KB6NU's Ham Radio Blog

I’ve worked some really neat places lately. For example, just a half hour ago, I worked a station in Greenbackville, VA. With a name like that, there must be an interesting story behind it.

Also in Virginia, I recently worked a station in Spotsylvania. The first thing that came into my mind was the mythical country in the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons. As it turns out, that country is Pottsylvania. Spotsylvania was the site of a famous Civil War battle.

Earlier in the week, I worked the Yukon–Yukon, OK, that is. When I told the op there, Will, that it was the first time that I’ve worked the Yukon, he said he gets that all the time.

Right after working the Yukon, I worked a station in Monk’s Corner, SC. Can’t you just picture a monastery among rolling hills with guys in long robes, making cheese or wine or something?

On January 3, I worked a group of stations in towns with people’s first names. In order, they were: Beverly, MA; Gary, IN; Roscoe, IL; and Tom’s River, NJ.

I think it’s fun to do Google searches and find out a little bit about the towns, if at all possible. For example, doing a Google search on “Spotsylvania” turns up a lot of information on the Civil War battle there. And a Google search for “Monk’s Corner” tells me that there actually is a monastery there.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find anything on Greenbackville, VA. Despite the colorful name, it would appear that nothing of note happened there.

More Cool Town Names, Jan. 25, 2003
Today, I worked stations in Melissa, TX and Cowpens, SC. According to the Online Handbook of Texas, “The town was laid out in 1872, when the Houston and Texas Central Railway reached the area. The settlement was probably named either for the daughter of George A. Quinlan, an official of the railroad, or for the daughter of C. P. Huntington, a prominent railroad executive.”

I wasn’t able to find out much about how Cowpens, SC got its name, but it’s probably self-explanatory. Every June, they hold the Mighty Moo Festival, in honor of the crewmen who served aboard the USS Cowpens aircraft carrier in WWII.

Cowpens was also the site of a famous Revolutionary War battle. According to the National Park Service, “The battle at the “Cow Pens” is recognized by historians as one of the most important of the American Revolution. On January 17, 1781, Daniel Morgan led his army of tough Continentals, militia and cavalry to a brilliant victory over Banastre Tarleton’s force of British regulars. It helped turn the tide of war in the Southern Campaign of the American Revolution.

“Coming on the heels of a patriot victory at nearby Kings Mountain on October 7, 1780, it was the second successive staggering defeat for British forces under General Charles Cornwallis. Only nine months after the Battle of Cowpens, Cornwallis was forced to surrender his army to General George Washington at Yorktown, Virginia in October 1781.”

I felt like I had the DX hammer yesterday evening. My first QSO of the session was with an F5 who gave me a nice report. Next, was a CO6, although I’m not counting that as an official QSO because the signal faded before we could exchange info.

The final DX contact was with a ZS6 (South Africa). We had a nice chat about snow–or the lack thereof in MI and SA. Unfortunately, his signal began to fade, and the QRM got bad as well, after about 20 minutes. I hope to contact him again sometime.

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I’m not exactly sure why this is, but my ground plane antenna seems to work better when there’s a layer of snow on the ground. Maybe the snow forms a better reflector? When the snow melted earlier in the week, the SWR was a little higher, and I didn’t seem to get out as well.

There’s a movement in the Internet community called “The Wireless Commons.” As stated in their manifesto, the goal of the group is to “define and achieve a wireless commons built using open spectrum, and able to connect people everywhere.”

I think amateur radio operators should play a part in this effort, don’t you? After all, we have a lot of the technical skills that are going to be needed to implement these kinds of networks.

I’m not sure exactly how to get something started here in Ann Arbor, but I’m going to start asking around. If I find out anything interesting, I’ll let you all know. Perhaps we can even schedule a presentation–by someone more knowledgeable about this than me–on the topic.

Stay tuned.

Today, I spent a lot of time on 20m CW, making eight contacts in about 3 hours of operating time. What can I say? I like to rag chew.

My first contact this morning was with Patrick, NY2PO. Guess what he does for a living? Yep, he’s a New York City police officer.

One of my contacts this afternoon was with Esther, KA4IFF, who happens to be one of the founders of FISTS. She is FISTS #11! She had a great fist, too, especially for someone who is 86 years old.

My shortest contact of the day was with VE6CCC. I heard him calling CQ, and he was kind of weak, but I’d never worked anyone with a suffix containing the same character three times, so I called him. Unfortunately, the conditions only got worse and we were unable to continue the QSO.

PET PEEVE: Operators who spell out the word “WATTS” instead of using the abbreviation “W”.

Operating 20m this morning was a bit frustrating. The band was open, but it didn’t seem if anyone was operating!

I worked a station in the Azores and one in New Mexico, both coming in with good signals and giving me a good report. I also heard and Swedish station working a German. But other than that, the band was really quiet. If only more people had their radios turned on!

I just worked a great special events station: K0W – celebrating the dairy cow. Right now, he’s on 20m CW at 14.055. The special callsign application notes that the call is good through the end of the year, so if you’re reading this before Jan. 1, 2003, you may still have a chance to catch him. I tried doing a Google search on K0W, but I don’t think there’s a website.

Got an Icom IC-735 Transceiver?

Then you should join the IC-735 mailing list. It’s a pretty low traffic group, but it seems to be a good one. It has a high signal/noise ratio, as they say.

I’d also love to hear from you directly about your experiences with the rig. E-mail me or look for me on 20m CW.

Monday evening, I installed a phone plug on the keyer in place of the header that was on there. This turned out to be more of a job than I’d anticipated. For some reason, I had a heck of a time unsoldering and removing the header. Once that was done, installing the phone plug wasn’t so hard. Took me about an hour and a half from start to finish.

I’m getting better with the keyer, too. I’ve been running it at 15 words per minute, and that’s starting to seem pretty slow. I can copy at least 17-18 wpm, but didn’t want to try to send too fast just yet. Next time, though, I think I’ll crank up the speed a little.

While I am making fewer keying mistakes, there are still times when i just lose it. By that I mean, my concentration flies out the window, and I get all out of sync. When that happens, I stop, take a breath, and then start over again. Fortunately, all of the operators I’ve worked so far have been very accomodating.

Thursday, I took the Heathkit keyer apart, spread out the schematic and began poking around. It looked to me like everything was working the way it should, so I buttoned it all back up, built a cable to connect it to my IC-735, and voila it keyed the rig perfectly.

My only guess as to why it didn’t work right before is that I had the positive and negative contacts swapped. If you’re keying the transmitter with a straight key, swapping them doesn’t matter–the key is only a mechanical switch after all, and the current doesn’t care which way it flows through a switch. But the output of the keyer is a transistor, and current flows only one way through a transistor, so you have to connect it properly.

Instead of using the capacitive paddles built into the keyer, I’ve opted to use the Bencher paddle. I played around with the sensitivity adjustment for the capacitive paddles, but I just couldn’t find a setting that wasn’t too sensitive. As a result, I was getting a lot of phantom dits.

The problem with using the mechanical paddles is that instead of using a stereo phone plug, Heathkit decided to use a small header. This is, of course, a lot less standard than a phone plug, and the local Radio Shack did not have the proper connector. To use the keyer today, I had to use some clip leads and Mickey Mouse it. I hope that Purchase Radio will have what I need, but if not I may have to modify the keyer to accept a phone plug.

The good news is that I made eight contacts today using the paddle/keyer combo. I asked the operators on the other end to be a little patient, and fortunately for me, they were, for the most part. I think I got better along the way, although during the last contact, I got tired and began to lose concentration and started making a lot of mistakes. All in all, though, I think I’ll like using the keyer once I get proficient with it.