A sense of mortality
We don’t often get involved in deep topics on amateur radio, and maybe even less often when operating CW. The other day, though, I was talking to a fellow on 30 meters, and as hams frequently do these days, we started complaining about band conditions.
After commiserating a bit, I mentioned to him that a new study predicts that next sunspot cycle will be of major proportions. Up to this point, of course, most predictions called for a weak solar maximum, or at best a mediocre solar maximum, similar to the last one.
My friend, who is in his mid-70s, said, “Well, I hope this is going to be a big one because it probably will be my last.” Boy, that hit me like a ton of bricks. I hadn’t thought about that until then. I just turned 65, and if I’m lucky, I’ll be around for this next solar cycle and then the next solar maximum. We don’t usually measure out lives in solar cycles, but if you’re a radio amateur, it’s something to think about.
All things being equal(ized)
One of the things that I really dislike about the Flex 6400 is that I cannot use my Motorola communications speaker with it. The Motorola speaker is a really great speaker that produces sharp, clear CW tones and clean crisp speech. But, the Flex 6400 requires an amplified external speaker. I guess that Flex was too cheap to include an audio amplifier in the 6000 Series.
Anyway, I purchased a set of Creative PC speakers that were recommended in the Flex user forum, and they work OK, but the sound is kind of “mushy.” (You can tell that I’m not really much of an audio guy, can’t you?) I guess that’s the kind of sound you want for the kinds of things most people listen to on their PCs.
After putting up with this for the past month or so, it occurred to me that the Flex has a built-in equalizer, and that playing around with that might improve the sound coming out of the speaker. I have the CW sidetone set to 550 Hz, so, as shown above, I set the equalizer to provide the best response around that frequency. This noticeably improved the CW note produced by the speaker.
I plan on tweaking it some more, though. I’m thinking that making the skirt a little steeper will make it sound even better. Any advice would be appreciated.
More operating videos?
Josh KI6NAZ, the guy behind the Ham Radio Crash Course videos, recently exhorted hams to create more online content. I’m not so sure that we really need more content, but I’m willing to play along. I’ve started posting some videos based on my study guides to my YouTube channel, and I’ve also posted recordings of my recent online Tech classes.
I might start posting some other videos on operating technique. For example, I should have done a video on how to set up the receive equalizer on the Flex 6400. I also think a video on how iambic keying works might be amusing. Let me know if there’s some basic operating topic that you’d be interested in having me make a video of.
Dave New, N8SBE says
I had a conversation with Roy Purchase, W8RP, many years ago at his store counter. I was telling him how I had just received a renewal of my license and it was good for ten years. He said, “I have a lifetime license.” I thought he was kidding me, and I actually looked up the rules later to see if there was such a thing. It was only after he passed away a short time later, that I realized what he meant.
I started getting lifetime memberships to various organizations a few years ago, when I realized that I needed to do that before it was no longer worth the gamble. Some others I dropped, figuring that it wasn’t worth it, because I wasn’t currently getting any real use out of it, so why burn more money? I turned 66 this year. Come August I’ll have been licensed 50 years.