Over the past couple of days I’ve worked four stations whose callsigns spell words: N0SAP, N8LAG, W2LID, and WB4OFT. Of these four, I have cards from the first three already. I put my QSL to WB4OFT in the mail today.
A LID for more than 80 years
Every time I work a station whose call spells a word, I think of W2LID. I hadn’t worked him for 12 years, and to be honest, I thought that perhaps he was an SK. He was, after all, 84 the last time I worked him.
That being the case, I was very pleased to hear him on the air a couple of days ago. He’s 97 now, and still sending some great Morse Code.
In a previous conversation, he mentioned that he was issued the call in 1937 at the age of 15. By my count, that means he’s been a LID now for at least 81 years!
Digital signals in the CW portion of the bands
Yesterday, I saw this digital signal just below 3530 kHz.
I’m guessing that it’s a WinLink signal. I’ve also seen this type of signal on 7028 kHz. I thought these guys were supposed to stay up and out of the CW portion. Can anyone confirm my suspicion about this being a WinLink signal and where they should be operating?
Ron Kolarik says
It’s hard to tell from your screenshot what the signal is, a sound clip would help identify it.
Winlink can run anywhere, and they do, in the RTTY/Data sub band as long as they are under 500Hz bw. they can also run wider modes as long as it’s peer-to-peer or they are connecting to one of the many offshore gateways which don’t have to stay in the US ACDS sub bands.
Ron K0IDT
Steve~W8SFC says
I can’t confirm that out of band signal, however I have observed phone mode activity that is substantially out of band near 40 meters in the past couple of weeks because I was just messing around (unfortunately I didn’t make note of the frequency, but since you mentioned this I thought I’d mention it). I am a newg (mil-speak for new guy) on HF, and sometimes I go exploring with the tuning knob, which is how I ran across the QSO that was out of band. I suppose there could be some explanation for this, but the 40 meter band was not at all crowded. This is also not the first time I have observed this out of band activity, mostly between 40 and 80 meters. Perhaps this is common practice, or the hams doing it are seeking clear air, but they did not sound like they were just getting to know the amateur bands. I should have noted the frequency and calls and run them through QRZ to see where they were, but from the accents and language they sounded to me like they were located in the southeastern US. I just thought since the subject was out of band signals I’d throw this in. I also note that I do not have my rig set up for 60 meters, and the signals I have picked up were above 40 and below 80 – close to the band but not in the 60 meter area. Has anyone else come across this before? I just don’t know if this is sloppy operating, or purposeful off the band transmissions. There wasn’t anything in the content of their QSO that made it seem strange or nefarious by nature, it seemed like just a couple of guys who QSYed there to operate.
D Jeffrey Blumenthal says
There’s C0AX from the Belden Congo.