cq_qrs_newsletter

2024 31 CQ QRS RagChew

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Contents

CQ QRS RagChew

Last Tuesday’s Net

Here’s this week’s list of the 59 stations heard:

New Team Members

This week I’m pleased to welcome a whole bunch of new team members: * Kevin VK3KEV from Semour * Mathew VK3AFH from Wantirna South * Richard VKSAAD from Blackwood * Alan VK1AO from Narrabundah + Matt VK2RQ from Belrose * Martin VK3MLT from Berwick * Steve VK2TEV from Macksville * Sava VK4PN at Mount Ommaney Kevin (another rotary wing enthusiast like me) has returned to amateur radio after a long absence and is teaching himself the Code…

And as I said, on this week’s net Kevin had his first ever CW QSO – with Jordan VK3ACU – how good is that? Mathew has already been listening in to our net and is starting to gain confidence on his learning journey as well.

Richard has been an SWL for over 50 years and now that he’s cracked his Advanced license, he’s promised himself that CW will be next.

Alan VK1A0 is a pretty active operator who I’ve heard on air a few times; he puts a nice signal into my place around 100KM away, and I like his approach: “and remember – it’s just a hobby”.

As another AllStar node owner, I hope we’ll catch up with him on Wednesday’s Post Morsum call-in as well. Matt VK2RQ was on during our net a couple of weeks back and was heard by David VK6KD; Matt also returned to amateur radio recently and doesn’t yet have much in the way of antennas, but is hoping to have some luck during our net.

Matt’s also keen on QRP operation – so I reckon he’s come to the right place! Martin has also just started on the CW journey and has already joined the Straight Key Century Club (ready for a future Oceania QRS saunter hopefully) and equipped himself with a nice Begali key already – jealous!

While Steve tells me that the Coffs Harbour & District Amateur Radio Club runs a half hour CW practice session at every weekly meeting – how good is that? Good luck with the learning journey as well Steve.

And Sava has been a CW enthusiast since he was licensed over 60 years ago, and is really pleased to see the resurgence that our net has produced. Welcome to the team guys and I look forward to getting reports from you each week about what you heard on the net.

So, after next Tuesday’s net, please send me a list of who you worked and / or who you heard using our new web form here: bit.ly/WCQQRSNET

Getting reports from stations and listeners is important to me – even if you listened ai didn’t hear anyone or weren’t able to copy anything – the fact that you had a go neec to get recorded so we know that the net is working and attracting new and old team members to have a go.

Masthead Image

Reports & Comments

The spreadsheets above show the known stations on last Tuesday’s net. Comment distilled from the reports I’ve received are below:

Comments:

[40m] + First time transmitting CW, been learning to copy for 2 months. + Exhausted and happy. + Listening on air so different to machine code, static, different tones and lots of nerves. + Will keep practicing and sending VERY slow morse on Tuesdays.

• Thanks to Jordan for being very patier with me and to Mark for coordinating this session. + Like flying, your first solo is your hardest – long time pilot here. * Thanks again Kevin VK3KEV.

[40m] + Fun night tonight, Kevin’s first CW QSO – well done Kev honestly your sending was great! Had a great rag chew with VK3AE who is just down the road from me in Ballarat. + Sounds like we need to chat about 160M Dylan.

+ I started to get tired after the awesome QSO with Dylan and was just about to take a rest, I then had a call from Stan that started off ok but we experienced some strong QRM so I sent back I was going to have a quick break (not sure if you could hear me at this stage Stan).

+I came back a few mins later to call you back but lost you in the sideband stations.

[80m] + By the time I got to 80m I should have packed the key up, falling asleep at the key as usual but was having too much fun.

+1 do have a bit of RSI in my right hand, writing and keying even with a paddle makes it worse so darn annoying, I some times key left handed to help the situation but it can sometimes lead to a few mistakes. + The cause is all the computer work at work.

+ Thanks everyone for coming up. + Hope to see you all again soon. 00d job – well done mate.]

40m] * Thanks to all, I enjoyed listening in. * There was much QSB and I could often only copy one side of the QSO but that was a perfect opportunity to learn and use some features on my radio I’ve never touched!

+ I have enjoyed reading through the newsletter and seeing the notifications; I took the time tonight to write down everything I heard in a somewhat orderly fashion, and submitted my report.

I’ve only made contacts with FT8 until now so doing that and learning how to deal with the not-ideal reception conditions here tonight was good practice I think.

+ I’ve spent about 4 months using Icwo.net and I think I am okay at 10WPM but have recently been practising using my straight key to send at that or slower (and not start speeding up).

Whether I have all my prosigns correct and can work my way through a QSO is yet to be seen but I have fairly high hopes haha.

| can work the VBand QSO bot online so practising with a real person sounds like the next challenge! «| will be on holiday next week so if all goes to plan someone may hear me on 40m next Tuesday 🙂 * Thanks again! 73, hope to talk soon :-). Mathew Van de Loop

Prosigns – I still don’t know most of them – as long as you’re prepared to ignore then when they happen, and keep going with the decoding, you’ll be all right. I’m certain!

No expert, but when you’re ready to transmit – perhaps just bone up on (or make a card with) the basic ones… * dah-di-dah (K) invitation to transmit * CQ this one should be fairly obvious – you’ll hear it quite a lot!

* DE from * 73 (of course) + TU thank you * GM GAGE good morning / afternoon / evening Then when you’re ready to move on to some fancy stuff – start practicing: * dah-di-di-di-dah hyphen – often used as thought-separator or to buy some time…

Bit like the dreaded “aahhhh” on phone j-dah-di-dah-dit end of message * dah-di-di-dah-dit slash fah-dah-di-dit question mark As the end of the newsletter is a link to an article that a couple of us in the Pee!

Amateur Radio Club put together about basic CW QSO protocols. Most important… enjoy the challenge and have fun mate.] *

[40m] + Most of the VK signals were a bit watery tonight, possible auroral effect.

[80m] * Heard Jordan VK3ACU on 3555KHZ giving someone a 339 report..

• VKSET started strong but by the end of our QSO he was starting to fade badly and sound like he was corning down a drain pipe with some weird multipathing. + It was good to see many stations on the 7300’s waterfall in QSO!

[80m] + Abit of a struggle on 80m, hard going with VK6QI who was buried in my noise. * VK5ET pounding in 599+++. * I heard VK6JDM calling and answered, but unsure if he was having trouble with his gear or his sending, or both? Decided to have an early night,.

[40m] * Conditions pretty good, successfully passed two-way traffic again, grateful thanks to OM Manny VK3DRQ. + Two TDIH sent and both returned.

+ Of the 7 VK stations worked, only one op had heard (read) about TDIH – that’s because he’d taken the plunge long ago when he courageously accepted the (mild) challenge – the others, 86 % of last night’s 40 m contacts, admitted they do not read RagChew.

+ A bewildering and shocking indictment.

[80m] * Conditions fine between ZL and VK eastern states, but very poor with watery flutter into WA. + From lan VK7TA at Latrobe

[40m] + Ihad a short QSO with ZL8TK before dinner, and a longer one afterwards, so propagation in that direction not bad. + I finished the evening with a call from JASTX, whose signal was down in the noise here.

• We then decided to try a remote to remote contact, Mark activated the Carnarvon remote and I got onto the Bedfordale remote, the results were great apart from high noise levels at the Carnarvon station.

+ Mark mentioned that the signal levels between us were good enough to continue with the QSO. + Many thanks to Mark with his help anc advice setting up a straight key interfac:

[40m] + Everyone busy exchanging info – so good to hear the band busy with CW. + Some SSB QRM and a bt of QSB but conditions were good overall. *

From Donald VK6JDM 20 km West of Esperance

[80m] + Heard Richard VK6HRC from his home station and later using a remote ‘station. + Signal was Q 5 with both but about 20 dB stronger on the remote. + The situation was very similar with Mark’s signals from VK2KI and VK6QI. *

[40m] + Another enjoyable night but a bit short of QSOs.

[40m] +I tried using a paddle tonight calling CQ which was immediately answered b VK6RR. + So far so good but then the wheels fell off as I got confused with the paddle and sending got erratic.

+ That took my mind off decoding and I lost most of the reception except an

[40m] «| was on 7.030 and called with out any luck. + I was using my qcx mini cw transceiver with an output of 5 watts. * Tried to work VK3ACU but others jumped in. + Mark asked why am I called “Professor Portable “?

In South Africa, teachers are referred to as professors. A friend asked what do I do on Fridays mornings? I told him I operate HF portable. “Ah Professor Portable” he replied. *73.

• From me VK2KI at Beautiful South Bowning NSW

[40m] + Another terrific night with lots of people on from what I could see. + On the Tecsun KiwiSDR at Araluen NSW I heard Stan ZLSTK at Waitarére Beach chatting to Brian VK2EBC up at Newcastle then Georg VK2DLF at St Marys working Armin VK2GAS at Norwest before I hooked up with Wimal VK1WA at Bonner using his trapped inverted-tee up 10m.

+ Wimal then went on to chat to Georg and Stan, while I heard Max VK6EN at Manjimup chatting to Peter VK6IS at Wundowie.

+I then had a chat to Phil ZL1PB at Tauranga, and while trying to concentrate on that conversation, I couldn’t help but be distracted by hearing the QSO between our new team member Kevin VKSKEV at Seymour and Jordan VK3ACU at Meredith; this was Kevin’s first-ever CW QSO – congratulations Kevin and well done Jordan.

+ The coveted CQQRS First CW QSO award will be heading in Kevin’s direction. + After getting over the excitement, I had a nice chat with Grant ZL2GD at Oxford then John VKSET at Hope Valley before disappearing for nose-bags.

+ When I came back I heard an interesting QSO between Lance VK7ZA at Margate and Manny VK3DRQ at Blackburn. + There was a little auroral ripple on Lance, but Manny’s signal was quite weak and his cartier was deeply broken-up by very strong and rapid QSB; sounded what I imagine a spark transmitter might have sounded like on a coherer receiver.

• There was a little auroral ripple on Lance, but Manny’s signal was quite weak and his carrier was deeply broken- up by very strong and rapid QSB; sounded what I imagine a spark transmitter might have sounded like on a coherer receiver.

[80m] + On 80m I listened to the QSO between Andy VKSLA at Wilkie and me (as VKéQI on the VK6SR Remote at Bedfordale), before Andy went on to chat to John VKSET at Hope Valley.

+ I got busy on the VK6 Remotes and only are back to my home station late in the peace. +I then worked Stan ZL3TK at Waitarére Beach after midnight his time , and declined his offer of receiving a set of five character codes, and instead sent a This Day in History.

+ Stan asked a question in response, but it was getting late – despite repeating the question, I still couldn’t make out what was being asked – and deferred until the next morning’s Post Morsum.

* Also from me VK6QI at via the VK6QS KiwiSDR near Brookton and the Southern Electronics Group’s Remotes at Bedfordale and Carnarvon

[40m] + On 40m using the VK6QS KiwiSDR near Brookton I heard Ron VK6KHZ from Yangebup, then I listened to Wayne VK6NW at Bridgetown chatting to Peter VKéIS at Wundowie. + also heard David VK3DBD at Yackandandah working VK5GG before heading off for dinner.

[80m] + By the time I got to 80m, Jordan VK3ACU at Meredith and Greg VKBKFG at Willunga we’re coming into WA nicely on the VK6QS KiwiSDR.

+ Using the Southern Electronics Group’s VK6SR Remote at Bedfordale, I hooked up with Andy VK5LA at Willkie and also listened to the chat between Dylan VK3AE at Ballarat and Chris VK1CT then Jordan, before I called Richard VK6HRC at Padbury.

+ Richard had just sorted out his key-to Remote interface and we decided to give it a try. +I slipped up to the VK6CRO Remote at Camarvon which was in use on 6m FT.

+ However, when the two operators didn’t respond to requests, I took the liberty of taking the Remote down to 80m. + Like last week, the Space Museum’s display lighting was causing havoc on 80m – with S9+ of noise, but despite that, Richard and I had a nice QSO Remote-to-Remote – Richard’s signal being S9+20dB.

+ Of course, after I finished, I put the Remote back on the 6m frequency and hopefully kept the digital mode users happy.

+ After finishing up with Richard I decided it was time to hit the hay, but listened to Stan ZL3TK working me (as VK2KI); both had pretty decent signals into WA – a pretty good haul from Stan’s location.

+I did notice some Auroral cirrus clouds on the KiwiSDR, but there was no impact on the New Zealand signals that I could hear.

[40m] + Anotch filter would be handy as many stations were close together and hard to differentiate. * Only trick I have is using CW REV function on my Yaesu 857 for receiving.

[80m] * Sorry no 80m contacts this week. + I was limited to 10W as my radio kept shutting down. + May have been due to low battery voltage or poor antenna SWR. Investigation still underway, hihi.

Ron did not have as many contacts as last week but a decent amount in spite of the high noise levels of the rain on the roof even drowning out his side tone at times! Ron also let us know that Ross MONNK is still away camping and Mike DL3YZ is.

Hoping to be able to access a remote station over this way soon. Mark was gracious enough to interrupt his breakfast and check in to report that he had seven contacts on 40 mx and 80MX and noted the interesting influence of the solar storm on 40MX.

‘Stan was hearing everyone on 80MX tried calling but apparently was not being heard, 40MX was not behaving. Looking forward to Stan’s much more comprehensive report in the RagChew.

Max VK6FN called in but before he could report the jolly network failed at his end again! Hank KA3BMS dropped in to say hello and catch up with his Australian lessons ©) Christine VK6ZLZ called in to say good morning and give us a weather warning.

I managed to catch up with Donald VK6JDM on 80MX ssb before the net and he did not do that well last night. He put out a call on 80MX and ended up with a pile-up but when the initial rush died down they all disappeared so no contact!

He also reported that he was hearing good signals from Mark VK6QI/VK2KI from wherever he was operating at the time (Bedfordale remote, Carnarvon remote or home) J only managed to get on towards the end of the net and caught up with Mark on 80MX.

We tried a VK6CRO remote to VK6SR remote contact and surprisingly tome all went well. Thanks Mark with your help setting up my serial-to-USB straight key interface. Looking forward to more CW activity already. Thanks to all 73 Richard.

• xactly as planned, formal traffic was exchanged a few minutes after 0940Z at ~ 11 vpm so that everyone had the opportunity to copy it down.

OM Manny sent his eply to the previous week’s QTC which asked about a water-passage in the Scottis Nestern Isles, with only its Gaelic name provided.

Plain-language traitic questions are based upon readily available information accessible from search engines. The answer you want may not be immediately obvious, but keep digging and try a different search engine if unsuccessful at first. 73 de Stan ZL3TK

Other News

Ial Intelligence for Generating Morserino Callsigns by lan VK1HF Ihave a morserino – it has an echo trainer – for practicing more code. Great for the off season by the fire.

You can upload a custom list of stuff for it to send you(which you need to correctly send back) – I want to get better at recognizing VK/ZL callsign: and I suck at the /P add on. So I wanted a random list of callsigns…

I thought, let’s see if ChatGPT can do this… Have a look : https://chatgpt.com/share/521¢2b64-9b7d-45b4-81 0b-afec1c75898b Pretty neat – you can just keep modifying the question you ask until you get what you want back. Feel free to copy/use/modify to suit.

Artificial Intelligence for Generating Morserino Callsigns

| share with you videos of QSOs with Australia and New Zealand on the 80 meter band: https:/Avww.youtube.com/watch?v= 7jcV1-694l&ab_ channel=SergioLandoni hitps:/Awww. youtube.com/watch?v=VUdGqdrM8c4&ab_channel=SergioLandoni

From Andy VK5LA at Wilkie

Hi mate, I just wanted to drop you a line to say how much I’m enjoying the newsletter, it’s a credit to you and has now become required reading in le shack de VKS5LA! Thanks for taking the time to put it together, it’s much appreciated!

Andy Williss VK5LA/VJ5Z/VK5KAW/VKSTIL/VK5FIL VK-QRP #752 GQRP #17085 FISTS #21741 Winkie, South Australia

[Hey thank you Andy. And in-turn, thanks to all our contributors who make the RagChew – and out net – just the ducks guts!]

QRS Germany to Australasia

From Mike DL3YZ: Hello Mark, Today I come up with a bit of an ambitious thought. I really like SWLing on the CQQRS net, but of course I’d like to take part more actively.

My experiments have shown that sometimes there is a RF window opening up on 20m from Germany to Australia, about the same time the QRS net is taking place on.

I was even able to chat with Ross over the remote and Ron last week, even with my home station on 100W and a GSRV antenna, hanging low in some bushes. So I thought it could be a fun for the crew to try to get some DX in the log next Tuesday.

Maybe the ether waves are benevolent, and some stations will listen and try and send me a few beeps around the globe. Iwill be calling CQ VK QRS on 14.051 MHz (+/-2) and keeping my ears open wide Jat: * 6:45 UTC.

* 7:00 UTC © 7:15 UTC * 7:30 UTC * 7:45 UTC * 8:00 UTC * 8:15 UTC

6:45 UTC 7:00 UTC 7:15 UTC 7:30 UTC 7:45 UTC 8:00 UTC 8:15 UTC

Of course my humble “special appearance” could all go terribly wrong, and for sure I will embarrass myself badly. But no risk, no fun. Have a nice day ( and sorry for my bad english )

Mike DL3YZ.

Ps Of course there is no need to drill out Nigel G4RWI’s web logging scripts, we could just put it in as 40 m.

[What a terrific opportunity to enjoy the fruits of our sunspot cycle peak Mike – great initiative! Let’s see how it works this coming Tuesday – and I’ll repeat the announcement on future Tuesdays when you’re available. What fun!

Perhaps you’d consider using our CQQRS WhatsApp Alerts group (possibly with the notification sound off or with a nice low sound so you don’t get disturbed at odd hours? That way you could provide coordinating updates on the fly?]

Morse Training Net

Nic VK7WW runs a 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.

The NTARC also feeds the CW live via the Discord phone / computer audio stream, and previous weeks’ recordings are available. Contact Nic VK7WW for more info nicholaschantler@hotmail.com – or just join in on Wednesdays.

This Week’s Topic of Interest

by Ross MONNK

A few weeks ago, RagChew carried an article about a very simple 5 mW HF transmitter tried on air by Jordan VK3ACU (see Edition 27 “Size Matters”).

| was intrigued and, “nothing ventured, nothing gained”, I dug out of my spares box ¢ Acrystal (the only one I had was for 10.244 MHz) ¢ An NPN transistor (I don’t have that many so I chose a 2N3904) ¢ Two capacitors (100 pF and 100NF) ¢ Two resistors (1K and 100K) ¢« Amono jack socket for my straight key ¢ APP9 9Qv battery and a battery connector ¢ ABNC connector for the antenna « Asmall square of perfboard The only thing I bought was a small red plastic project box to put it all in.

| put the crystal and transistor in sockets so I could change them if needed. And, as an addition to the original circuit diagram, I added an 100NF isolating capacitor to th output. As you can see from the screen capture of my oscilloscope, it works!

| only have a cheap 20 MHz USB oscilloscope so, with a signal of 10 MHz, it’s fairly close to its Nyquist Frequency, hence the data point dots along the waveform. The FFT display looks nice though.

Having got it working on the bench, I then took it out to the woods to test it with my RTL-SDR dongle as the receiver.

| made a dipole antenna and connected that directly to the BNC. No UnUn… no coax… the battery dangling from the red box – everything went up to the top of my fibreglass mast with just a 2-core wire coming down to the Morse key.

Mike DL3YZ suggested using only a “rostige Buroklammer” (German: rusty paperclip) antenna fo! the SDR and I’m jolly glad I did because, being sat right under the dipole, the signal came booming in even with the RF Gain dialled back to zero.

Can’t claim to understand the significance of what I’m seeing on this display. But for a transmitter using just a single transistor with zero output filtering, it looks impressive to me.

I’d like to give a big shout-out to Ron VK6KHZ and to Mike DL3YZ for their advice and encouragement with this project. I’m not as clever as I like to appear and they were a big help. So…QRS QRPP DX anyone? [Absolutely outstanding mate! Jordan…

What have you started?! Ross, I think what you’re seeing on the receiver is some sort of allasing / driving into non-linearity causing intermodulation distortion from the strong signal. The KiwiSDRs do the same on marginally strong CW signals….

A broad band of stuff around the carrier, bounded by a stronger peak at each edge. Opportunity to get a 7023 movement going for the next International Pixie Day in the UK / Europe?

Jordan’s milliWatts on 80m were heard in Tasmania – over 500 km away, and Richard VK6PZT‘s 1 Watt on 40m was heard two weeks ago by Stan ZLSTK in New Zealand – over 5000KM away. Thanke mate! Blandy aitetandina 7

| just love getting articles like this for RagChew, and I know many of our readers lor forward to them too – thank you Ross.

So, if you’d like to have a go at writing something of interest for the newsletter, please let me know so we can share more thoughts and ideas; email to cqqrsnet@gmail.com

Brain teaser

Jules Perrin JP VK3JFP has created a terrific resource to help guide learning for all levels of amateur radio licenses: https://Awww.julesworkshop.net/Amateur%20Radio.html With thanks to Jules for the good learning website, here’s this week’s quiz questions from Jules’ Workshop example test questions:

Exam Questions:

What do transmission lines do? These are also referred to as feedlines or feeders. In fitting an amateur transceiver to a motor vehicle an important matter to consider is?

+ whether there is voltage available to power the transceiver * the placement of a laptop computer for logging purposes * potential interference to the engine management system * signal reflections from the wing mirrors On entry to a power supply the active lead of the mains should be connected to a * indicator lamp * filter capacitor * transformer * fuse Answers next week.

Answers from last week’s Quiz:

What is the final stage of a transmitter? Answer: The RF amp. The purpose of the capacitor in this filter circuit is to:

Pass the low frequency bypass the high frequencies attenuate the low frequencies amplify the high frequencies

In an SSB transmitter the balanced modulator suppresses ¢ both sidebands e the carrier and one sideband * one side band e the carrier Answer:the carrier. How did you go?

Di-dah-di-dah-dit

So back to the Slow CW QSO practice net.

Next Tuesday’s Net

Our CQ QRS Net will be on as always on Tuesday from around 0700Z until about 1300Z; see below 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. And don’t forget, Mike DL3YZ will also be calling CQ VK QRS on 20m at the times specified above.

Reports

Post Morsum

Richard VK6HRC will run our Post Morsum on the South West AllStar net (via repeaters and hotspots all over WA) from 0600 WA time. If you’re in WA, all you need is an FM 2m or 70CM transceiver and an AllStar node nearby.

If you’re elsewhere in the world, you may be able to connect your local AllStar-enabled repeater to the net, or you can connect via Echolink. Let me know (cqqrsnet@gmail.com) if I can help with that.

Teamwork

Thank you so much to our team of 32 contributors to this week’s newsletter: DL3YZ, LU7YS, MONNK, VK1HF, VK2DLF, VK2EBN, VK2GAS, VK2JCC, VK2TEV, VK3ACU, VKS3AE, VK3AFH, VK3DRQ, VK3JFP, VK3KEV, VK5ET, VK5FD, VK5KFG, VK5LA, VK6BEK, VK6HRC, VK6IS, VK6JDM, VK6KD/4, VK6KHZ, VK6PZT, VK6RR, VK6WE, VK7TA, VK7ZA, ZL2GD, ZL3TK – bloody outstanding work all!

GU CW on Tuesday, mb Mark Bosma VK2KI / VK6QI Beautiful South Bowning NSW mark.bosma@icloud.com non impediti 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

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