Wednesday, Feb. 29, 2012 — With a daughter attending a state university nearly 2 hours away –who has a boyfriend attending another state university two hours away in the opposite direction — I find myself playing taxi just about every Friday for my daughter.
Ahh yes, Daddy Duty calls: Four hours round trip in the car to bring my loving and devoted daughter home from college … so she can run all over the countryside with her BF (that’s boyfriend in text shorthand). It’s rather funny to see these kids think they’re something cool because they use abbreviations … hell, hams have been doing that since the dawn of radio! Instead of LMFAO or LOL, its simply HI HI … much faster to send, don’t you think??
Sounds like fodder for a good rant, I know — but that’s not my purpose today. I’m going to cuss and discuss my first steps into the world of mobile CW.
My Dodge Durango is equipped with a trusty IC-706 as well as VHF gear. On my weekly trips to college and back, I invariably find myself on 40 meters looking for a conversation to listen to. Unfortunately, that’s easier said than done.
Too often the daytime conversations on 40 focus on the latest medical issue. I don’t care to hear reports about the latest blood in your stool, your latest prostate exam, or your new pacemaker. Call me callous, I don’t mind. I DO like to hear hams talk radio stuff and weather, antennas, etc. After failing to find engaging QSOs, I dropped down into the CW portion of 40.
I found CW a great way to pass the time, just copying the mail. After several weeks of this I decided to tempt fate and bring a key on my next cross-country college trek.
KEY? WHICH KEY? As a collector I had to decide which of my precious keys I dared drag out of the shack and try to run mobile? A bug would be out of the question, so I had my choice of iambic paddle or straight key. A hand key didn’t sound like a lot of fun, particularly given the lack of a good surface on which to operate the key. This pushed me toward my covey of iambic keys.
Hmmm …. my favorite general-purpose all-around favorite iambic is the Bencher BY-1. I have … several, let’s say. I have a BY-2, and an MFJ keyer thingie with a BY-1. But the BY-1 I had available wasn’t equipped with a plug — just the cable. Some idiot cut the plug off (just don’t tell anyone I did it!).
Another key I have enjoyed is the Vibroplex Code Warrior Jr. I have a couple of these. I also have the predecessor of the Code Warrior Jr, the NorCal QRP club kit version of the K8FF iambic paddle. The NorCal QRP club sold several hundred of the kits of the K8FF design back in the 90s. Vibroplex negotiated to purchase the design soon afterward, and they refined the basic design and offer it now in several variations.
The latest K8FF kit key I picked up on eBay recently was already adjusted to my liking and properly wired. I thought to myself, “Self, why not??” I took the key with me on my next trip to EKU.
Once out on the open interstate, its a lot of fun to copy the mail along the way. But working another station adds a level of complexity I wasn’t anticipating.
KEY MOVEMENT. Sitting the key on the seat seemed OK … but what happens when it moves in the middle of a transmission? I know what happens to me — I send what I call Drunken Sailor CW … “FB OME, UR SIGH IS 5H9 GUT RPY HR IN CENMUCKY HO BTU HW/.”
If you try to correct it all as you send, you’ll wear the dit contact down to nothing with all those strings of eight-dit boo-boos. You just have to hope the fellow you are in QSO with has knocked back a couple of 807s himself and can translate your fist.
Last Sunday I copied the mail on a guy running a complete Collins S line … beautiful signal too. Didn’t sound like a classic rig at all … had nary a bit of character (i.e. drift, chirp, distortion, etc.). In the old Novice subband you can hear guys with classic gear running slower speeds, and I love hearing the old rigs in a good chirpy CQ: “Whip-woo-whip-woo Woo-woo-wha-woo …” Ahhh, you can almost smell the dust burning off the tubes, can’t you? But I digress … back to the mobile.
I decide I’m going to call CQ … I’m barreling 70 mph down the parkway in the middle of nowhere, maybe I can get a short QSO in. I begin my call, the key is securely sitting catty-whompus in the passenger seat … but should stay there until I make a panic stop. I realize a habit that might be hard to break which might also be a problem running CW mobile — I close my eyes when I send CW. I didn’t realize how natural that was to me, but that’s what I do. Closing your eyes while driving isn’t illegal, and neither is sending CW while running mobile, but driving with your eyes shut isn’t a good move for anyone but a demolition derby driver.
I try again, but find myself wanting to close my eyes and send. I play around a little more, pull off the highway to check the Icom manual for some settings, and then hit the road again. By this time I decide to practice copying in my head — and remembering calls when I don’t have the chance to write this stuff down.
I copied OK in my head — not stellar, but OK. But by the time the other fellow finishes his transmit and it goes back to the original guy, I’ve forgotten his name … was it Tim, Jim or Slim? Was he in Hatchawatchie, Louisiana or in Watchanocka, Pennsylvania? Damn!
By this point I was entering Lexington, Ky., and dodging horse trailers and Keeneland lookie-loos, I had no time to work CW … even trying to copy in my head took me away from driving. Rig off.
I’m going to have to try this again … next time I’ll begin at the very beginning of the longest leg of my trip. It may have to be short and sweet, the usual name/RST/QTH/Rig/WX QSO, but hey, that’s a start.
I just don’t want to be the poster boy for the new state government “fix” for distracted driving … I can see it now — my face on a poster, a “NO” symbol drawn over a Bencher BY-1, and the text, “Friends don’t let friends work mobile CW!”
Until next time, 73 …