Well, not really a 'deathmatch,', but hey, it sure would be a great idea for an amateur radio magazine article series — old vs. new.
Yeah, yeah, it's been done. But how about getting hams who haven't used either rig (the old or new) to operate them, and perhaps offer their own reviews? Can vacuum tubes compete with digital processors and DSP? It's one of the life's unanswered questions.
Naturally, the new stuff is better. But to those of us with RF “ether” in our blood, there's a certain romance with the older gear. Yes, it doesn't make sense; I'm sure given a choice, Marconi would rather have used an Icom IC-7800 for his experiments. Something tells me he wouldn't homebrew a thing.
And what about the father of the code, Samuel F.B. Morse? He was the original appliance operator! He didn't know electricity, he didn't know engineering, he didn't know anything beyond art and painting. He was the idea guy, with a great deal of clout — and smart enough to hire smart people to figure out the details that led to the first public demonstration of his Morse code.
Jumping off this tangent, I'll try to get back to my original train of thought … old gear vs. new.
Tonight the 80-meter CW band was busy, busy, busy. There were at least 2 contests underway, and the digital guys where fired up too. I tuned around the band prior to the 10 p.m. start of the KSN CW net on the 746PRO. The Heath HW-16 had been on for several hours, and I had toyed with the idea of using it on the net this evening. I hit the antenna switch and the HW's speaker came to life with signals.
I tuned to the HW-16 to the low end and ran across a couple of sizeable pile-ups. My daughter came to the door wondering what kinda of racket I was listening to. “It sounds like digital or computers communicating,” she told me. Yes it's digital, but not in the computer sense. She was amazed at the speed these ops were running — probably 35-45 wpm. She couldn't believe someone could copy that fast without a computer. I wish I could, but I can't — yet. My copying speed is getting better I believe. I spend a lot of time listening lately. Wish me luck.
Throwing caution (and common sense) to the wind (or ether, in this case), I shut down the Icom and commited to the HW-16 for the net.
Thank heaven for the multitude of options that the Datong offers or I would have been trying to copy half-a-dozen QSOs around the 3579 kHz KSN frequency. There were stations way down in the noise who were very close to our frequency, but the Datong let me shift my passband to cut them out. This was a worse-case scenario, and the rig — with Datong — worked very well.
The Datong FL-2 is identical to the FL-3 minus the automatic notch filter. Since I'm using the unit on a CW-only rig, an automatic notch would likely make the rig very, very quiet .. hi! I bought the thing for a song on eBay, and you wouldn't pry it from my hands for any amount of money … unless you brought large denominations.
I took the Datong offline to try to find the KSN NCS. Man, what racket! I finally found Frank, KB4UJA, finishing up the KSN preamble. It took me a few moments to dial in the Datong, then bring the VFO to the frequency. Surprisingly the HW-16 dial appears pretty close, which is as fine a resolution that's possible. The HG-10B VFO shows greater dial miscrepancy, but it doesn't matter since I'm spotting it with the receiver.
The QRM is fierce. Frank's signal is about 569 with QSB. I get the selectivity so tight that I can't hear two check-ins because they're off frequency and outside the audio passband. As long as I can hear Frank and limit the QRM, I'm in good shape. Hopefully he'll pull my 35-watt signal out of the noise.
There's the regulars who check-in, and I usually wait for them to go first. Frank hears me and I get checked-in. Some “DX” stations checked-in, one fellow from Wisconsion and another from Canada make the list. Everyone's cleared, and the net ends about 35 minutes after the hour.
BUSTED QSO. I fired up the 746PRO this afternoon and found K4KZA in QSO with a fellow from West Virginia. I called him when they signed, and we had a good ragchew — until a contester in Georgia in the winter field day began calling CQ on our frequency. A guy in Virginia answered — while Larry and I are in QSO — and while the Georgia station was rather light, the Virginia guy was S8 and there's little doubt he heard us talking. Who in their right mind answers a CQ on an occupied frequency? I think I just answered my own question.
Larry and I were ready to sign anyway, so it wasn't a problem to let those guys have the frequency. It just seemed a little more rude than the usual contest fighting-for-a-frequency stuff.
HOLA, HOLA, AUDIO … Larry told me he had wired up a different mike for his 746PRO — an Astatic D-104. I have seen guys try D-104s on later model mikes, and it usually sounds pretty bad.
In Larry's case, his audio sounded very, very good — better than the hand mike, and not at all ragged or objectionable. It was the best sounding D-104 I've heard on a late-model rig in a long time.
Larry said he had modified his D-104 years ago, so perhaps that is why it works so well. Other than the slight pop of the PTT, you would assume he was on vox. Larry's voice sounded great.
Larry said he was going to try to meet up with Danny, W4DAN, Scott, KQ8RP and the rest at middays during the week, so perhaps I'll stop in and join them.
That's all from the shack, I've got to shut the gear down … 73 es CUL … de KY4Z