cq_qrs_newsletter

2025 11 CQ QRS RagChew

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Contents

CQ QRS RagChew

Wasn’t Tuesday just great fun? We had a good turn-out again – so many people having such a satisfying time – learning, practicing, or just relaxing having fun. What a great team! Thank you all.

Terrific to see our team mate Simon MOKBuJ from Wolverhampton venturing out into a beautiful brisk Spring morning for the first of the season’s DXperiments; with 20 Watts and a small centre-loaded whip, Simon was testing the 20m long path to Oceania.

None of our team managed to have a two-way exchange this time, but Simon was hearing signals from this end Q5 – promise of things to come hopefully?

I look forward to more opportunities as our EU / UK team members start emerging from Winter hibernation, and hopefully we’ll have some folks on at this end with gain- antennas to make it worth while for them.

Last week Jordan VK3ACU reported a nice exchange with a French station using his Elecraft KH-1 hand-held with just a short whip; short path, but still, a great sign.

And perhaps our four intrepid team members over there might encourage some of their mates to have a go and join in as well? Fingers crossed. Keep an eye out on the Monday email net reminders for updates on any planned expeditions.

What motivates you to bother learning or sticking with CW? Back before the ITU ules changed, everyone who operated on HF needed to demonstrate competence in Morse code – so in those days we didn’t have any choice.

But now, those who join-in on our Tuesday nets do so because they want to. But I wonder what is it about CW, and in particular Slow CW that is so attractive to me? Hopefully, most of our team find they enjoy connecting with others who also enjoy the challenge.

Others enjoy the challenge of stretching the corridors of our brains to learn and develop the skill. Perhaps for you, our Tuesday evenings are an opportunity to break away from work or other responsibilities and relax for a bit?

There’s both an art and a science to operating CW – especially for those who also like to tinker – perhaps you enjoy the sense of accomplishment? ‘And you might be surprised, for some of us, the Tuesday activity can actually add to a good family relationship!

How could that be? And what about the many among the team who are living on their own by circumstance or choice? None of us have perfect lives; good enough is the best we can ever achieve and stay reasonably sane; do our activities also help you fulfil some aspects of life perhaps?

Don’t worry, I’m not going to start preaching to you about what we should or should not do or feel; phew! But I am interested to learn more about you and what you enjoy about our activities; worth thinking about, or not?

Pethaps you’d like to scratch some thoughts down and share? cqqrsnet@gmail.com

So back to earth; here’s this week’s list of the 54 stations reported by the 37 team members we know of who were on air.

New Team Members

We’ve had three new people join the team this week. James VK7JZ lives in Hobart and is progressing on the CW journey using the CW Academy training; more from James below. Peter VK3BGM at Moolap near Geelong was introduced to the net this week by Peter VK3WOW.

Peter’s a great home brew and QRP fan who enjoys listening in to keep his skills up. SWL reports from our Tuesday nets most welcome Peter – please use our webform for lodging your report when you can.

Peter responded to a recent on-air question by VK3WOW as to whether anyone was listening; you never know eh? similarly, Michael VK6GMM from the Northern suburbs who escapes to his farm at Northam when he can was introduced by Richard VK6HRC; Michael is looking forward to having a go when he can.

Welcome fellas, and I look forward to getting some reports from you about what you hear and can or can’t decode, or like James who surprised himself, hearing you on air when you’re ready to give it a go.

Masthead Image

And thanks this week to John VK2RU for his relaxing image above. John and Jenny two of our grey nomads, are now at Ponto Falls on the Macquarie River between Wellington and Dubbo; doing it pretty easy watching the river flow past and keeping an eye on the baked dinner in the Weber.

They hadn’t seen the platypus that was usually buzzing about near the far bank.

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

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 Cheers, mb Mark Bosma VK2KI / VK6QI Beautiful South Bowning NSW mark.bosma@icloud.com non impsditi ratione cogitationis

Reports & Comments

Once again, a huge thank-you to our part-time Aussie Nigel G4RWI for building both the webform that we all use to submit our reports, and the outstanding software too!

That I use to convert the collected reports into the Excel spreadsheet above and individual reports that you’ll see below.

Manual production of the spreadsheet and team reports used to take me a whole day, but now takes less than a couple of hour from go-to-whoa – thanks mate – Eccles cake on its way.

So the spreadsheets above show the known stations on last Tuesday’s Group; the comments distilled from the team members’ reports follow:

Comments:

From our new team member James VK7JZ in Hobart: Just want to say a big thank you for the QSO we had just before the CQQRS net.

This past week I completed the CW academy fundamental course and have been putting out a few CQ calls to try and bed down the exercises with some actual QSOs -|so appreciate you going slow for me.

I was losing every 3rd-4th character in the QRM, some of your TX was coming through perfect, some would just fade out on me – real life.

I can decode single letters up to 25 WPM, but need a Farnsworth spacing of about 10 to give me a moment to think between characters — I know this will get better with practice.

When walking to work I have been listening to Morse Code Ninja in the ear buds a bit faster than that but its hard work — real life requires me to slow down, 17 or less and still with good gaps.

| was intending to tune in for the rounds of CQQRS tonight, see if I could hear any stations, and if I was fast enough on the copy to decode it then send my call sign at the appropriate time. Best laid plans!

You are the first person to answer a CQ of mine that was not a preprogrammed QSO with one of my club members in the same city – I loved it and big thank-you.

As it happened, I did not recognise your call sign, but only a couple of days ago I signed up for the CQQRS newsletter — when looking up your call sign I linked the name to the newsletter (my first) I got last week.

| will be listening in on Tuesdays — if I can hear it, and head copy it, I will respond. 73 de Jim VK7JZ [My pleasure James – fantastic!

Some others have reported the same problem after learning the Code via the Internet – and they actually find the slower non-Farnsworth speeds on the net too slow – interesting how that works.

However, I’m sure with more time listening and having QSOs on the net, it’ll start falling into place. And as for missing letters, me too!

However, in most QSOs it won’t matter – you’ll be able to get the gist of most of it (until someone asks you a question – Hi)… if not, ask for a repeat (AGN? PSE RPT? or just ? if you miss a callsign or report).

Either way, as you’ll see on the website, I recommend that you concentrate on sending at only 70% of the effective speed that you’re comfortable receiving at – most members of the team will respond at the same speed – which will make the QSOs more relaxing.

Yes, I just happened to accidentally notice before the net on Tuesday that you had subscribed and read the last RagChew. I don’t get notified when a new subscriber joins – so it’s often by good luck that I see a new callsign.

I’m glad you put your callsign in the unassigned field (I’ve tried unsuccessfully so far to designate that field as Callsign).

Things were pretty quiet early on Tuesday’s net, and your signal wasn’t as strong as expected – so we may have had tough conditions as well – but hopefully the band filled up in Hobart.

As you’ll read in the newsletter, we usually have 3 to 5 dozen stations on during the evening. Good work having CW contacts with some mates – excellent (that’s how the CQQRS net started – I was sending for club members in WA (via a Remote) and it just grew from there).

[20m] + I was SWLing just for fun, and wanted to see if i cud hear Simon sending from UK. I heard him on the ironstone SDR, but not here in Stuttgart 🙂 Have a great week, 73 de Mike..

[40m] + Another good QRS nite. Managed to keep going until late with the valiant tx and HQ170 Rx. + Managed lots of QSOs on my single FT243 rock, until another op took over. Holding the frequency ment I could key with my best xtal.

Using the Two tube VFO’s is a handful so having one crystal helped a lot. + Many were unaware I was operating a 1950 setup – Hopefully the listeners enjoyed the history variety.

| used a spare contact on the HA1 keyer in the photo to unground the speaker wire whilst the other contact removes the b+ regulated supply fro! the receiver simultaneously.

This achieves good smooth qsk changeover from tx and Rx with intercharacter reception possible. Thi new mod avoids the nasty click i had on qsk changeover. The click was

• ars ring badly with tinnitus. I added a 33 chm bleed resistor back to the ungrounded leg of the speaker to protect the op audio transformer from excessive high open CCT voltage.

Also gives a lower audio sample if required on the alternate position on the changeover switch. Tonight, I used two separate antennas. One RX and one TX – so no TR switch.

The 6BZ6 tube and front end coils coped with the back wave RF from the TX; on’t try this at home folks with a silicon rig… your surface mount components will be black and smoked out. I opted tonite to go xtal locked at 7.033 MHz.

That’s the only good rock I have in the range we use for Tuesday QRS. Using a very vintage receiver is fairly hard work as you do have to chase the other stations a little. They never all transmit on the exact same frequency.

Some modern rigs just being approximate in their calibration. The station setup was excellent tonite as all the static crashes were handed well by the all-tube receiver that has no xtal filters to ring like a bell.

The receiver has a noise limiter that’s adjustable and worked extremely well. It has an adjustable passband and 500HZ selectivity, just with coils at 60KC IF.

Got a bit tired during the net – I felt my CW starting to flow a bit and an interesting thing was happening with CW decoding in my head.

If I missed a couple of letters and then picked up on the next I could recall what the previous two were and re- decode in my head backwards, while still copying the next words. This was happening for the first time tonight. Oh the other bit of bench work…

I polished the Bencher key contacts and did minor re alignment to exactly align the contact centres. I used my jewelers loupe to view the contact surfaces. It probably won’t need doing again. It’s probably closer in tolerance now than it was when it was new.

I think many of our ops would do well to look at the key contacts once a week every week. After a paper burnish I find a microfibre lens cloth does the final job removing any micro paper deposits.

I keep the same cloth over the key to keep dust out when not in use. Also used for removing finger marks from the chrome work. I never need metal polish as it’s kept clean frequently with the micro fibre cloth.

For those interested watch-cleaning paper is available in different grades. Be very careful with the soft metal, gold silver or platinum just like high-end relay contacts which can be ruined by rough work.

There are other activities people do that have similar hygiene habits. Gun cleaning, sports equipment, washing the 100K sports car once a week . Sometimes it’s a 4wd that is detailed.

We are all caretakers of ham equipment and it’s worthwhile to consider how the next CW op might like to receive a used pice of ham equipment. Best Regards Paul VK3KLE 73.

A quick call to him but alas, nothing. So with a bit of nudging (wink wink) he was back on the air at 7028 kHz. Thanks, bli Nyoman!! It was short but great fun. I was able to copy about 90%, QRN is still persistent but it is better this late evening.

At the end of QSO, I am surprised no one called him as he is DX but instead VK5KFG (operating QRP) called me. So it is back to back fun. Other than that, I hope condx will be good again in 2 weeks.

I will not be around for next week but will be back the week after. Adios amigos!.

[20m] * My first attempt at joining CQ QRS Group friends in 2025. The weather was bright at Cannock Chase forest but only 3C so I chose to sit in the car.

I’m pretty quick at hooking up the JPC-12 antenna now and for this transglobal operation I chose to fly a union flag from it.. + The flag didn’t bring me much luck though.

I heard just one VK station – Mark VK2KI – and I had to keep dodging other Europeans who were calling over me. The CQ QRS – Alerts WhatsApp chat is very handy for letting people know where I was but my Xiegu G90 maxes out at 20W and that was just not good enough to be heard properly on the long path at that time.

+ It was all fun and not completely fruitless either. I chatted with Lithuanian and Slovenian stations and finished up with Peter GOGYY.

[40m] * Good to work Ketut VKS3BWN and Peter VK3WOW for the first time.

[80m] * Conditions not that great, local stations fine but struggled with the weaker signals from the East coast and noise levels up to s7 at times. * Thanks to all, good night as usual..

[40m] * Only had time to work Peter before running off to training after being at fire support for the day..

[40m] «| had a quick listen around 1945 loca time and heard some weak North American DX and several stations on the NZ CW net around 7030.5 but no stations on the QRS net. When I returned after dinner things were hAattar

• With only 25 minutes before an online meeting was due to start, I was able to make two quick contacts. There’s not much time for more than an over or two each at QRS speeds, but it was still nice to get on the air..

80m] Good signs on 80M late-ish after the 30AT Anchor SSB net. My TS-520 has he CW filter and CW is a pleasure on his radio. Nice QSOs with Mark 2KI ind Sava 4PN.

[40m] * still not much was heard, earlier on,. * but some activity was there, an bit later.. * then – so was the noise level..

[80m] + in comparison, to 40m, the 80m band was an dream to use,. * especially when dealing with any QRN issues..

[40m] * Missed a few weeks, and only listened in for a bit tonight but great sending from all I heard! There was apparently a lot of activity that I missed out on, but I went to bed

[40m] + Tonight was all QRP on the original QRP Labs QCX running (an optimistic) 4 Watts into an end-fed antenna. Had a good chat with Mait, Sava, Ketut and OM Manny. What still amazes me about these little rigs is how good the receivers are.

They are surprisingly sensitive for a direct conversion receiver and the audio filter is quite narrow with no ringing. Full break-in keying as well. There is no AGC on them though which can result in a fair din in the headphones if a strong local

[40m] + Acouple of times during the evening I received RST reports where the T value was given (unless I completely mis-copied these) as “2”.

On neither occasion did I have the heart or gumption to ask “Do you really mean that 2?” – partly, I guess, because I really was worried I really may just have misinterpreted what was

Was being sent me. By the time this happened to me the second time, I was really starting to wonder “has there been a change in the standard way of reporting the T (tone) component of an RST report?” Or, perhaps, is there some different convention in how this T component is used within the CQ QRS nights?.

[80m] + Delighted to make my first VK6 CW contact ever (on 40 m). Thanks Rich VK6HRC!. [Glad you asked Peter! Yes on the CQQRS net, you’ll hear both RST (readability, strength, tone) reports, and RSN (readability, strength, noise) reports.

Stan ZL3TK introduced the group to the new, much more useful system a while back. + These days, it’s pretty rare to hear anything by perfect CW tones – 99+% of reports are T9.

There are exceptions of course – and in particular on the CQQRS net where lots of the team enjoy using home brewed or older commercial gear, any of which may drift, chirp, click, have hum mixed in etc.

+ However, the RSN report replaces the now largely redundant tone report with a noise strength report. + So an RSN 542 report indicates that the signal strength is two S-points (le 12DB) above the background noise level; an RSN 355 report indicates that the signal is strong, but so is the noise – hence the readibility 3.

Similarly, an RSN 361 report indicates that something else Is wrong – QRM, QSB, or even trouble decoding because of poor receiving skill or even poor keying.

* /usually send the letters RSN before sending that report to alert any listener that what follows is an RSN report, not RST. No need to get weak at the knees about either your decoding ability or the quality of the your signal mate!]

[80m] + I did try first listening on 20m for the OM Simon / MOKBJ/P but nil heard. Continued tuning on 20m and came across John / CT7BEG who was RSN 472 QSB..

[40m] * Very noisy due to thunderstorm to the south-west which moved close so I disconnected all antennae..

[40m] * Oops nearly forgot to fill in my report About to run out the door to work!.

From VK2, I was trying to work our intrepid first-of-the season DXperimenters Simon MOKBJ/p portable in a quiet spot in the outskirts of wonderful Wolverhampton.

Simon was in and out of the noise on the VK6QS KiwiSDR receiver near Brookton and was occasionally leaving a trace on the waterfall display.

I could tell pretty much when he was transmitting, but only the occasional etter of his callsign popped up above the noise floor..

• David VK6KD/5 called in from somewhere in SA with a nice signal, but he and Simon weren’t hearing each-other. Ditto Peter VK6IS at Wundowie – good signal in NSW, but no luck to the UK this week..

[40m] + Ilistened in to Richard VK6HRC at Padbury chatting to Phil VK6GX at Gidgegannup. Terrific to hear Phil back on air after losing most of his low-band antennas in a storm a few weeks back; well done getting back on air Phil.

Some of our readers may be aware that Phil lost pretty much everything antenna-wise a few years ago when his property was attacked by a bushfire; amazingly his home was saved by a roof-top sprinkler system.

[80m] +I slid down to 80m early this week after taking a break for a nice dinner with Ms e. The band was open nicely from the East to the West – but boy oh boy – static crashes up the gazoo.

Anyway, I could hear that there were quite a few stations on the low band enjoying the strong signals that 80m often provides when the D-layer has dissolved… Also from your editor Mark VK2KI at Beautiful South Bowning

[20m] +I could hear Simon MOKBJ corning in and out of the noise on the long path (with even the occasional meteor ping), calling from his cold spot near Wolverhampton.

I gave Simon a few calls, and he could hear me ok, reporting RST 529 from my 50 Watts to my 80m Double-Extended Zepp up 7m (ie a 106M doublet on 20m… I’ll need to have a think about the radiation pattern on 20m).

However, my out-of-alignment nearly 50 year-old Trio TS-1208 just couldn’t reciprocate on receive. + also heard David VK6KD/5 coming through really nicely, as was Peter VK6IS; neither had any luck with Simon this time unfortunately..

[40m] + On Tuesday I just happened to notice that we had a new reader of the RagChew, James VK7JZ in Hobart. James had subscribed to the newsletter, but MailChimp (used to compile and distribute each edition) doesn’t tell me when we have anew subscriber.

Well wasn’t that lucky (for me anyway) ~ because I heard James calling CQ about 40 minutes before the net started. I called James and for nearly the next hour enjoyed a very pleasant rag chew.

+ By email, James said he had completed the CWacademy fundamental course and had had some CW QSOs with friends in Hobart, but hadn’t had a CQ answered until now; so no First CW QSO certificate – sorry mate… but close James!.

+ After James, I tried calling Paul VK3KLE at Stawell and Georg VK2DLF at St Marys – but neither heard my call, so I slipped up to 20m to listen out for ‘Simon MOKBJ/p..

[80m] + At 1030Z when I came back from a nice dinner with Ms e, I could see that 40m had a number of QSOs in train, but decided to go straight down to 80m this time for a bit of fun…

+ Great to hear Allen VK5ED at Blakeview on air on 3585KHZ again – Allen used to be on every week when we operated the net on 80m only; this time Allen was chatting to Jordan VK3ACU at Meredith, who then responded to my CQ on 3550KHZ +/- drift and VFO display coarseness.

+ After Jordan, I had a nice chat with Peter V3WOW at Blackburn. Peter had been having trouble with the Chinese phasing noise canceller that I’d recommended (see Other Topics below) and had had a chat with his near neighbour, Manny VK3DRQ who as we reported recently, had just built one of the VK5TM noise canceller kits.

Manny was so happy with the performance of Teny’s kit that Peter decided to return his bought one and buy the kit. Should be a fun and satisfying project I hope © emerceotnn recs Sees op Peter; keep us in the loop..

SAREE ATE + After Peter I had a nice chat with seen Andy VKBLA at Ber in the Riverlands region before he caught up with Save =

Post Morsum Report from Wednesday

DALES LARS Endy PLS LR Se LO hy from Richard VK6HRC Hello All. ‘Two SWLs logged and three checked-in to report on the AllStar/Echolink and South West hub at 2200Z on Wednesday morning. VK6QI/M Mark VK6FN Max VK6HRG SWLs VK6MRB Mulligan VK6KRC Bob and others.

VK6KD/5 David was unable to check-in due to Echolink problems, despite Rob VK6LD being dragged out of bed at 5:45am by Mark (who was on the road but with a flat battery in his notebook computer) to do a reset on the Mandurah repeater to provide another Echolink access point.

Mark checked in from the co pilot’s seat with his report, on his way to Canberra while Captain Elizabeth drove. He heard nine stations on the VK6 SDR network, and from home worked six and heard seven.

While doing his normal multitasking WhatsApp alerts etc Mark had time to check his lightning alert app and see where the WA QRN was emanating from (Goldfields WA mostly).

Max managed to check in just before close with his report, somewhat of a struggle escaping bed after a well-earned sleep-in after a full day of fault-finding and problem-solving. The end result…. his station was back on air with a big signal again.

I worked five stations, two new ones for the log Ketut VK3BWN and Peter VK3WOW. It did not gel with me at first that VK3BWN was YB1NWP Nyoman’s brother, until he sent his name along! Great to get Ketut in the log as well thank you.

As for Peter VK8WOW, conditions were getting quite noisy but we managed to exchange signal reports. Checked his QRZ page later and immediately recognised Peter from a segment in the RagChew newsletter.

Abig thank you to all on last night and this morning, stay safe and have a great week

Kick-Back Friday

Terrible conditions for the Fists Down Under QSO party last Friday and only one contact in the log for me. The band opened at about 10:42 Zulu and Stan ZL3TK came up so we were able to exchange FDU information. Thank you Stan.

Cheers, 73 U Richard VK6HRC [Thank you for running the Wednesday morning AllStar call-back and chat Richard – and of course for assembling the report.]

This Week’s Topic of Interest

QRZ.com Page Creation – Part 3 How to Build Your Own QRZ.com Webpage by Ross MONNK

Last after discussing why you might want to have or update your own QRZ.com webpage, last week we looked at registering a login and having your callsign validated. Now the fun stuff begins – but with some caveats!

Part 3 – Edit your account preferences

Okay, you’re getting there. Registered and validated… so far, so good. Now stick with me whilst I go through the pre-flight Safety Briefing before take-off.

This week we’re going to address privacy concerns – identity theft; stalking; spamming; that sort of thing. This bad stuff might be stopping you from having some sort of online presence.

Many people are not in the least bit concerned about online privacy and happily swim in the shark-infested waters of social media. Others are obsessed by it – hands up all you Kali Linux geeks out there.

I fall somewhere in the middle – I want to take reasonable precautions, and then I’ll just deal with anything in the unlikely event that it comes up.

I talked about a couple of those “reasonable precautions” in the Introduction to this series of articles in edition 9/2025 and I’ll presume that you remember what I said. But here’s another way of thinking of it.

Herds of mammals; flocks of birds; shoals of fish – there can be many reasons for this group behaviour but one of them is ‘protection from predators’.

Predators can be confused (and even endangered) by large numbers of stampeding prey, so the hungry lions simply pick off individuals that stray outside the main group.

The survival of prey animals is based on probability – if you’re in the middle of a large herd, you’d have to be very unlucky to be singled out by a predator.

You can see where I’m going with this – QRZ.com has thousands, tens of thousands, of operator’s pages and so your callsign is only ever likely to come to the attention of someone with whom you’ve just had a radio contact.

It’s a numbers game – the safety of the herd. Okay, enough theorising. Let’s choose what information we wish to expose to public gaze.

• Log in using the “Login” tab on the QRZ.com home page

“ Hover over your callsign (where the “Login” tab was) and click on the link to your page

• Do the same again – hover over your callsign – but this time click on the link to edit your page

• The next link isn’t obvious but look for “Update the basic callsign data” at the top, click on that

• Enter or remove the information you want to be visible on your page, as you see fit (some of it is required by QRZ.com though).

Personally, I want other operators to see the village where I live, but there’s no reason for them to know my exact house number or even street name. But it’s up to you.

Whilst much of this information will be visible to anyone with a web browser, more sensitive information like your email address is only visible to other amateur license holders who’ve registered with QRZ.com (this keeps the Spam Bots away).

Okay – that’s enough for this week. All the boring stuff is out of the way, you’ll be glad to hear. Next time we’ll finally get down to the nitty-gritty – building your very ‘own web page. How exciting! [Thanks for the next steps and sage advice Ross.

I really appreciate the effort you’ve gone through to break the process down into easy steps – for lots of us trying to navigate around the website can be quite a challenge. Well done]

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; email to cqqrsnet@gmail.com

On My Workbench

1950s NDB Transmitter

Click on any of the images for a quick demo. 1950’s non direction beacon built by TCA in Australia originally designed as a navigational beacon and AM emergency TX. If you find this interesting let me know ir the comments below.

HT was off and we are in to a dummy load in the video. This transmitter now lives on the 160M Band. [How many repeats did it take you to decode the Morse? Don’t worry – it took me many many repeats…. see Feeling frustrated about learning CW below.]

What Happened to Paradise?

From Peter VK3WOW [After reading about my ravings about noise cancellers in recent RagChew newsletters, Peter parted with a little hard-earned, with the promise of kissing goodbye to the switch mode power supply hash plague on 40m and 80m. Paradise beckoned…

But guess what? No banana! So here’s the first part of the saga from Peter]

I’ve just hooked up a QRM eliminator I bought from China, and I have to say my first impression of it is that it is a very good signal strength reduction device, but at $70 or so seems a bit overpriced for a device that appears to provide only that function.

I’ve tried hundreds of different knob position combinations on 80 metres, using the little telescope antenna that comes with it, and as far as I can see not one thing I can do with the knobs makes the tiniest bit of difference to what I’m getting through my ICOM7300.

(a) operator error? (b) wrong operator expectations? (c) device is a lemon? (d) all that S9 hash is I see on 80 metres doesn’t qualify as QRM?

| notice in the original RagChew article that Mark said to replace “the coil” in the Chinese unit. As you can see from the screenshots below, my device has no toroid at all. A case of (b) perhaps, then? With best wishes, Peter VK3WOW

[Peter and I had a WhatsApp videoconference (read two old blokes waving their phones around) and I we stepped through the adjustment process that I’ve found to work best.

My version of the same unit nulled out the noise easily; Peter’s was just eliminating everything, with the occasional intermittent burst of noise. A faulty unit! Anyway, there’s light on the horizon….

After seeing and hearing how well mine worked, Peter was motivated to keep going to find a solution, which we discussed in our nice 80m QSO on Tuesday night. Stand by for more articles from Peter about this project!]

Frankenkey

On the Road

• From our Grey Nomads John & Jenny VK2RU I haven’t been on the air for a while now. Having a few problems – some real, some imagined. Started off chasing some bad QRM that has now gone. Then I worked on getting rid of some RF.

Particularly bad when I use the Codan 9360 antenna. Every tap on the Morse key sets off the LED lights in the van. Sometimes the brake lights on the Chev join in the party. I was using FT 240-43 toroids. Changed them to FT 240-31 and things are a bit better.

I’ve also been playing with the squid pole antenna. My copy of the DX Commander is a very good antenna, but a pain to constantly put up and down. New version is a bit easier and tests ok.

Once I try it on the air and prove that it actually works in real life I’ll put an article in the RagChew. Here’s a sneak preview:

40m and 20m have their own wires. All other bands are on the 1mm s/steel wire on the reel. Just pull up the wire to get the band you want. The s/steel wire doesn’t have any insulation so it’s only the wire up in the air that is used.

The wire left on the reel just shorts out. For 80m I disconnect the 40m wire from the driven plate and connect to the top of the coil. Or I pull out all the

S/steel wire and it’s an inverted L. It’s not pretty, but appears to work – made from stuff I had. $20 for 50m 1mm s/steel wire from Bunnings. I’ve been doing a fair bit of sending and receiving practice. It’s weird. I can head copy most words at up to 25 wpm.

Sending on my Morserino is pretty good. But on the air it all goes a bit crazy. Not the sort of thing I would like to annoy other people with. But having said that, I’m just about at the point of getting on the air again and

Giving it another go. Currently at a very windy Carcoar Dam and slowly heading north towards the Gulf to avoid winter for another year. regards John [Thanks for the antenna ideas John – terrific.

I don’t think you’re Robinson Crusoe with the leap from perfect CW to what you hear on air! Others will be relieved to hear they’re not alone. And don’t be shy getting on air even

Struggling to receive…. not Robinson Crusoe there either. I often ask experienced ops questions or say something seeking a reply – more often than not the other folks just aren’t copying well enough to know what I asked.

I’m the same – I miss big chunks when distracted by the SDRs, WhatsApp, logging, normal lapses in concentration etc…. but struggle through. Take care both].

QRZ?

Who’s calling me? Who’s on the other end?

QRZ? Who’s on the other end? From your editor Mark VK2KI / VK6QI Key to the success of our net is helping to make it a get-together that people enjoy returning to each week.

When you’re on the key, it’s really hard to find out a bit more about the person you’re chatting to. So I’m really keen to share the backgrounds of some of our team members – it’s really nice to know who’s on the other end of the QSO.

How did they come to amateur radio and when, and what on earth was the motivator that got them interested in CW? How’s the journey been so far, and what’s planned? Perhaps, what they get out of the net and the newsletter, and how it can be made better?

So, would you be willing to share some thoughts about yourself? Please let me know: cqgrsnet@gmail.com Alternatively, lan VK1HF is keen to record and produce some short audio segments for RagChew about some of our team members.

If you’d like to have a chat with lan rather than writing something, send me an email and I’ll pass your details to him. So… QRZ?

QRZ? Who’s on the other end?

Other News

Getting my Goat?

From Wayne VK6NW: The movie suggestion in last week’s RagChew in response to Jordan VK3ACU’s goat photo got me thinking… have some suggestions:

| pt tgetnar Panes VICE ‘s Suveer Loop 2 mag lcep antenna and fs bean a in ampeerert 2s actualy cong 2 past a3 far ORD DIC fon unig as eld mato turing cop, ec I’m wicang t= ‘worts oles to avoid eg ust a rerecer, feugh, nag loapa can ganas hh vobages ard ffebds, va hemp your head eoray fram if The goat care te chuck out al the eecing resbes

Solar Space Weather Information

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.

Live Stream

Live ovedam Jordan live-streamed a video of Wedhnesday’s training – here’s the preview:

And the actual video below – there’s nothing there now, but check next Wednesday at 0800Z

Across the Continent on 1 Watt

Click on the link for another terrific video from Jordan, including a QSO with some bloke in Beautiful South Bowning.

Does Anyone Know Why?

Aurora Alert

ASWFC AURORA ALERT HIGH LATITUDES, ISSUED AT 0123 UT ON 13 Mar 2025 FROM THE AUSTRALIAN SPACE WEATHER FORECASTING CENTRE GEOMAGNETIC STORM IN PROGRESS. AURORA MAY BE OBSERVED DURING LOCAL NIGHT TIME HOURS IN GOOD OBSERVING CONDITIONS AT HIGH LATITUDES.

Follow the progress of this event on the ASWFC web site on the Space Weather Status Panel, https:/www.sws.bom.gov.au/Space Weather Previous reports are archived under More information about ASWFC Aurora Alerts can be found under ‘our mailing list by following the links, https:/www.sws.bom.gov.au/Products_and Services/4/1 This alert is not subject to forecaster validation.

It is automatically issued from autoscaled data which may produce a false alarm on rare occasions. Australian Space Weather Forecasting Centre Bureau of Meteorology ASWEC@bom.gov.au www.bom.gov.au I www.sws.bom.gov.au

Too Much Midday Sun?

Couple of our team caught hard at work at the Northern Corridor Radio Group’s Whiteman Park headquarters. Richard VK6HRC to the left and John VK6NU above. The things you do when the temperature goes over 100!

Jules’ Workshop – New Regulations Section

From Jules VK3JFP Jules Workshop, www.julesworkshop.net, is a free site for those candidates wishing to prepare for the amateur radio licence exams. Over the past year, ACMA Class Licensing was introduced and the existing LCD phased out for operators.

The Regulations section of Jules Workshop, Jules’ Workshop Regulations, was recently updated to include the material the WIA Education Committee developed. Ihope you find the training material helpful.

Jules Perrin JP 0457585974 VK3JFP www,julesworkshop.net ‘Supporting our veterans.

Jules’ Workshop – New Regulations Section

Feeling Frustrated About Learning CW

Last Week’s Cartoon:

Two responses to last week’s cartoon. ¢ One was “Hmmm! Late again!” – recognising that for our ZL friends and Eastern staters, the net always seem to end up going late into the evening, despite best intentions 🙂 ¢ The second was “Next to the penguin under your signature block”…

Reflecting the old adage, be careful what you ask for! Thanks gents – thumbs-up 🙂

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

Di-dah-di-dah-dit

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 0700Z until about 1300Z; 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 1300Z – 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

Please let me know via our Reports form bit.ly/CQQRSNET who you work or hear on Tuesday’s Group. The report form closes at lunchtime (Eastern Australian time) on Thursday.

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.

Teamwork

Thank you so much to our team of 31 contributors: DL3YZ, MOKBJ/P, MONNK, VK1HF, VK2DI, VK2GAZ, VK2RU, VK3ACU, VK3AE, VK3AFH, VK3BWN, VK3DRQ, VK3ECH, VK3JFP, VK3KEV, VK3KLE, VK3WOW, VK5AO, VK5FD, VK5KFG, VK5LA, VK6HD, VK6HRC, VK6IS, VK6JDM, VK6NW, VK6WE, VK7JZ, VK7TA, VK7TO, VK7WW.

Thank you team – magnificent! GU CW on Tuesday, mb Mark Bosma VK2KI / VK6QI Beautiful South Bowning NSW mark.bosma@icloud.com non impediti ratione cogitationis

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 nat necessarily reflect that of the editor or of the C@ QAS Group members.

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