[OhQP-mail] Lack of CW Activity - or was it QRP or QLF?
Hank Greeb
n8xx at arrl.org
Wed Sep 1 09:37:37 EDT 2010
Hi Dave:
I worked you, or the other "N9FN-Dave" on 80 CW about 2300Z! Thanks for
the only MERCer county contact!
"Testing things out before hitting the road?" You gotta be kidding! :)
In earlier daze of my ham radio career, I'd put everything together,
including a 50' mast and wire beam, which I could erect myself, figure
out the settings on the transmatch, make sure there weren't any glitches
in the equipment, take along duplicates (or triplicates) of everything
possible, etc.
Now, I have a couple of "go boxes" and a list of other components, which
I throw in the automobubble, filler up with petrol, and trundle off.
This included a backup on everything except main rig. In the extreme,
if my trusty 1984-ish Drake TR-5 failed (which is has never done in its
25+ years of operation), I had an itty bitty QRP rig which operated on
40/30/20 metres, with which I could have made enough contacts to qualify
for a "new record" in QRP for HENRy county.
The J-38 was the backup for keying. It has never failed me in some 59
years of hamming. The second backup would have been a couple wires,
contacted together with my fingers to make "almost acceptable code".
I've used to emulate a key if I was just testing something and didn't
have the J-38 handy. :)
I forgot to say that I gave away my very simple but working keying
circuit, a couple years ago when I visited a friend and used his rig and
setup for another effort @ OQP. The circuit is so simple I never
figured it would give me a problem. two resistors and a transistor -
optional couple of diodes...... I've thrown this one together numerous
times and it always worked, unless I screwed up the (very simple wiring.)
So in the true spirit of an old bumble-brain geezers ham, I put the
keying circuit together in the motel in Napoleon on Friday night.
Testing could wait until Saturday morning! Switching to the J-38 wasn't
really traumatic - I know it works! :)
Anyway, I had fun! Was delighted with the venue @ McClure. The Village
park is exceptional operating as a portable station! The mayor was a
ham in the 60's or 70's (I forget which), with a novice license which he
didn't upgrade before it expired. The RF environment was great - no man
made noise on 80/40/20 metres, at least not enough to drown out the
normal atmospherics. If anyone has a hankering to activate HENRy county
again, contact the mayor, I'm sure you can get permission to do so.
73 de n8xx Hg
On 8/31/2010 9:36 PM, David Bunte wrote:
> <snip>
>
> Bummer about your computer not keying the rig... was it working
> properly when you tested things out before hitting the road?
>
> Did you make the trip without backup hardware?
>
> <snip>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.ohqp.org/pipermail/ohqp-mail_ohqp.org/attachments/20100901/4ea7ed62/attachment.html>
More information about the Ohqp-mail
mailing list