go through in the 50s and 60s, and another about a 75 meter nightly round table in which the group learns a well kept secret about one of its regulars. 

The book is available at Amazon at this link.  I just downloaded it to my Amazon Kindle to get into it.  

​73,  Eric 4Z1UG

​Last week, Karen and I had our day in court as a result of Karen being rear-ended in an accident last year.  There were no witnesses to prove that she hadn’t hit the van in front of her before being hit from behind. The insurance company of the owner of the truck which hit her would not pay for the damage to the front of her car.  According to the insurance company representative it was an “open and shut case”.

Except, that it wasn’t open and shut, because there was no accident until she was hit from behind and we wanted justice.  We waited over a year for our day in court, even though we thought our chances of winning anything were slim. 

Without witnesses, I suggested to Karen that this was really a physics problem. We had to demonstrate that she was hit hard enough to be pushed a few meters into the van in front of her. She enlisted three physics students from the boys’ high school, where she teaches, to work on the problem.  We gave them the vehicles’ weights and speed. They made utilized formulas that they had been studying for four years, filling up three white boards with the all of their calculations. 

After they were finished we both agreed that we could not interpret their results without them going to court with us. With special permission from the school, we had three 12th grade physics students come to small claims court with us.  One of the boys spoke.  He explained the calculations they had made which showed that the truck had pushed Karen’s car approximately 3.8 meters on impact.  His testimony was confident and mature causing the insurance representative to want to settle with us.

We were all changed by this experience, especially the boys.  They came away with the idea that justice was done in this Jerusalem court and that their hard work and study had practical applications. We too were moved by their diligent work and brilliant testimony before the judge.  Of course, with WhatsApp, the entire school knew of their victory in court and what they had done for their teacher. 

What does this have to do with amateur radio, you might ask?  As hams we have a lot of practical knowledge that has far reaching implications. We take our theoretical knowledge and apply it on a daily basis and I owe my amateur radio background to looking at this as a problem to be solved. These physics students had the opportunity to take their knowledge from the white board to the court room to help solve a real life problem.  As hams, we can influence others to dig deeper, to try new things. While we express ourselves through electronics and radio, our approach to problem solving is very practical and far beyond just our hobby.

73, Eric 4Z1UG

When we learn amateur radio in our youth it becomes a prism through which we see the whole world.  This is because we learn some basic electricity, electronics and physics and we use this knowledge to better understand and interpret the physical phenomena around us.  We look at problems differently and often find the solutions quickly.

​This is the case with my guest this week, Brian Clarke, VK2GCE, who caught the amateur radio bug very early in his life in Auckland, New Zealand.  It wasn’t until later that he actually got his license.  He became a talented musician in addition to pursuing a degree in electronics. He then used his combined knowledge to better understand the waveguide properties of a brass trumpet.  Somehow his radio and electronics background made it obvious to Brian that a trumpet has properties similar to waveguide used in microwave communications.  The only work left was to prove these assumptions and to earn his Master’s Degree.

Brian discusses in the podcast the “Subs in Schools” program sponsored by The Re-engineering Australia Foundation.  This program engages students by helping them to understand and apply the technology of submersible vehicles and submarines.  The students do the research, design, build and apply what they learn to control their submarine models in the water.  Imagine what benefits come from this project based learning which they can later apply to solving other complex problems. 

While there is a lot of discussion of STEM programs (Science- Technology-Engineering-Math) in schools which foster these skills in students, it is only when this knowledge is applied to problem solving that it becomes more than an intellectual exercise and bears fruit.  Hands- on projects like Subs in Schools need to be a major part of STEM programs.

Our amateur radio hobby provides a solid foundation to support STEM programs in our schools.  Think about what we as HAMS can do, especially those of us close to or in retirement,  as volunteers to bolster these programs with our hands- on and real world knowledge. The opportunities are endless!

​73, Eric 4Z1UG  

The response from the QSO Today listener survey was terrific. Almost all of you who answered my survey entered the drawing by giving me your call sign.  I assigned each record in the survey that contained a call sign a line number, set the range in an on-line random number generator and pushed the button.  I got this idea from Cale at the HamRadio 360 Podcast.  Great idea Cale!  The winner of the drawing was Mervin Northover, M0MIN, in the UK, who now has his prize.

While the survey was insightful, you were also very generous with your guest suggestions.  Most of your QSO Today guest suggestions were new names and call signs to me, many of whom I had never heard of.  I entered all of your suggested guests into my prospect list.  I go through a few each day, complete the record and send invitations.  I expect that we will have some great future guests on the podcast.

I purchased my plane ticket and made reservations for my first Dayton Hamfest.  I hope to meet many of the QSO Today listeners at the show.  I also plan to attend the FDIM conference.  What I learned is that the Fairborn hotels are the closest hotels to the new Hamvention site in Xenia.  As a result, hotel rooms disappeared quickly right after New Year’s, possibly impacting the folks that would go to FDIM.  So if you are planning Dayton this year, now is the time to make preparations. 

My QSO Today is with Mike Myers, VA3MPM, who is an active ham in the city of Ottawa, Canada.  Mike likes to collect old transceivers, the ones that many of us wanted as kids, in the seventies, but out of our financial reach at the time. He likes the early Drake, Swan, Yaesu, and Kenwood transceivers that he finds at hamfests for very little money.  Mike says that most of these rigs will work with a little clean up and maybe replacement of all of the electrolytic capacitors.  In the end, he has some very interesting rigs where each one gives him a different on-air user experience.  

Some new hams to the QSO Today podcast tell me that the cost of a ham rig can be expensive and a barrier to getting on the air.  These older rigs (under the careful scrutiny of an Elmer) can be a great opportunity to get on the air for a fraction of the cost of a new rig.  With a little more help, you can add some SDR (Software Defined Radio) capability to give these rigs some interesting new capability (See QST Magazine, Jan 2017, Modulation-Demodulation Software Radio, by Alex Schwarz, P. 50). 

For me these QSO Today conversations stimulate some new thinking.  I hope that they do the same for you. 

​73,  Eric 4Z1UG

​Thanks to all of you who completed my listener survey.  As I write this over 300 of you have replied and entered my drawing for the $100.00 DX Engineering Gift Certificate.   Your input is very helpful.  I will post the survey results to the QSO Today website at some point soon.  

I take your comments and suggestions very seriously.  One of your most important contributions is guest suggestions. As I have said before, I send out tens of invitations every month to create a roster of QSO Today guests.  Only about 10% of my invitations result in QSO Today interviews.  I think that this is a very good response.  Your suggestions bring to my attention ham radio operators who have amazing stories that I want to hear and share with you.  As I go through the QSO Today Listener Survey, I am adding your suggestions to my list. Thanks!

I was pleasantly surprised by the response to Episode 127 with Brooke Allen, N2BA.  Our QSO went off the traditional rails of the typical QSO Today conversation and ventured into territory that I found both interesting and compelling. It caused me to question, in my own mind, what it is about amateur radio that should be preserved.  Why is it important for the ham radio service and its licensees to still be here after the old timers are gone?  If I have to make an elevator pitch about ham radio, what could I say in its favor?

Here is my elevator pitch: 

Amateur radio provides hands-on learning experience that encompasses a vast amount of technical knowledge, practical mechanical and social skills.  Its mentors and students often trade places as they research, experiment, construct, and test new circuits, equipment, antennas and other technical contraptions. Ham radio creates a passionate life trajectory into science and technology for its younger members.  It’s the ultimate hands-on STEM classroom.

I appreciate that my QSO with Brooke was discussed on some other podcasts.  I chuckled as I heard comments from other podcasters that I may have squirmed in my chair when, as my mother used to say, the conversation became “adult”.  As a community we should have these discussions that lead us to articulating our positions as a service and hobby for the future.  

​I don’t have answers, but I like asking the questions.

73, Eric 4Z1UG

Often during a QSO Today interview I am catapulted into the past to remember my youth, growing up with electricity and electronics, and then the discovery of amateur radio, almost by accident. My conversation with Ian Keyser, G3ROO, this week, caused me to recall, as a very young boy, playing with electric wires, plugs and live house current. I made wall plugs from shoe boxes and rescued electric motors out of equipment my Dad had in the garage. I had a pair of sound powered field phones that provided hours of fun, especially when I ran the twisted pair out my bedroom window to the house next door. I was so inspired by the Disneyland Tiki Room at age 9, that I attempted to add Tiki Room features to the bedroom I shared with my two brothers. Unfortunately, the combination of a high speed electric motor and plastic flowers wreaked havoc on the babysitter’s fine, straight hair. That might have been the reason she never came back.

Growing up in the sixties, in Southern California, we were all over town on our bikes up in every neighbor’s tree and we spent countless hours digging underground forts in the empty fields behind the house. We sometimes got hurt, although not badly, were pretty dirty until bath time and kept Band-Aid in business for years. We were not alone; all of us kids carried our childhood wounds with pride, sometimes even sporting a cast.

​What I remember is that my parents didn’t protect me from my interest in electricity, although maybe not aware of how many times I got a shock. They supported my interest and created opportunities for me to work on my electronic projects from an early age. I still have the telephone lineman’s pliers in my tool box that I received from my grandparents on my seventh birthday over fifty years ago. I can’t work on telephone lines without them. When I wanted a Heathkit electronics laboratory in the fifth grade, my Mother made a list of electronic and electrical terms on a yellow pad that I had to learn to merit the gift. Frankly, I was surprised to know that my Mom knew the definition of an Erg! (Erg=10 to the minus 7 Joules)
Taking risks, pushing the envelope, trying new things and occasionally getting injured helped us to grow into confident adults. Perhaps the combination of potential liability, insurance companies and over protective parenting has created a safe but non-challenging environment. When was the last time you saw a “high dive” or even a diving board at a public pool? 

Are we too protective of our children that we limit their opportunities, setting them into safer situations in front of the computer, television, or iPad? If we want our kids and grand-kids to be builders or even amateur radio operators, we may have to open the doors and let the kids out into the world. I don’t have the answer. I am only asking the questions. 
 
73, Eric 4Z1UG

I am now 126 episodes into the QSO Today podcast. If you are reading this when I sent it, it is New Years’ Eve, 2016. Tomorrow is 2017. I want to share with you a few things that I learned in 2016.

• Being a podcaster, especially one who hosts a guest every week, requires good listening skills. Since I began the podcast, I have learned to listen more intently for the gems that are often revealed. In 2017, I hope to become more comfortable with the “pregnant pauses” in conversations that often lead to a better QSO and not be the one who breaks the silence.

• My education trained me to add up the facts before making a decision; put all of my ducks in a row. While it goes against this way of thinking, my gut often gives me the early warning of the right decision before the facts add up. I am paying more attention to my intuition than ever before. Perhaps this is one of the gifts of being older.

• When adversity strikes, often the pain is intense. It causes an accounting of one’s health, business and personal relationships, and a resetting of priorities. When the pain subsides, the gift is the knowledge of which tasks, challenges, friends and family members are important and sadly and painfully, which are not. In the long run this is a good thing like cleaning out the basement after the flood.

• One of the guests whom I hoped to have on the QSO Today Podcast was Jim Dixon, WB6NIL, who was the creator of the Allstar technology, ROIP or radio over Internet protocol that leverages the Asterisk phone system created by Mark Spencer. I have mentioned a few times that I use this technology, created by Jim, to stay in touch with my ham friends around the world using my UHF repeater. Sadly, Jim passed away this month leaving a void in the Allstar community amongst his friends and the people who knew him. While Jim and I traded emails about coming on the show, it was not to be. He who hesitates is lost.

• The QSO Today Podcast, like some of my other activities, was born out of my desire after my 56th birthday to live my life out “on the edge”, to take risks to do something that others have not done, to preserve the stories of some of the amazing Hams who contributed so much to our noble hobby. I also sing and perform in musical theater, no longer the geeky kid who ran the lights and sound backstage. (the picture is 4Z1UG singing "Colonel Buffalo Bill" as Charlie in Annie Get Your Gun).   I can only say that I am sorry that I did not adopt this attitude a few decades earlier. If you are young and reading this message then I advise you to take chances on the edge of your comfort zone. Your life will be enriched.

73,  Eric 4Z1UG

Often, it seems that in interviews with my guests, we do not cover all of the bases in the first hour.  It was only after the end of the first hour with Hans Summers, G0UPL that he mentioned the work he is doing with high altitude balloons.  Since I was still recording, I added this segment to this week’s podcast.  Hans captured my imagination and filled it with new possibilities. 

​We have had other balloonists on the QSO Today podcast including Keith Kaiser, WA0TJT, in Episode 82, who uses the large latex weather balloons which require large amounts of helium to take these balloons in the stratosphere where they break and fall back to Earth.  The cost of these launches can exceed one-thousand US dollars.  These, often one-day high altitude events, involve chasing the balloon to the place where the payload eventually lands by parachute. ​
​
​Hans shared with me another idea.  What if you could make the payload so small and so light that you could use the Mylar party balloons sold in gift stores to do a high altitude balloon launch that stays in the sky for weeks, traveling around the world?  Furthermore, rather than using a VHF radio, what if you used a HF transmitter/beacon that leverages the world wide amateur radio network of WSPRnet receivers to track the balloon location and altitude to display on a website for the balloon launch?   This is exactly what Hans is doing with VE3KCL in his balloon launches.  Hans has leveraged the WSPRnet network to track these high altitude world traveling amateur radio balloons.

​One of the greatest aspects of our amateur radio hobby is our ability to make friends across the world around our common interest of amateur radio and electronics. This has been pointed out in many of the QSO Today episodes by my guests, that we are a “fraternity” (includes YLs and XYLs) with a shared interest in all things radio. As we travel around the World, some of us will knock on the doors of homes and apartments where we see ham radio antennas just to meet another ham radio operator. Often these meetings result in lifelong friendships. I still stop and introduce myself on my travels around Israel when I see a ham radio antenna. These days, I do not see many. In fact I made a mental note of an inverted V that I saw on the side of the road in my travels last week. I need to stop there on my next pass. “Do you have a ham radio operator in there?” I say on the intercom. “I am Eric, 4Z1UG. Can I meet you and say hello?” Most of the time, the answer is a resounding “YES”. 
 
It is with this in mind that my meeting with Eddie Leighton, ZS6BNE, my guest in Episode 28 of the QSO Today Podcast, was like the meeting of two old friends last month when I was visiting South Africa with my wife, Karen. Our friends in Johannesburg, where we stayed, were only too delighted to allow me to invite Eddie to their home so we could meet in person, catch up on ham radio, and to operate Eddie’s RaDAR (rapid deployment amateur radio) rig on the outside patio. I was grateful that Eddie agreed to drive almost three-hundred kilometers to meet with me from his home QTH in Lichtenburg. It was a great afternoon and I hope that I will meet Eddie again on our ham radio travels.

​This episode departs from my normal format as the audio is the conversation and demonstration of Eddie’s “minimalist” RaDAR backpack. This tiny but simple system allowed us to make an 800 kilometer SSB QSO with another ham in South Africa using five watts and a 40 meter end-fed wire. I picked up a Zoom H5 audio recorder, thanks to your support, and used it for the first time to record this “eyeball” QSO. I hope that you enjoy it as much as we did.