Yes dear readers, I thought SKN fun was over at midnight Zulu time, but I was wrong! The activity on 80 meters continued without much change after it was officially Jan. 2 2008.
After a cup of coffee and some piddling on the PC, I decided to spin the HW-16's VFO to see what was active. Heck, it was 12:30 a.m., aren't all good CW ops asleep?
I found a healthy CQ pounding into my headphones, so I tuned the rig, zero beat the vfo and gave him a call. We had an hour ragchew, and it was probably the most enjoyable CW ragchew I've had for a time.
He was in Sandwich, Ill., and running my classic gear DREAM STATION — A Johnson Viking Valiant txmtr and a National NC-300 receiver. Lord, did it sound good, too. It had a great note, no chirp, no drift. Excellent sound. We talked tube gear, SKN, keys, etc. It was getting late, so I told him I was off to bed. Right after he signs, I hear a weak-as-pond-water station calling me.
The HW-16 has a fair receiver, but for weak signal stuff, it doesn't compare to my Icoms. I send QRZ? and finally can get his call, a VA7 in British Columbia.
When the QSB is in our favor, he's at least S8. Problem was it was mostly down. It's been a while since I've had to work that hard for a QSO, not to mention I'm running the HW-16, and its no powerhouse on TX either.
He gave me a 559 to his 449, which probably means we had equally crappy signals. I suspect he was working as hard as I was. The headphones helped, and thankfully there weren't many signals on the band. I had the HW-16 wide open without the Datong filter. At times his signal wasn't as much signal as it was change in the white noise level. Still, that's all I needed to copy his CW, which was well sent.
I almost didn't respond to his call, mostly because he was so weak, and partly because it was so late. But something told me that if this guy was willing to call my peanut whistle chirpy-ass signal, he needed something — and he did. He needed Kentucky for WAS, so I told him I would be delighted to QSL to confirm KY.
Even though the QSB was bad, by sending the important things twice, we never really missed any pertinent data. I could never had completed a phone QSO under the same conditions.
I tried to peak his signal by tuning slightly off his frequency and by using the Datong filter, but his signal was so weak I had the best luck just by listening to the rig and its built-in audio CW filter, which is fairly broad anyway.
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Oh, and those problems I mentioned below with the HW-16?? My McElroy Mac Key Deluxe wasn't as fixed as I believed it was — the intermitten problem with the sidetone was again due to leakage. This time, it was not a missing washer, but a deteriorated insulator. The “hot” terminal on the key base passed through the base and it is supposed to have an insulating spacer to keep it from grounding out.
What I found was the spacer had deteriorated, though it looked intact until you took it apart. The spacer was made of some crumbly plastic crap that disintegrated. I replaced the insulating spacer with a small section of soda straw, which worked beautifully.and on one is the wiser.
I used the Mac Key on the two QSOs mentioned above, and the rig performed flawlessly! If nothing else, the work on the key means it won't be a problem in the future, and it means my HW-16 is good to go for more winter QSOs.
Looking at my logbook, most of my QSOs for December were CW Q's. I've worked more non-contest CW QSOs than I have for quite a while. It's been fun.