cq_qrs_newsletter

2026 07 CQ QRS RagChew

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Contents

CQ QRS RagChew

Boy oh boy! Here was I telling Ms Elizabeth that this week’s newsletter would be out ina flash and wouldn’t interrupt our pub-packing (low-carbon use, public transport- only, staying in local pubs, etc) holiday to Victoria at all.

Well here it is, Friday, already a day late! Oh well. But the flip side is that we have yet another bumper RagChew edition for your reading enjoyment (hopefully) this week – thanks once again to the huge band of contributors… 42 would you believe!

What a great team of supporters our CQQRS net has! But not only do we have a bumper number of contributors, we also has a terriffic turn-out on Tuesday’s net; at least 62 of our team members were on ait, and 59 different stations were worked.

I wonder how many SWLs we had as well? Soa reminder – if you do listen in, please send us a note via our web form – even if you didn’t hear any one or couldn’t yet decode any callsigns.

Below you’ll see that we’ve had eight new members join our team, thanks largely to referrals from members – well done all!

And speaking of that, we’ve had a number of people join our CQQRS WhatsApp groups (so they hear about QRS opportunities both during and outside of the net); however, one of our team members asked me to join them to our CQQRS WhatsApp groups – I think it was one of our off-shore members – but I’ve searched high and low and just can’t find who it was!

So if you’ve asked me and I haven’t sent you the link to join, please let me know! cagrsnet@gmail.com So here we go…

Said last week that we’d had quite a jump in new team members due largely to. ord-of-mouth promotion of our net by team members; thank you to those who are > encouraging. this week, I’d like to welcome aboard our eight newest mates.

+ Adam Cummings is a UK-based Short Wave listener who had been talking to VK8DBD from both Yackandandah and New Zealand’s North about his interest in radio, including a strange inkling to have a go at CW.

David sent him a copy of our RagChew newsletter and Adam tells me that when he gets time from his busy working and travelling schedule, he’ll start the study to earn himself an amateur license.

Welcome Adam, I think you’ll find our team of CW enthusiasts to be very welcoming and keen to help with either the licensing or the CW journey.

In the mean-time, hopefully if you find yourself listening-in on our get- togethers and submitting reports via our WebForm, I suggest you use something like SWL-Adam as a callsign so we know who you are.

This will be a good stress test for our various software pieces used to sort the reports for our newsletter. * Tony ZL1TSS hails from Hamilton and SOTA / POTA has drawn him back to the hobby after an absence of 25 years.

No doubt, Tony will soon discover the joys of being able to use CW portable as many of us have; challenging, but it’s just such a natural fit. Welcome Tony and I look forward to hearing or working you soon on a Tuesday.

* Chris VK5ER lives in Adelaide and is also a WWFF Parks fan. Anyone who likes operating portable and has pictures of both a helicopter and a vineyard on their QRZ.com page gets my vote! See QRZ? below for more of Chris’ background. Welcome Chris.

+ Stephen ZL3ABX lives near Nelson on the South Island and is keen on CW and home brewing. Three people Stan ZL3TK, Phil ZL1PB and David VK8DBD all suggested that he subscribe – well done chaps!

Stephen tells me that CW was a major reason he became a ham, but claims that he’s not very fast yet and has been been a bit shy about getting on the air; his confidence is growing and he’s had a lot of encouragement.

I know with all those attributes, he will fit right in and find a home with our team. Welcome Stephen, and by the way, speed isn’t everything… in fact, for most of us, it ain’t anything! * Phil VK8MC lives in Darwin and was encouraged to join us by Mal VK8MT.

Phil gave CW a red hot go a few years ago but struggled to get up to a decent copying level and eventually gave up in frustration. He’s now having another go – starting from scratch.

Phil says he will try and listen on Tuesdays – noting that 80/40 are very difficult in Darwin. Although he says he is in no shape for a QSO he hopes to get a bit of copying practice on air and via a phone app.

Phil is also keen on portable and QRS operation – and anything involving bikes (of all descriptions). Welcome mate – and I hope between you an Mal we’ll get more QRS activity from the Northern Territory on our net.

You said Mal had convinced you to take a Morse key with your Elecraft KX3 on your up-coming long adventure – in turn, you may care to twist Mal’s arm to convert our CQQRS AllStar node in Darwin into a Hotspot so you and Mal can instantly join our Post Morsum voice callback on Wednesdays, rather than relying on Echolink.

You’ll also be able to use the various KiwiSDRs to listen in – I recommend Paul VKSPH’s Ironstone Range network or lan VK1HF’s Snowline receiver.

I also recommend Nic VK7WW‘s 80m Slow Morse training on Wednesday evenings on 80m to get started – again, use the KiwiSDRs or use Jordan VK3ACU‘s recordings on our website; see the details in Other News below.

+ David ZL2CUP lives at Levin, between Palmerston North and Wellington. Like several others in our team, David is a priest; also like several, David lives ina mobile home and guess what… enjoys QRS!

Amazing how many of our team share the same interests, be it vocation or hobbies. I look forward to hearing you on when the band opens across the Ditch David.

+ Peter VK6YSF has been listening-in to our Post Morsum callbacks on Wednesdays, and finally took the if you can’t beat ‘em…. option.

Peter is a keen home-brewer – designer and builder – and also has an outstanding website that I’ve used for reference for UNUN, Marconi-Tee and ZS6BKW antenna design in the past: http://vk6ysf.com/ Peter is also one of the builders of the Southern Electronics Group’s VK6SEG KiwiSDR at Hoddys Well, which I use every week on the net, and have featured images about in the past.

Welcome Peter… the journey ahead is into a new and un-charted area which if the bug bites, could well be somewhat addictive… ask any of our 240+ team members!

* After a long absence (20+ years) and only a little experience with CW, Adam VK4IM told me that I’d like to learn more – and feels that our group and newsletter may be the way to help him along. I have no doubt about that mate!

Adam heard about CQQRS via the VK Slow CW FaceBook page and also stumbled across our weekly Post Morsum net recently on the VK6 allstar network; none of those scared him away, and he’s now one of us! We’ll feature a bit about Adam in next week’s RagChew. ahsite

Website

If you’d like to find out a bit about our net, or would like to pass information to others about our Tuesday get-togethers, here’s the link to our website. bit.ly/CQQRSWebsite So here we go – on behalf of the CQQRS Editorial team, please enjoy the newsletter.

Niall kh DOSITa VK2KI / VK6QI Patrick John Beautiful South Bowning VK2IOW VK2RU NSW Milthorpe NSW on a track somewhere cqqrsnet@gmail.com non impsditi ratione cogitationis Nigel Richard Lance G4RWI VK6HRC VK7TO our other grey nomad Padbury WA Margate TAS

With thanks to Nigel G4RWI’s clever software, and John VK2RU’s clever spreadsheet work, here’s the 59 stations heard by 50 members of our team on Tuesday:

Also on this week was Scotty VK4BRO and Ketut VK3BWN, both of whom were very sorry to report that life got in the way, and they didn’t get to submit their reports in time.

Sorry gents – but the web form closes so that John VK2RU and Patrick VK2IOW can do their magic, in time for newsletter publishing on Thursday afternoon.

Comments: The spreadsheets above show the known stations heard or worked on last Tuesday’s CQQRS Net; the comments in the team members’ reports (submitted via our webform bit.ly/CQQRSNET ) follow.

The comments were compiled for us by the clever software built by Nigel G4RWI and the layout was perfected by Patrick VK2IOW. Thanks again to Nigel, Patrick and John for the work, and to every team member who submitted a report –

The spreadsheets above show the known stations heard or worked on last Tuesday’s CQQRS Net; the comments in the team members’ reports (submitted via our webform bit.ly/CQQRSNET ) follow.

The comments were compiled for us by the clever software built by Nigel G4RWI and the layout was perfected by Patrick VK2IOW. Thanks again to Nigel, Patrick and John for the work, and to every team member who submitted a report –

[20m] Today condx on 20m were great. The band was quiet, and the DX window was open for quite a long time. I was an S5 into the famous Ironstone SDR at 7:00 UTC already, and on my last chat this morning with David VK3DBD at 9:10 UTC, our signals still were easy copy.

So it was fun to work all these stations this Tuesday. Thanks to all callers and listeners, pleasure. 73 Mike.

[40m] I was using a 5 watt paraset which uses a 6v6 crystal oscillator keyed at the cathode as the transmitter. I managed to have 2 QSO’s. One was with Max VK6FN whose multi-null antenna usually cannot hear me when use 100 watts.

Both Max, VK6FN and Phil, VK6GX noted the chirp of the transmitter which I guess is is really just an oscillator being turned on and off by

[40m] Lots of activity on 40m with less QSB than last week. CW sending speeds were too fast for me to copy accurate callsigns unfortunately. More practice at my end I guess.

At one stage I confirmed my CQ calling on 40m was getting into the Ironstone SDR in SA. Good indication of conditions at the time.

80m opened up for a short time but found more activity on 40m tonight. Managed to get a QSO in with Morgan (VK6MTF) on 3.555 while he was floating around in his boat. Chat group suggested Morgan was in Albany, which I may have missed in CW translation.

Good contact between Ballajura and Albany. 73s to all.

[40m] Late to start again tonight. Good signals from the 4 stations I worked, some QSB evident at times. Great to work Matt VK3PP again from Hamilton who is in the early stages of morse code journey.

Also my first VK6 since being part of this group in Morgan VK6MTF, who was in a POTA park I believe. Ketut VK3BWN and Mark VK3MJ were very gcod sigs here. |

[40m] Jespite much calling no more responses. Noticed a lot of ightning storm activity on the eastern seaboard.

[15m] This week Elizabeth and I found ourselves a Port Albert, a nice little spot in South Gippsland Victoria. We were on another low-carbon public transport only (nearly) pub-packing holiday, this time exploring the Gippsland area.

How much can we squeeze into our backpacks? Enough… but no radio this time (| had ordered a QRP- Labs QMX kit, but (perhaps luckily) it had not yet been sent in my direction); so I was receive-only using KiwiSDRs for the net.

Not a peep heard from Edi DO2ZEMR on 15m this week unfortunately.

[20m] Long path to Europe was percolating nicely for the DXperiment this time. Mike DL3YZ was coming through OK into the VK6SEG KiwiSDR near Northam WA, although what I’d previously thought was auroral noise, seemed to be an intermittent roughness in the receiver’s tone, associated with jumps in signal strength.

Adjusting both the receiver RF gain with the AGC off and adding front-end attenuation didn’t change the problem; I sent a question to the SDR’s Southern Electronics Group parents, Rob VK6LD and Peter VK3YSF (both of whom now get the RagChew newsletter as it tums out).

[40m] I listened on 40m at the start of the net this week – nothing heard via the Southern Electronics Group KiwiSDR near Northam, so we decided the time was right for a nice walk around Port Albert.

By the time I returned, 40 was starting to jump in WA with a nice collection of WA stations chatting happily to each-other.

When I returned from the DXperiment on 20, 40m was opening from the West to the East, and I tuned in to Morgan VK6MTF who was activating a Parks On The Air location at King River in Albany on 10 Watts, catching lots of interest; he’d achieved the requisite number of QSOs on CW in only 35 minutes, and despite reporting brain fade, went on for several more hours with the good band conditions.

Lots of signals were coming in to WA, so I was kept busy enjoying copying the QSOs. I came across Michael VK3CMV from Chiltern (one of the locations we’d passed through by train on Saturday), and Ketut VK3BMW reported that this might have been Michael’s first CW QSO; if so, his fist sure sounded good to me!

Once confirmed, there’ll be the hallowed CQQRS First CW QSO award heading in Mike’s direction.

[80m] 80m was very quiet when I listened this week; Sava VK4PN at Mount Ommaney was sending TEST – no-doubt checking the Reverse Beacon Network for propagation, before calling CQ.

Eventually Sava was found by Peter VK6NQL at Chittering, but it was bed time here, so I didn’t hear if any others came up on 80 this week.

[15m] Unfortunately, nothing heard from Edi DO2EMR on 15m this week.

[20m] Really nice conditions for the long- path to Europe this week. Mike DL3YZ was a nice steady RSN 541 nto the Snowline KiwiSDR at Dry

Plain in the NSW Southem Alps. Unfortunately, he was competing with a strong Japanese portable station on the same frequency – and of course, they couldn’t hear each-other.

However, Mike responded to my comment on the DXperiment reporting system on his website, and moved up the band a couple of kHz; I was able to then let others know via our CQQRS WhatsApp Alerts group – so hopefully Mike had a successful moming, while suffering through the flu.

[40m] Kicked off on Tuesday listening on the Snowline KiwiSDR from our holiday location at Port Albert, Victoria. Very quiet… apart from the static crashes.

After the 20m DXperiment, there was a good number of stations on the SnowLine KiwiSDR, but I was stil having trouble loading the web page on my MacBook.

This has been a regular problem for me – lan VK1HF‘s page loads easily on my phone, but is very very slow to load on my MacBook – it usually stalls while loading, despite trying both the default Safari web browser and Google Chrome.

In the past it’s sometimes sat loading for many minutes, then suddenly burst into life; no such luck ‘on Tuesday this week. So I was juggling with my phone in one ear, and using my computer to monitor the VK6 SDR.

Great to hear the band open so nicely from WA, with Morgan’s portable 10 Watts, Roy and Richard coming through nicely into VK2 However, like last week when I was using my phone with Bluetooth earbuds, the phone dropped out every few minutes and the SDR needed to be re-loaded, so in the end I gave up and just listened to WA.

Had a really enjoyable night. Had been a day off work so a couple of hours of CW practice during the day, then CQ QRS net with CWA class in the middle of it. Not sure if by the end I was warmed up or brain cooked.

Had a QSO with Ron VK3AVA in Melbourne and we were both reporting high noise but it only proved to make me listen more carefully.

Then a QSO with Brian VK2EBN in Newcastle, Brian was telling me about his visits to Hobart and I was chatting about how I used to visit Newcastle on the Iron Ships, long before my adventure into amateur radio and CW.

Lastly, after CWA class had a good long QSO with Manny VK3DRQ. Manny ever the gentleman offered to go slower, but when I explained I was OK with faster characters, just need a bit of gap in between, he nailed it at exactly where my brain was at so I copied most on the first go.

Other stations I listened to but they were mid QSO as I was scanning around so I took some notes, and when it sounded like they were deep in chat I moved on. Really enjoyed the evening, thanks everyone.

[20m] Did I work Mike DL3YZ on 20 metres or not? I’m really not sure. Certainly I called him. Certainly I could JUST make out him calling someone, someone whose callsign seemed to end with a W. Improbably, I heard him give a signal report of 579.

My report to him was RST 249. Going to file this under “Ghost QSOs” for now, I think…

[40m] I was absent last week as I went to the Albury Wodonga ARC meeting. Last night, 10/2, yielded 4 1/2 pages of copy which included a callsign VK/G4. I think that’s what it was, heard a couple of times during the night.

Did anyone else hear a call sign like that? 73 John

40m] Cramped for time, but two nice conversational QSOs with Donald and Max. (Many Happy Returns Max – 4 score on Wed 11TH)!

[40m] Great to hear everyone chatting away.

[40m] First week operating solo from COQRS with no adult supervision. Band seemed pretty lively later on and it was great to work some old friends.

[20m] When trying to QSO OM Mike DL3YZ we started with very QRM conditions. We couldn’t QSO until we QSY 2up and there we did enjoy our QSO. Thanks OM Mike. It was nice to hear you again on 20m.

[40m] It looked like there were plenty of station on air, but with

Some unusual readings. When I first hear VK/G4RWI I thought he was on the other side of the planet, very hard to copy, I call him, just in case but no answer was heard.

Yet, later on when I was about to hit the sack, I could hear VK2IK RSN 592; he was having a QSO with OM Sava, but VK4PN was no way to be copied. I did have a very nice and enjoyable QSO with OM Mait VKSAO, his signal was very strona and very stable.

[40m] Conditions seemed good with plenty of signals showing on the waterfall. I had a few nice QSOs, alternating between straight key and sideswiper.

[40m] Enjoyed the better conditions and the faster paced contacts pushing me to my limits! As Mark posted on WhatsApp I can’t write that fast, time to drop the pencil?

[40m] Due to an early evening appointment I couldn’t get on air until 20:30 so missed EU DXperiment completely. Still had a bit of fun working QRP on 40 m. Two contacts stand out though, VK2IK who gave me an RS1 of 599 despite my QRP of 5W.

The second one was 1 RST of 119 and did his absolute best to copy my call {| GR PRE eR ORR Be Re Re OR TR Pe OT KR eee GS ST OIL Pe

With AP /VVA who gave mé an ho! OF 1 ly and did his absolute best to copy my Call sign but no luck. I am grateful to him for trying and VK2DLF, VK1CT and ZL1HJ for digging me out of the noise.

[80m] Last half hour of the QRS net I always work 80m, by this time of the evening VK6 path is usually open. The only signal I could see at Ironside kiwi SDR was myself and plenty of noise. FT8 slot was very busy as well so the band was open.

It was close to 23:00 hrs and I was ready to quit when a reasonable signal appeared on Ironside SDR. I thought may be one of regulars (Mark or Wayne ) and tuned to frequency and to my surprise it was V6NKL whom I never heard before.

He gave me RST of 339, at my QTH he was 377 with deep fades every few letters apart. It took me three overs to copy that k between n and |. Fades were perfectly synchronised to sink it into the noise repeatedly.

I wonder why copying under duress is fun rather than being frustrating?

Reporting

After next Tuesday’s Group, please remember to send me a list of who you worked and / or who you heard using our web form here:

Even if you didn’t hear anyone, we’d still like to know that you had a go. And to make your report more interesting, please consider sending a photo to be attached.

If you have a photo (compressed if possible) that you’d be happy to include, please email it to: cqarsnet@gmail.com So, please help attract new and old team members to have a go by submitting your report each week.

Submissions close 1300 (Eastern Australian Summer time) on Thursdays.

Post Morsum 11th February 2026

B Mart SVEN E weer 6 UE Bb NW RE Ree > is evVvew

From Richard VK6HRC. Seven on the cantankerous Echolink hub this morning. ( AllStar link down )

VK6FN Max VK6QI Mark VK6KD David VK/G4RWI Nigel VK6LD Rob VK6HRC

Max enjoying the better conditions again worked four on 40m with a notable rag chew with Phil VK6GX at the end. Mark called in from waterfront Port Albert Victoria, heard heard twenty on 40m and two on 80m making use of the Snowline sdr in VK2 and the Hoddyswell sdr in WA also did a fine job of spotting on WhatsApp.

David caught up with Morgan VK6MTF doing a POTA stint from King river near Albany WA on 40m then into swl mode as the pace from the enchroaching JA stations more QRQ than QRS was a challenge ! Nothing heard on 80m.

Nigel solo in Mark’s shack worked four on 40m made some observations on the antenna and high noise levels. With the motorhome work and extra cleaning duties complete he will no doubt have time investigate more thoroughly.

Rob VK6LD/M was on his way to catch up with birthday boy Max. I put out a call on 40m was spotted by Max and it was fast and furious for a while, as I signed with Max Roy VK6RR came up and to finish off Ron VK6KHZ.

Later on managed to get a POTA contact in the log thanks to Morgan VK6MTF. Thank you to all on last night and especially this morning for putting up with all

IN YUU Wall UIE teh TY! -cholink drop outs etc.

This Week’s Topic of Interest

Very Slow Morse – aaargh! (why it’s so hard for me to head copy very slow by Ross MONNK

Very Slow Morse – aaargh! ard for me to head copy very slow Morse « by Ross MONNK

Standard Morse sent at moderate speed (say, 20 wpm) has a wonderful musical quality that, whilst few radio amateurs these days can understand it, has attracted many of them onto the long hard road of learning.

You, dear reader, must surely know what I’m talking about. But Morse learners, and I’m sure that you can back me up on this too, don’t send “musical” flowing standard Morse.

They make many mistakes; they struggle with timing so that their dits sound the same as their dahs; they run letters together into weird fake prosigns; they run words together into strange German-like composite words. Hopefully not all in the same Over though!

But those are not issues that affect only slow Morse – they plague even the faster senders. No, I want to address that hypothetical, perfectly sent, but Very Slow Morse. This type of Morse is problematic because:

1. Very slow dits and dahs don’t sound like Morse letters. This is one of the reasons why the Farnsworth technique is encouraged – the pace is slow but the letters still sound like Morse. 2.

It can be very difficult to remember which letters have already been sent. The letters sent first have a tendency to drop out of my short term memory. Slightly faster Morse assembles itself better onto a ‘Scrabble tile rack’ in my mind’s eye. 3.

It can be very difficult to tell where one word ends and the next begins. Standard Morse sensibly requires a longer gap between words than between letters, but with Very Slow Morse the gaps all seem much the same.

When I’m writing my decode down (or using a decoder), I can usually work around items 2 and 3. And most learners try to send individual letters at a decent speed, which makes item 1 less common.

No, it’s when I’m Head Copying (or trying to) that notice these things most. Of course, learner’s minds need time to process the thinking required so there’s nothing they can do about any of this apart from using Farnsworth spacing.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining – it’s all part of the fun of Head Copying. And “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” anyway. I know a very experienced CW operator who loves these sorts of challenges. I hope one day that I will too.

In the meantime, I hope you can understand why it’s so hard for me to Head Copy Very Slow Morse (with the emphasis on “Very’). F’ve deliberately been using the personal pronoun because I know that at least one Ragchew reader disagrees with me on this.

I encourage anyone with an altemative opinion to speak up – maybe I’m doing something wrong!

If you have an article or two that you think might be of interest to our readers, please let me know so we can share more thoughts and ideas; for guidance on writing for RagChew, see Articles below. Please email material to Mark VK2KI: cqqrsnet@gmail.com

On My Workbench

Cheap Charge Controllers for Tiny LiPo Batteries by Simon MOKBJ Lithium Polymer (LiPo) batteries have revolutionised our hobby and while most people want to find the biggest capacity for their budget, I’ve been eager to buy the smallest possible size for a Morse-related project.

I’ll tell you about the project on another occasion. Meanwhile, I learned a lot about LiPo charging.

Cheap Charge Controllers for Tiny LiPo Batteries

| found a 30MAH 3.7V battery on Amazon that fitted my project perfectly. It’s battery QRP! I learned that a sensible charge current would be 0.5C, so about 15MA.

Now I had already bought ten TP4056 LiPo charge controller modules for less than a fiver from an ebay seller. The only snag was that they came ready to charge a 18650 battery at a whopping 1A.

From a discussion with my favourite large-language-model assistant I learned about the risk of entrusting charge protection to the final circuit inside the battery nack § It’e far safer

[P4056 charging chip to limit its output ate value to resistor R3 on the board. I was now ready with an 82K quarter- watt resistor. The challenge was to remove the factory-fitted part.

I pressed my soldering iron onto a desoldering braid and ‘wiped’ the tiny surface- mounted component off the board. It was far easier than I predicted. It was a bit more fiddly to solder the new resistor but I managed and it all works.

The picture shows the old resistor next to the Queen’s nose!

QRP Transceiver

From Sava VK4PN Another QRP rig (an old project) being modified. Trying to squeeze bit more out of the PA to bring it up to 5 Watts. The PA is resting on my QSL for insulation, cooling

Fan removed to optimise pot-core inductor wiring. Still a bit of tidying up required, may be ready for the next week QRS Net. Cheers, Sava VK4PN

What’s going on on your workbench? If you have an article or two that you think might be of interest to our readers, please let Mark VK2KI know; email to cqqrsnet@gmail.com For guidance on writing for RagChew, see Articles below.

QRZ?

This week – Chris VK5FR from Hallett Cove

G’day Mark, Thanks for the welcome! I first heard of a ‘slow CW net’ on 40M from Andy VK5LA when we were activating Flinders Island (no, not that one….this one htips://www.vk5fil.com/). I have recently

(January) commenced the beginners CW Academy with VK3QB, Chris Chapman and ‘one of the chaps on course mentioned it. I currently only have a 40M dipole up in a challenging position in Hallett Cove, VK5 and I did log into the AREG KiwiSDR the Tuesday before last to have a listen but found that they were still shooting along a bit quick for me, and I only had a KX3 available so ‘mic fright!

(‘s ‘keyer fright’ a thing?) got the better of me and I just listened picking up some random letters here and there. Ihave subsequently made a contact with WA3SCM Dave on VBand and made a real hash of it but Dave was very understanding and assisted me through taking his time, even though quite late at his QTH.

I have emailed him and thanked him for his support and mentioned the CQQRS net. As he is trying to help newbies on CW he has replied asking for some info on it and I will reply to him after this and forward him alink.

I did get this weeks newsletter and it was interesting (trying) to line up some callsigns I was copying with the newsletter….now I understand why I thought I was going crazy (not copying correctly) G4 callsign!

Since retiring I have been trying to slim down the social media so I have ditched Whatsapp (amongst about five others) however, if this aids my first ‘on air’ QSO I’ll certainly consider it going forward.

Ihave a mixed relationship with CW having struggled with it as a teen to try to get a licence. When the Foundation licence became available I jumped on it only to be roundly abused in my first ever amateur contact by an OM who let me know what he thought of those who didn’t know the code.

Nevertheless, here I am now and I could tell you that back story one day involving a contact (voice) with W9KNI, Bob Locher, owner of Idiom Press and Bencher paddles at the time while operating as 4W6FR…story for another timell!

Anyway, thank you for the CQQRS net I’m sure as I practice more and gain confidence I hope to assault one of the teams ears and get that elusive first CW QSO after some 40 years of radio (CB and amateur).

73 Chris VK5FR [Great story Chris, and I’m really pleased that a couple of our team have helped steer you in our direction.

Most of our team will slow right down when they hear that you’re now to the key – and in fact, many of our folks have had their very first CW QSO in the safety of our net… either randomly or pre-arranged with one or two of our welcoming committee.

And oh by the way… that bloke VK/G4RWI has been carefully selected and is highly paid to cause confusion among our group… when I first came across him a couple of years back, it took me about four goes to get his callsign…

And I even knew he had joined our team! Now we’re best mates so I’ve been forced to get used to his call – Hl! And as for Andy… and as for those guys who told you about our net… well! Welcome again Chris – I know you’ll love it here among friends]

QRZ? Who’s on the other end?

CW Practice

This year we’re using Aesop’s Fables. These are short moral stories, often using talking animals, that illustrate simple truths about human behaviour and character.

‘Aesop’s Fables originated in ancient Greece, traditionally attributed to the storyteller ‘Aesop who is thought to have lived around the 6th century BCE.

The fables are generally smaller files of two to three hundred words that have been recorded at 15 wpm and run for about 15 minutes.

If 15 wpm is a bit quick for you, load it onto your phone and set the playback speed at 0.75 X or even 0.5 X- whatever works for you. 0.75 X will play the MP8 at a bit under 12 wpm. Itis suggested that you read the text file before listening to the audio file.

That will make it easier to follow the audio file and prepare you for any unusual words. Any punctuation that is not usually used with CW has been removed. This week’s fable is ‘The Ants and the Grasshoppers’, and the MP3 and TXT files are attached here –

If you prefer a different speed or tone you can create your own MP3 files by converting the text file with the Ebook2CW app — https://fkurz.net/ham/ebook2cw.html.

You can either play the MP3 files in any media player, or load the text file into the Ditto CW: Morse Player app — https://dittocw.andro.io/.

Both options work well, however Ditto CW gives you complete control over all Morse settings, while a normal media player only allows changes to playback speed, and does that in steps (e.g. +1.25x, 1.5x, 1.75x).

Other News

Foundation License Training Videos

My hope is that this free material will encourage new and younger people to get involved with the service of amateur radio.

Jules Perrin JP 0457585974 VK3JFP www. julesworkshop.net

Re-starting the Journey

From Nigel VK6NI from Denmark Hi Mark, Found your email in the spam otherwise would, have responded sooner. No problems, it was fun going through the old stuff looking for suitable photos! I like the “postcard” format of the pictures in the newsletter.

| am waiting on a Morserino M32 Pocket by Willi OE1WKL to try and blow away the cob webs and revive my CW, see https://qrp-labs.com/morserino. There has been supply issues with components, etc and my order is outstanding since September.

Will let you know how it goes when I finally get it.

[Thanks Nigel. Exciting news… fantastic and have fun hoy if there’s anything any of the team can help with. If you like, you could start now pending arrival of your Morserino by listening-in to Nic VK7WW‘s CW training on 80m on Wednesdays – or the recordings by Jordan VK3ACU on our website – see below.]

Drumming-Up Interest

Hi Mark, I wanted to mention something that could possibly be of use in regards to drumming up interest in CW. Ihave been a CW operator for a long time (since 1968). I realize that there is no practical use for it, even in the ‘shit hits the fan’ scenarios.

On the other hand, it is part of history, and I certainly encourage people to keep historic traditions alive. I could even see a group that does smoke signals on a regular basis for the fun of it and keeping that part of history alive.

CW was used a lot with wires before radio so I see nothing wrong with doing it over the internet as well as radio. In fact, young people would not even need a ham license to learn the tradition of CW over the internet.

I see nothing wrong with separating CW from the radio part of the hobby. I have a limited setup here in Florida and can barely be heard in Australia using CW.

That is why I have been using the two Remotehams remotes in the VK6 area when joining your Tuesday morning groups. But as you know, those two remotes continue to have issues.

With one of them, if the rig is on the wire antenna the external tuner often does not function causing an unacceptable high SWR. With the other remote, if the power is turned up above about 25 watts the server connection drops and sometimes will not come back.

I am sure that these problems could be solved – if I lived in the area where the remotes are located I would certainly help out solving the issues so that the problems could be resolved. I am retired and have plenty of time and love solving problems like these.

The main remote I was using over here was the N4GYN high power remote on Remotehams in Georgia. Ray, the owner, mentioned that he is getting too old to keep his nice remote going and may have to eventually take it down and move somewhere where he can get some help for his health problems, which I find very sad.

He has done a great effort in having his remote on the air over the years for us all to use.

Computer. Of course someone could send with the computer keyboard and listen by ear which in itself is not a bad thing. Personally, I enjoy listening to well sent high speed CW more than sending it.

My old fingers are getting arthritis in them but listening to CW has always sounded like music to me (| am also a music lover). Anyway, I just thought I would put this idea out there. I see nothing wrong with giving it a try.

Sure, it is not ‘real’ radio but does that really matter in keeping the CW tradition alive? Thanks – Jeff Pohl (WB2GDZ)

Computer. Of course someone could send with the computer keyboard and listen by ear which in itself is not a bad thing. Personally, I enjoy listening to well sent high speed CW more than sending it.

My old fingers are getting arthritis in them but listening to CW has always sounded like music to me (| am also a music lover). Anyway, I just thought I would put this idea out there. I see nothing wrong with giving it a try.

Sure, it is not ‘real’ radio but does that really matter in keeping the CW tradition alive? Thanks – Jeff Pohl (WB2GDZ) [Thanks Jeff.

As it turns out, in RagChew edition 6/2026 we had articles from David VK5PL and Ross MONNK about the VBand internet CW system, and further down in this edition David has written more about how it’s keyed.

The QRP-Labs Morserino- 32 Pocket mentioned above by Nigel VK6NI can also be used on VBand.]

Morse Training Net

Our team member Nic VK7WW runs an on-air Slow Morse training net every Wednesday at 7pm EDST on 3580 for 30 mins. He uses the callsign of the Northern Tasmania Amateur Radio Club VK7TAZ on that net.

Many of our team learned Morse code with the support of Nic, and the weekly training session comes highly recommended for anyone who wants to learn the Code, or simply brush up.

Everyone’s welcome – 3580KHZ at 7pm Eastern time every Wednesday; you’ll hear lots of the CQQRS team on that net. Jordan VK3ACU has recorded the complete set of lessons which you can now find here:

Https://www. youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHsQmZz6fBXO7swAfbT mutrbbEL17fUQL Contact Nic VK7WW for more info nicholaschantler@hotmail.com including how to join the NTARC DISCORD group to follow the action, or just come along and join in on Wednesdays.

Update from Europe

Update from Europe From our DXperiment Coordinator, Mike DL3YZ Hi Mark. Carlos CT7BPZ has received his Elecraft K3 100 W radio and is getting to explore it this week. We tried to make contact, but he didn’t hear me for some reason.

I heard him quite well, but a little off-frequency. Think he will eventually be with us on the net next week. also met another operator Paolo from Bologna, Italy who has showed interest in joining our gang.

Looked at proppy, and saw that for them short path would be their preferable DX window to Australia / New Zealand, but that would be around 17:00 UTC. Think its very late for your side.

When looking at the map, from Italy or Portugal to Australa there is only the Middle East in the way, the rest is water, and the distance is shorter too. Funny, I didn’t expect that this sight difference in location would be that significant.

Great hobby, always something to learn. So I think Carlos and Paolo cud also make it long path somehow, but their DX window will be really short compared to DL-VK which was open for almost 2 hrs on Tuesday.

Do you think there would be interest in the community to have a short path time-slot as well ? 73 Mike DL8YZ CQQRS DXperiment Coordinator Stuttgart, Germany [Thanks Mike – it’d be great to have more European and UK operators on the net – so.

Keep up the good work. I’m keen to see a local Region 1 CQQRS net similar to ours if we can get enough interest going there. Let me know Paolo’s details if he’s interested in what we’re doing.

For the current short path time, yes 1700Z is 0400 in the East, 0100 in WA but 6am in New Zealand. So if any of our team are interested in

First CQ QRS Net QSO

From Michael VK3CMV at Chiltern Hi Mark, Yes, Tuesday’s QSO with Ketut VK3BWN was my first QSO on the net and my first ‘on CW for about 10 or more years; I’m returning to CW!

It was my favourite mode when I first got my Novice licence in South Australia, in 1980. I had life, house and kids intervene for too long. I’m very rusty but am determined to change that.

I’m running an Icom 7410 into a Comet 300W manual tuner and then into an extended, end fed half wave wire on 80m, to give me all HF bands above 80, including WARC bands.

I also have a 14m vertical built of 7m of 3″ aluminium tube topped by a squid pole with a wire zipp-tied to it. That doubles as the pole for one end support of my end fed and the vertical is fed at the base with a remote auto tuner, desk top controlled with 12v power fed to the tuner via the coax.

Many thanks for your welcome and I enjoy reading your emails. I anticipate being more active on CW as my concentration and skill improves. Best regards, Michael VK3CMV [Welcome back Michael.

I know you’ll love it again like you did before, but now you also have a wonderful community of mates, most of whom enjoy a bit of a natter. No more “UR 599 73 SK”… unless you particularly like that!

And great that you’re able to get on 80m too; we started the net on 80m and only relatively recently took up 40m… 80m opens up nicely to New Zealand, SA and WA on many Tuesday nets, once the D-layer dissolves after the sun sets on the fonosphere.

We need more late nighters on Tuesdays on 80ML]

Soft Head Protection

If you’ve read something that you think might be of interest to our readers, please let me know. For guidance on writing for RagChew, see Articles below. Please email material to Mark VK2KI: cqqrsnet@gmail.com

Readable Five

What have you been reading lately? 2ompiled on the track somewhere by John VK2RL

The Art & Skill of Radio-Telegraphy

From Jens VK4PE This is a good free classic public domain CW book. Irecommend it because it is a good handbook for beginners and experts. The 3rd edition on this page is free to download. Inside the pdf file it is clearly marked as a Public Domain book.

The other option is a printed version. It is about $30 with shipping. I have this version and it is one of my favourite books. Today it is rare to get something for free and it is a good read. Cheers Jens VK4PE

If you’ve read something that you think might be of interest to our readers, please let me know so John and I can share more thoughts and ideas. For guidance on writing for RagChew, see Articles below. Please email material to Mark VK2KI: cqqrsnet@gmail.com

There’s No Such Thing…

Hills WOOK o YUCSLUIIS. I think the first lesson in Teachering 101 is to always tell students “There’s no such…” (I’m sure you know the rest) and “…the only dumb questions are the ones not asked”. So here we go…

V Band – Answers Take Two

In RagChew 6/2026, David VK5PL and Ross MONNK both provided answers to the previous question about VBand – what is it and how is it used?

Well this week, David has provided more information about this interesting option for CW QSOs and practice via the Internet.

V Band – continued

From David VK5PL When using Vband, apart from not needing a licence or a radio, you also don’t nee: a key! “Then how am I going to send code?” you ask? In paddle mode, use your computer keyboard: + the [ key for dits and + the ] key for dahs.

Left and right control keys can be used in place of the [ key and the ] key. In straight key mode, use either of those keys to send. But if you do have a key, you can buy a Vband adapter from the Ham Radio Solutions website.

You plug your key into the adapter and plug the adapter into a USB slot on your computer. Beware of clone versions available on eBay, they may not work and are not supported by the website.

Ross MONNK will also continue his series of articles about VBand further down the log. Thanks to both David and Ross.

[Do you have a question or two that are worth sharing? How about a discussion- starter? Please let me know cqgrsnet@gmail.com and I’ll pass them to John VK2RU for compilation each week.]

Prosign/Character/Signal of the Month

[Suggestion – put it on a sticky note near your key as a reminder for Tuesday. Tell us how you went!]

I Hear Tell…

Congratulations to Max VK6FN who turned 80 on Wednesday; I trust that Rob VK6LD who attended the celebrations brought one of the special edition CQQRS Birthday cakes!?

[If you have some intel about other team members… or even yourself… that’s worth sharing, please let me know cqqrsnet@gmail.com J

Di-dah-di-dah-ait

So back to the CQQRS Slow CW QSO practice net.

Next Tuesday’s Net

Our CQQRS Group will be on as always on Tuesday from around 0600Z until about 12002; see https://bit.ly/CQQRSWebsite and navigate to the Net Details page for details.

Doesn’t matter whether you’re brand new and want to try just exchanging callsigns and RST reports, or you’re ready for a good old rag chew. We’ll have fun.

There’s usually people around until after 1200Z – so keep calling in the segment of the band designated in the table below until you catch someone.

I should be on as usual from home in NSW or via the Remote at Bedfordale WA, and I’ll also be watching the proceedings using the VK6QS and Tecsun SDRs in WA and NSW respectively. Hope to hear you there.

Reports & Photos

Please let us know via our Reports form bit.Jy/GQQRSNET who you work or hear on Tuesday’s Group. The report form closes at lunchtime (Eastern Australian time) on Thursday. ‘And how about helping to make the reports even more interesting by sending a photo?

If you have a photo that you’d be happy to include, please email it to: eqqrsnet@gmail.com To make it even easier for our Reports editor Patrick VK2IOW, see if you can reduce the size of the image (to less than 100KB file size by preference).

No problems if your computer or phone can’t do that – just send it through anyway please. And of course, I’m always on the lookout for more photos for the newsletter, so if you have something that might be of interest aside from the reports, please send it through as well – I always enjoy the photos that our readers send – and I’m sure our readers do too.

Email them to cqqrsnet@gmail.com please (reduced size if possible – but whatever you send will be great). Oh and by the way, I recommend that you don’t keep the Reports Form website open between submission of reports from one week to the next.

If you’re unlucky, there’s an undocumented feature in the software that could cause your current week’s report to be combined with your previous report – it’s happened to your editor several times – much to the chagrin of our Reports editor 🙂

Post Morsum

Richard VK6HRC will run our phone Post Morsum on the South West AllStar net (via repeaters and hotspots all over WA) from 0600 WA time, then from 0700 WA time on 80m (8605 LSB).

See https://bit.ly/CQQRSWebsite and navigate to the Net Details page for details of how you can connect via Echolink or even possibly via your local FM repeater.

The newsletter is interesting to readers because of the material contributed by so many people – be it the reports each week or the various articles. Could you write a short article or articles for RagChew? You bet! Writing not your strong point?

Don’t worry, I’m very happy to help as much or as little as needed. Here’s a thought – although our readers will much prefer your own writing, perhaps have a go at using a Large Language Model Artificial Intelligence tool such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot or Google Gemini to check your writing or even to actually draft the whole article in a relaxed easy-to-read manner!

You can find out more about how to do that on the Newsletter page on our website bit.ly/CQQRSWebsite. Our website also includes a suitable prompt (the command you feed to the Al to make it do what you want).

Please remember though – you must fact-check anything that an Al tool drafts for you because Als ‘hallucinate’ – ie if an Al can’t find what you’re looking for, it will make up an answer and present it as afact!

This is one of the dangers of using Als – it’s quite probable that the tool will create a very readable and convincing draft that is 100% wrong! You as the submitter are responsible for fact-checking.

But it’s a learning experience – please let us know how you went if you had a go with this new generation of tool. And by the way – lam very concerned about our future in a world of Al – but I’m pleased to see that school and university curriculums now focus on understanding the risks – for instance, kids are now learning critical thinking something that used to be taught mostly at post-graduate level.

When the typewriter was invented, people predicted the downfall of handwriting; when the word processor was invented, the art of writing was thought to be on the way out – ditto for the spreadsheet and arithmetic, AM, SSB and FT-8 for amateur radio etc.

We can ignore Al and hope that it just goes away… or we can learn to handle it through experimentation and use. Oh, and one more thing (actually two) – copyright material: * please use your own images – don’t use images copied from the internet unless you have the producer’s permission, or they’re marked ‘Creative Commons’ or similar; * if you include other peoples’ written material, unless you have permission, you may only include small snippets (unless it’s marked ‘Creative Commons’ or similar), and you’ll need to site the source and author.

For more guidance on writing for the RagChew newsletter (including help with using an Al), head to our website bit.ly/CQQRSWebsite then click the menu on the top right and then click RagChew Newsletter.

Areminder; if you send me any information by email, our report form or WhatsApp I unless you specifically state that material is not to be published, I’ll assume that you’re happy to see your thoughts in the RagChew newsletter.

Teamwork

Thank you so much to our team of 42 contributors: DL8YZ, MOKBJ, MONNK, SWL- ‘Adam, VK/G4RWI, VK2IK, VK2IOW, VK2RU, VK2TIG, VK2WP, VK3ACU, VK3BSE, VK3DRQ, VK3ECH, VK3JEFP, VK3KLE, VK3WOW, VK4AW, VK4IM, VK4PE, VK4PN, VKSAO, VKBAV, VKSFD, VKSFR, VK6GX, VK6HRC, VK6JDM, VK6KD, VK6KHZ, VKENI, VK6RR, VK6XC, VK6YSF, VK6ZFG, VK7JZ, VK7TA, VK8MC, WB2GDZ, ZLATSS, ZL2CUP and ZL3ABX.

And a special thank you to our editorial team, Nigel G4RWI (head of software development), Patrick VK2IOW (reports coordinator), John VK2RU (spreadsheet man), Richard VK6HRC (Post Morsition) and Lance VK7TO (bit wrangler).

Great work alll UY CW on Tuesday, mb Mark Bosna VK2KI/ VKEQI Beautiful South Bowning NSW ‘eqarsnet@gmail.com non impedit ratione cogitationis

An Ode to CW – thanks to David VK3RU: In days of old, when ops were bold, And sideband was not invented, Words were passed by pounding brass, And all were quite contented. – Unknown author

About the CQ QRS Net

For the current schedule and more information about the CQQRS net, please go the the Net Details page on our website:

The opinions expressed in the RagChew newsletter are those of the individual contributors. The opinions do not necessarily reflect that of the editor or of the CQQRS Group members.

Any material and images received from members by the editor or published on the CQQRS WhatsApp groups may be published in this newsletter unless specifically requested otherwise.

The RagChew newsletter is considered to be exempt from the Australian Government’s ban on social media for under 16 year olds because it is a service that has the primary purpose of enabling users to share information about products or services, engage in professional networking or professional development services or of supporting the education of users per the Australian Government eSafety Commissioner FAQ webpage “Which platforms have been excluded from the age restrictions” dated 10DEC25.

The values, doctrine and guidelines for the Group and for the newsletter are published on the Principles page of the group’s website https://bit.ly/CQQRSWebsite

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