KG6YJ ham radio blog

  My First SKCC WES (Weekend Sprintathon) - March 11, 2023, Saturday. I'm a new CW op, recently became a SKCC member (#27223), this is the first time to do SKCC WES. On Saturday I was tuning my DIY trail EFHW antenna in the backyard: Finished trail EFHW antenna Half wavelength stealth antenna wire pulled up by a fishing pole, forming an inverted V RG316 coaxial cable -- 1:49 UNUN transformer -- half wavelength stealth antenna wire I used my DIY paddle key as a straight key to hunt a few POTA and SOTA, and then did 2 SKCC WES QSO's, nice! DIY iambic paddle key used as a straight key My 1st QSO was with K7GUD (23806s), after sending his name "PAT" he mentioned "b" which means a bug key he was using. My 2nd QSO was with KS1KCC (20550s), he sent his name "SKCC", I thought "What? Is this a human name?" Then I asked him to re-send his name, he sent "SKCC" again... Later I realized it was the KS1KCC club callsign! HI HI. This week'...

  My First CW Ragchew March 9, 2023   I started to do CW QSO from January 2023, but only limited to short ones, mainly POTA/SOTA hunting and activation and SST (Slow Speed Test). In these QSO’s, the exchanges are simple and barebone. For POTA/SOTA, only callsign is necessary to exchange, even RST report is not that important, QTH (state/province abbreviation) and other information are optional. For SST, callsign, name and QTH are needed. Usually these QSO’s only cost about less than a minute. A new op doing S&P can listen the runner’s QSO’s with other hams for a while to copy his/her callsign and other information before calling the runner, this will reduce the new op’s copying workload during QSO quite a lot. Ragchew, on the other hand, is a longer QSO in a casual and friendly manner, usually longer than 30 minutes. More information are exchanged in a ragchew, for example: actual RST report, name, QTH (city/town name), RIG, power, ANT, height, weather, temperature...