About a week ago, my Elmer-ee, Zoltan, KD8ABX, e-mailed me and asked if he could come over some evening and watch me operate HF. He came over Monday evening. After participating in the ARROW Monday Night, I fired up the IC-735 and tuned around on 40m.
One of the things he was curious about was why someone would choose a particular band or a particular mode over another. The answer to that, of course, is not an easy one. A variety of factors come into play: the time of day, band conditions in general, and personal preference.
I explained to Zoltan that one reason for choosing 40m that evening was that 40m is kind of the “all purpose” band. It’s almost always open to somewhere, and at that time of night I knew I could find someone to have a QSO with to demonstrate how it’s done.
After finishing that contact, I suggested that we tune up to 30m, and see what was happening. I explained that 30m was kind of a cross between 40m and 20m. That is, it was often open for DX like 20m, but, like 40m, it was often open later at night than 20m.
The ham radio gods were smililng on me Monday. Not only was 30m open, but there was a huge pileup trying to contact the YV0D DXpedition. That gave me a chance to explain DXpeditions and pileups to Zoltan. YV0D was operating on 10.104 and the pileup extended up past 10.110. That also gave me a chance to explain split-frequency operation.
I tired of listening to the pileup, I tuned up the band a ways, where I heard ER1DA calling CQ. A quick call netted my first DX QSO of the night. Tuning up a little higher, I worked YZ80AA, a special event station celebrating 80 years of amateur radio in Serbia and Montenegro. (The first ham station there was YU1AFS, a club station, that went on the air in 1924).
Finally, I heard Tony OE5GYL calling CQ. I’ve worked OE5GYL several times, the first two being while he was on vacation at a “naturist” beach near Sarajevo. He came back to my first call, and we had a nice, though short contact. I told Tony that I was giving a CW demo to a friend and he passed on his regards to Zoltan.
Overall, I think it was quite a successful demo, and one small step for CW. About a week or so earlier, Zoltan asked what might be a good microphone to purchase for use with the IC-735 he bought at Dayton (at my suggestion). I mentioned that I’d be happy to lend him the hand microphone that came with my rig. I have never used it, as I bought the desk mike, and I hardly ever operate SSB anyway.
Well, after watching me operate CW for a bit, he said something to the effect, “I can see where somebody might not need a microphone at all.” Bingo! I think I might have another potential CW operator on the hook, and I plan on reeling him in.
All of us CW ops should do this at least once or twice a year. If anyone at all shows any interest in CW offer to have them come to your house and watch you do what you do. It really is a special experience, isn’t it? If you can convey that magic to them then just maybe we’ve made another small step for CW.
Leave a Reply