Tonight I missed the section CW nets, so I thought I would get on the air later. After months of collecting dust, I unearthed my Heathkit HW-8.
The HW-8 has been nice rig to play with. I know that you can always cut your 100-watt HF rig down to QRP levels, but there's something different about working CW with a simpler rig (besides missing my 746PRO's DSP, QSK and RIT).
The HW-8 — at least on 80 and 40 — holds its own as far as sensitivity goes. It has an audio filter that works pretty well for what it is. Mine is fairly stable, though there's some hand capacity/cabinet movement drift when you're tuning the dial. It could use a vernier dial, it gets a bit touchy to tune the rig to someone's frequency. Just takes a lighter touch.
Tonight there were signals all over the bottom 60 kHz of the 80-meter band. I tuned around for a CQ call, but heard none. I tuned to a clear spot on the higher end of the band and called CQ for several minutes with no takers. It seems that activity attracts activity; if you want someone to respond to your CQ, call on either side of an ongoing QSO.
I tuned down the band again, and heard someone tuning. I checked my antenna tuner settings (with only 2 watts out, you don't want the HW-8 to transmit into a big mismatch. I lost the final transister that way on the first HW-8 I owned).
I answered the call of a ham in Lemont, Ill, which I learned is a suburb of Chicago, right off I-55. He gave me a 569 report, which I considered respectable. There static crashes on the band, but not that bad. He was 599, just booming in.
Ed was running an Icom 746 and a homebrew amp running 500 watts — no wonder he was loud. One of the benefits of working CW with my Heathkit gear (the HW-8 or HW-16) are the great stories and ragchews it almost always prompts. Ed has been a ham for 56 years, and he went on to tell me he had a Heathkit HW-16 that he considered “his baby.” I told him I had one too and it was “my baby” too! We chatted nearly an hour about rigs and the hobby, and how much fun old rigs can be.
He has modified his HW-16 to operate 80, 40 and 20 meters. He replaced the 15 meter band with 20. He built the rig more than 20 years ago, and enjoys using it still.
Sigs were good, and he said the copy stayed Q5. The HW-8 seemed to drift a bit as I operated it. I didn't warm it up and suspect he was probably using the RIT to follow my drift.
All-in-all, a very fun QSO.
73, de KY4Z … dit dit …