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Thought you might enjoy a link on Straight Key Night (SKN) operations. The videos demonstrate a variety of vintage radios and keys. Note the general speed of the contacts… The operator must form each dit and dah by closing a manual key contact. This requires better dexterity and control than that needed for an electronic keyer.
CAUTION: those early key contacts had over 300 VDC on them (keyed cathode operation). And the real early vintage equipment was often built on a wooden frame (and quite exposed).
Some of the setups also show “rock bound” (crystal controlled) setups using FT243 crystals. These could often be obtained as Military Surplus ( slightly below the bands) and then the crystal could be ground with an abrasive to move the frequency higher and into the CW band. The quartz crystal required care during the grinding process as they can be rather fragile. I saw a video on youtube for those interested in the crystals history.
ARRL Straight Key Night – another side of CW operations
Straight Key Night 2013 Fun with Simple Gear – WU2D
– Mike gave the club an excellent presentation at the April 2015 club meeting.
Quartz Crystal Documentary – Crystals go to war
FT243 – crystal grinding video
Fabrication d’un tube Triode – Bonus video
– (hint: it’s a hollow state transistor with a filament) 😉
Enjoy
I thought I would share some Morse Code links with some others exploring the CW -questions forum who want to explore the process further. I have added a couple of “fun” links as well.1) “ how it works: Morse Code (720p) ” – early ARMY training tape– some good details2) “ technique of hand sending “ – 1944 NAVY training film– using a straight key, explanation of timing for good sending.– good background information4) “ abbreviations used in cw communications “ – by Ray Anderson– discussion of the many abbreviations that are often used for CW mode5) “ five tips for learning morse code “– thoughts on good and bad learning techniques.6) “ DA operating W6CF ” – enjoy7) “ the rythem of the code ” – morse code set to music– fun introduction for the younger crowdNOTE: There are lots of other CW training sites out there – but this should help wet the appetite of those interested in exploring this medium. Members that discover other helpful sites are encouraged to share there links with the forum.If you don’t get a reply soon, I can see if my copy on my computer is a good plug or not. I reworked my computer recently, and I haven’t put my programming SW back on yet. Will look later tonight after work.
The method used to learn CW is intended to help you avoid the old mental speed limits that almost everyone encountered. The original Novice and Technician licenses required 5 wpm CW, the General and Advanced License required 13 wpm CW and the Extra class required 20 wpm CW. Natural “learning speed” limits were encountered at about 1 or 2 wpm below each speed required for a higher license. These “plateaus” were a serious problem that the CW operator had to deal with. The learning process can be thought of as learning a “fresh” set of characters at each new operating speed.
Many learning methods evolved to try to improve learning CW and improving newcomers skills. By learning characters at higher speeds with larger spacing between characters should make it easier to learn the unique rhythm or sound of the characters at higher speeds. Slowing the character rhythm down should help avoid the traditional learning problems with starting to learn at 5 wpm and having to grow from there.
Characters are combined to form words and you will eventually recognize the words without hearing or focusing on the indvidual letters that make up the word. Again, it’s all about learning to hear the rhythms – so I would encourage you to turn your keyer speed control down when engaged in a lower CW contact or if you receive a QRS request. There is somewhat of a “balance” where the method you suggest would work – perhaps at average speeds of 16 – 18 wpm or higher… but for now, I would strongly suggest you turn the keyer speed knob down.
A good CW operator will always accommodate the operator on the other end! If they send very slowly – you should try to send in a similar manner – don’t need an exact match… but caution if your speed makes it easy for you, but hard for them.
Exchanges can be difficult sometimes given the “texting” style shortcuts that are taken during a QSO. Example: “R R tnx fer the call es wx hr is vry cold. QRM and QRN makes cpy difficult.” Can be a challenge sometimes – number 1 rule – have fun.
Hope this helps – but don’t be afraid to experiment some as well. Lets see what other opinions are out there.
Hi Mike,
I kludged together a radio on the fly (station taken apart due to shack space building). I monitored the net, but could barely hear you relative to the static to know the how or when to check in. I was able to hear one other station.
Currently hooked up to my vertical. Inverted-L is out of commission for a bit, while I redo the station setup. So, I didn’t have another ant to try out.
Will try again next time.
The IC-7300 has an option to export the 12 KHz IF signal. That IF signal can appear on the USB sound card audio or on the ACCessory audio. But the manual does not define how that 12 KHz IF works.
The Gnu Octave program has the ability to plot graphs of data and to read data from the sound card, so maybe it can show what’s going on on the IF.
After some work with Octave…
- The USB sound card supports two channels and they appear to have identical contents…but need more work on that
- The IF is centered on 12 KHz
- USB signals are above 12 KHz
- LSB signals are below 12 KHz
- AM and FM span across the 12 KHz center freq
- The IF filtering has already been applied
I was sort of hoping that the IF had a wider bandwidth but it does not.
Jeff,
I just looked at the instruction manual for the IC-7300 and it seems to confirm your observations. To be clear, I do not own a IC-7300.
I also don’t see anyway to get to a wide bandwidth IQ data stream. If someone who actual owns one finds otherwise, I would like to know about it.
73,
Bill
NJ1HI’ll kick this off with a comment and question about using the IC-7300 with WSJT-X.
The IC-7300 doesn’t work smoothly with WSJT-X and maybe someone know how to make it better.
- How to set the digital mode bandwidth to 3 KHz or more.
- How switch the Tx audio source from internal USB sound card to Microphone more quickly
The IC-7300 has a data mode, but it is not compatible with WSJT-X because it only support a maximum of 1200 Hz of bandwidth. WSJT-X needs 2700 Hz for JT-65A and about 4 KHz to include the JT-9 modes. That means the radio has to use the regular SSB modes with the filter set to 3 KHz when running with WSJT-X.
The IC-7300 has a menu to select the source of TX audio for “data” mode or for “data off” mode. But, since the data mode doesn’t work with WSJT-X, the user has to switch between taking TX audio from the internal USB sound card and the microphone.
Can anyone think of a way to improve this operation?