One trend I’ve noticed lately is that when signals are weak, or there’s fading and/or interference, guys have a tendency to bail out of a contact or not even answer a CQ in the first place. I’d like to suggest that operators not only not do that, but instead seek out these signals and work on your ability to copy them.
One reason to do this is that band conditions can change after making contact, and making that extra effort when signals are poor can result in a great QSO. Besides, you might meet someone interesting and make a good friend.
Another reason not to bail is that copying weak signals is good practice for when you might need it. Improving your ability to copy weak signals will make working contests more fun, even if you’re not a big contester. And, you never know when you’ll have to field an emergency call. Being able to pull a distress call out of the mud could save a life.
One thing you can do to help you copy weak signals is to have a good speaker or a good set of headphones. Most built-in speakers are next to useless, and I often wonder why manufacturers even bother with them they’re so bad. One of the best purchases I ever made at a hamfest was buying a Motorola communications speaker for $10. You can usually find these speakers at just about any hamfest (when we start having hamfests again, anyway).
Good headphones are not very expensive and can make the difference between copying a signal and not copying it. Two headsets that are popular with CWops are the Yamaha CM-500 (about $$60) and the Koss SB-45 (just $31 on Amazon). And, being headsets, they also include a microphone.
Another thing to do is to really become familiar with the filtering capability of your radio. For example, my KX-3 has an audio peak filter (APF) that really zeroes in on a CW signal. For the longest time, I didn’t know that the KX-3 had this capability, so I was missing out. The moral of the story is RTFM (read the fine manual) and play around with controls on your rig to get the most out of it.
I’d love to hear about your experience with copying weak signals. If you have a good tip, please enter it in the comments below.
I spend a lot of time working digital modes, primarily psk31. One thing it took me quite a while to figure out is using the full complement of capabilities of my radio on receive can easily make the difference between making the QSO and not. I know a lot of psk31 operators are unaware that using filtering to exclude other signals and noise, using different preamp settings can make a big difference in S/N level, and thus allow you to complete a QSO when you otherwise couldn’t even get any copy.
And I learned those techniques almost entirely by working hard to make QSOs with the weak signals on my waterfall, not the strong ones. It turns out the interesting signals tend to be weak ones – dx stations are often weak and sometimes phase garbled, qrp stations are often in interesting places. And in any case the added challenge just increases my fun.
Agreed on headphones for rough phone and cw. The equivalent with a digital mode is the ability to pick through the garbled copy and sort out the essential info from repeats. Some familiarity with how errors in decode get reflected in the copy you see in your preferred mode can go a long way toward letting you figure what the text really was.
Good stuff, both from you Dan as well as Paul B. Like Paul, I do a lot of PSK-31, and learning how to filter the bandwidth, IF shift away from strong signals (so that they get taken out by the filter), tweak the gains (amps, attenuators, and RX knob on the signalink), etc. have opened up a world of weak-signal contacts for me. As you said, RTFM, know your gear, and practice.
Also, those little $10-ish MFJ-281 square speakers are better than any built-in speaker I’ve ever had the pleasure(?) to use.
Since you asked, about the only tips I can add are (1) learn how to use your transceiver’s narrow bandwidth filters to block out most of the other signals, and how to use the IF shift to slide any troublesome remaining signals over into the blocked part of the receiver’s band; and (2) to really learn to use the various RX gains to get the signal into the optimal level for your receiver, high enough for good copy but low enough that nothing clips and the noise is kept to a minimum.