Despite my flapping-in-the-wind feedline, Straight Key Night was a success and a lot of fun. I still worried over the SWR changes, but the changes only happened when the wind kicked up.
I made contact using both the Icom 746PRO and my HW-16 today. The last QSO this evening was with a fellow in North Carolina who was running a 2-tube transmitter with a 6L6 final and a Hammarlund HQ-129X receiver. He told me I had some chirp on my signal, which is was likely due to the fact I had a space heater running on the same circuit. I have only a single outlet in the room, and lots of gear running from it, and the desklamp was dimming with each transmission. I cut the heater off and the voltage variations in the lamp seemed to go away.
His 2-tuber was RST 589 and rock solid — pun intended. I would never have known it was homebrew if he hadn't told me, the quality was absolutely perfect — a true X.
Ahh, but that's the allure to SKN — hearing all that classic gear on the air, chirps and all.
During one QSO I copied last night, a guy running a one-tube txmtr couple with an HQ-110 receiver quipped the rcvr let him “heard the whole band at once, hi!” My HW-16 is a bit like that too if I don't run the Datong outboard filter.
I've used the HQ-129X, the “X” means it has crystal filtering, and it has decent selectivity. The HQ-110 only has a Q multiplier, which doesn't help much when you are copying 12 kcs at a time.
My HW-16 was doing some odd things again, and I think it was probably due to the T/R relay or dirty connections on the bandswitch on the VFO. It still transmitted, but it was activating the sidetone during periods when I was not transmitting — and that makes it hard to figure out what you're sending.
I'm going to use the rig some more and try to duplicate the problem. It only surfaced after several overs in the middle of a long SKN ragchew, and I couldn't sign off to check the problem.
I have a single-tube transmitter I had hoped to put on the air for SKN but I've yet to build a power supply for it. Its the classic Novice rig that showed up in QST and the handbook in 1952 after the Novice license was launched in 1951. The rig was in the ARRL Novice license guide for a number of years and was built on a wooden frame. By the late 1950s, they updated the rig to enclose it in a metal cabinet for some semblance of TVI shielding.
I had plans to using my HW-8 on the air, but never did. I heard several QRP stations with good sigs, including a guy running an MFJ QRP rig with a bit of chirp and a single-tube txmtr.
The must unusual CW note goes to a ham whose call I missed. His CW sounded like he was running pure AC on his finals, and a MOPA rig at that. As his transmission continued, his signal rolled down the band about 3 kcs. I copied he had a Hartley oscillator, but nothing more. It takes some concentration to copy “buzz-ba-ba-ba-buzz” for BT when you are accustomed to a 700 Hz tone.
One guy I worked wanted my SKCC (Straight Key Century Club) number, which I gave him. His was something like 3,800, which I thought at first was an error. The SKCC started right after SKN two or three years ago, and I immediately joined and received NR 268. I wasn't sure it would go anywhere, but the SKCC seems to be growing steadily and fullfilling the same role as 10-10 does on 10 meters — to encourage activity. In the SKCC's case, its CW activity.
I haven't taken part in the SKCC sprints, but there's a lot of people collecting the numbers. The next time I have QSLs printed, I'll have to add that number to the card.
It's been a fun SKN. Only 364 days to go until SKN 2008!
73 es CUL … de KY4Z … dit dit ….