Our team (T2C in 2023 and P29RO in 2022 and other activities in the years before COVID) has decided to announce its next DXpedition. We will return to the pacific and travel to Nauru (C2) in October 2024. We are planning to operate with 5 stations, 24/7 from 160 to 6 m in CW, SSB, FT8 and RTTY.
News and updates available on the main web site.
On October 7, the first six team members will leave Germany and plan to arrive on Nauru on October 10, after an overnight stay in Brisbane, Australia. After their arrival there are still some things to organize, so limited operation (high bands only) will take place. Full operation with 5 stations 24/7 can be expected starting October 15 in the evening (local time, UTC +12). We will pay special attention to our sunrise and sunset for low band openings.
Help the team out by making a donation here.
QSL Cards - Let's Fix This
Having convinced myself that QSL cards are indeed an important detail in our daily amateur radio lives, the question becomes how can this practice be saved and restored? Assuming the cost of a printed QSL card purchased in bulk is around 30 cents each, and an optional envelope 20 cents, we’re looking at roughly 50 cents before postage. First-class postage these days costs 73 cents though post card stamps are 56 cents so there are a few options for savings.
But these numbers aren’t static. The rise in postal rates has been steady and frequent and there’s no reason to believe that might slow down. The current worst case situation for QSLs is sending a card, in an envelope, with an SASE inside. That comes to $2.16 per QSL at today’s rate. Send 500 of those a year and you’re out more than a thousand dollars, an expensive proposition for any of us.
That’s the main reason why “free” Logbook of the World confirmations seemed like such a good deal. And it is, if your interest is only collecting ARRL awards. But LoTW provides only a check mark on a big spreadsheet intended for ARRL awards. There’s no place for photos, personal notes, equipment, antenna or how much power was used, etc. And as we have seen this last summer, LoTW comes with the possibility of problems. We know now the original system, which is still in use today, was assembled with baling wire and duct tape twenty years ago and there is apparently nothing to replace it on the immediate horizon. It’s free, for now, but rumblings and rumors persist that ARRL will one day assign a fee to use it.
We need a completely new service, and it’s probably best if it’s not from ARRL, that permits storage and retrieval of QSL card images. These could be from a static image that could be edited to add pertinent QSO data along with comments, etc. Someone would log into the system, see that they have waiting QSLs that hadn’t been viewed, and have the option of downloading those images or simply viewing them online. It would be nearly the same as traditional QSLing, but without the postal burden - or the actual paper card.
Of course the ARRL (and others) won’t accept these confirmations for award credit, but who cares if you aren’t interested in ARRL credit? And if you are, you can continue to use LoTW too. No harm, no foul. A system like this would provide an option to inexpensively send a reasonable facsimile of an actual QSL card complete with photo, comments, and everything that makes a QSL card special.
While there are services now that allow these to be sent via email, I think it best that whatever comes next be a service where retrieval is optional and doesn’t come via unsolicited email. I simply want to log-in on occasion, and download whatever is available for me. I’d be willing to pay $20-$30 a year for such a service so I think there is a potential business opportunity here for someone, doesn’t matter where, to jump on and build something fresh and new.
Let’s fix this and resume the quaint, cozy practice of collecting QSL cards.
QSL Cards - Historical Markers
Thanks to those who replied with comments about part one of this series about QSL cards. The consensus seems to be that broadcast stations initiated the practice of sending post cards that hams eventually emulated. That’s a good enough explanation for me, though I prefer to believe it was more magical than that. What got me thinking about all this was coming across a lonely box in the attic that contained stacks of old QSL cards. These go all the way back for me…
I was licensed in 1977 near the end of my high school days. It took me a few months to assemble a Heath HW-16 and get it on the air. My Novice call was WD9GCT, an abomination for a CW operator. When I upgraded to General I asked the FCC to issue me a new call, anything would be better, and they handed me N9AVG out of the pool, a big improvement. I held that call for 25 years until a crazy notion about a shorter call sign that started with a “K” stirred and I picked up the vanity call KE9V which I’ve now held for more than 20 years.
The very first QSL card I ever received was from WB4AKY of Tampa, Florida confirming our 15 meter CW chat on August 4, 1977. This was during the summer I graduated high school and just before I was off to college. Several of the cards received during this period included “good luck in college” notes so I guess that transition loomed large enough in my head that I was pounding brass about it with random strangers. I have about a hundred cards from my Novice days and these are a historic treasure for me and indicate what would lie ahead.
After upgrading to General I began exploring the world of QRP and nearly all of the QSLs received during that period were for low-power contacts. Many more than I remembered were apparently of the two-watt variety. All small kits, a dozen or more of them prior to the Elecraft era.
Some of my favorites include one from W6ZH/QRP “Pete” Herbert Hoover, III. Pete was a prolific low-power enthusiast using his K2 (#0043) who also happened to be the grandson of President Herbert Hoover. Another from the father of the modern QRP movement, Ade Weiss, W0RSP/QRP who was running a home-brew concoction when I snagged him. Another from Ken, N2CQ a legend. My first QSL card for a 2x2 QRP contact with AL7FS in Alaska and KH6B in Hawaii remain special to me too.
Then there was this improvised, but priceless “card” from K7MOS in Billings, Montana (back). Charles was 70 at the time and had been using CW since 1953 - 49 years of CW only for this gentleman!
Another somewhat less traditional, letter and card confirmation came from my friend Carter Craigie, N3AO who only recently became a Silent Key. Back in 2002 he was on the Appalachian Trail when his few watts of RF tickled my galena.
There are so many others, all treasures that persuade me that QSL cards are much more than just confirmation of a contact, they’re historical markers in the slipstream of our radio lives. Electronic confirmations, like LoTW and others, are about as boring as watching paint dry. It’s only become preferable due to ever increasing postage costs that has made traditional QSLing unaffordable.
This needs to be remedied…
QSL Cards - In the Beginning
Just a few years after CW displaced King ‘spark’ as the radio amateur’s mode of choice, Mac Anderson began to build his first radio station. Having just turned 15 years of age money was tight and it wasn’t easy collecting the parts required for such an endeavor, but he finally did it. After an agonizing period of study and assembly, his station in the barn attic was ready for testing. He clamped the old cans on his head, powered the thing to life, and began tuning around. To his amazement he heard other stations in QSO. Eureka! A few days later came time to test the transmitter. With a shaky hand he called CQ and signed with his call sign. No one was more surprised then he when suddenly, his own call sign was coming back to him through his makeshift headset. He let out such a yell that his mother nearly had a heart attack and ran to the barn to see what had happened.
The other station was located in White Bear Lake, Minnesota and the operator’s name was Fred. They chatted for a brief moment until Mac’s Mom burst into the chilly radio shack and demanded to know the reason for the yelling. He tried to explain to her that he was communicating, wirelessly, with another radio experimenter nearly 600 miles away. She didn’t believe him. He took the headphones off his own head and put one of them to her ear as he tapped out a quick message and sure enough, Fred came right back. She didn’t look impressed, she looked annoyed and demanded he shut things down for the night and come into the house.
They discussed the incident over dinner as he tried, to no avail, no explain what had happened and how amazing this truly was. She was adamant that all she heard were ‘beeps’ in the headset, certainly nothing that could be understood by humans. Basically, she told him he was spending too much time in the barn in a way that let him know she thought he might be crazy. Sleep didn’t come easy that night as he agonized over how he could prove to his Mom that he really did communicate with someone in another state, via wireless that he had built with his own two hands.
His outlook changed over night as he dreamed up the solution to this situation. He got a postcard and wrote all of the details of his QSO with Fred on the card. He explained his station as best he could in the limited space. And he asked Fred if he wouldn’t do something similar and return the card to him by post.
A few days later, the card arrived and Mac ran with it to his Mom to show her. Upon seeing it, she nearly fainted. There it was, in black and white, and with a Minnesota postmark no less, proof that her boy was a wireless operator.
That’s the story of how QSL cards entered the world of radio. Except that it isn’t. I made the whole thing up. I don’t know how or why the tradition of trading QSL cards became a “thing” in amateur radio, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t happen something like that. Young folks, flushed with excitement from their radio conquests, running into those who didn’t know Morse code and didn’t believe what they were being told, it was all simply too amazing.
The QSL card became “proof” that a distant contact had indeed been made. The timeline for my fiction pre-dates any sort of awards or competition requiring a QSL card so why did hams take this up prior to DXCC, etc.? I believe that in the beginning these were just for fun and to prove to the doubters they weren’t just talking to themselves and concocting stories about their wireless set. I’m also willing to bet that over time these cards became more artistic as a means to coax others to return the favor. Speculation on my part, but it makes some sense.
Have a better story about how this unusual practice began? Drop me a note as we continue to discuss QSLing this week.
Rainy Day People
It’s been raining all morning, nice and gentle, so far. Made sleeping-in an extra hour too easy. The parched lawn is soaking every bit of it up right now. I’ve got a couple of windows open here in the shack and the sound of falling rain is better than music to my ears. While writing this I received a text message from my son who is taking one his daughters to school this morning that said, “People who cut in school drop off line deserve the death penalty” so I have an idea how his morning is going and I’m grateful to be home, near the coffee pot, with no particular place to go.
When I received shipping confirmation for the new Elecraft K4 a few days ago I started reconfiguring the shack as it will arrive on Monday. The first thing was to remove all the big iron to make way for the new equipment. While waiting, I’ve put the KX3 into service and have powered it these last few days with a battery. I logged more than thirty POTA activators using QRP CW this week. I’m up to 745 unique parks worked on my way to a thousand which is where I’ll stop POTA hunting.
Sprat 200 arrived in the Heartland mail yesterday, another good edition that will give me a few weeks of enjoyment as I like to do a quick scan on the first pass, then really hone in on several subsequent passes. I’ve ordered the latest and greatest Sprat on a stick from HQ in England. I buy one of these every three or four years as a “backup” for the printed versions. It’s not likely I’ll lose a Sprat magazine as these are highly valued around here, but you never know…
I ordered a 20 meter version of the Old Friend transceiver kit yesterday too. The first production run sold out in less than 24 hours, but now I’m on the list to get one, whenever it is again available. Funny note, support for that transceiver comes via the chat with the designers groups list where one fellow chimed in that the use of OF (Old Friend) might have been a poor choice as “OF” means something different and spam filters might snag these emails. I believe he will eventually come round to see the humor in it. Maybe. :-)
Fog of Incompetence
All of hamdom has by now seen the video (16:10) where one ARRL Director revealed a few additional details surrounding the cyber attack on the ARRL. The lack of competence at the IT level is shocking, the lack of management oversight even more so. I wrote a scathing post blaspheming the organization in a way that made my breath smell of brimstone then deleted it. Opinions don’t matter. ARRL is a product of the 20th century whose best days were 75 years ago.
Sadly, it never made the transition into the 21st century and never will.
The way this one Director opened up is curious and not typical behavior. We are much more used to obfuscation and stonewalling from Newington in the face of bad news. It makes me a little suspicious that this might be some sort of preemptive public relations move? Historically, a Director who speaks out like this ends up afoul of some obscure “ethics” rule and is quickly excommunicated.
We will see…
All this has taken my interest and subsequent focus off ARRL awards, including DXCC, and LoTW. I’m a Life Member so there won’t be any dramatic door slamming exit for me. With profuse apologies to The Old Man, I just don’t care anymore about the ARRL or the thick fog of incompetence that has settled over the entire organization. Life is too short.
The Old Friend
A message popped up on the QRP-L mailing list yesterday from Dave Benson, K1SWL with news of a new offering from the former Small Wonder Labs alchemist. I’ve been wondering what Dave might be up to these days and it seems he’s been keeping the cobwebs at bay with another new transceiver kit along with George Heron, N2APB:
The OLD FRIEND Transceiver™ is a single-board, 6 Watt Direct-Conversion Transceiver specifically designed by Dave Benson, K1SWL for CW operation . The OLD FRIEND is capable of transmitting and receiving on the 80m, 40m, 30m, or 20m bands.
This project pays homage to our early days in QRP. For home brewers, a functioning D-C rig was a real accomplishment in those days. The Old Friend (“OF”) incorporates newer technology in the form of digitally-controlled tuning and an LCD readout and includes both Iambic Keyer and Straight Key functionality. The OF further features good audio quality by virtue of its ‘relaxed’ approach to audio filtering.
Dave said of it, “My last kit project after a long hiatus. There are always other projects here, but for my own enjoyment…” I don’t know if he meant this is his ‘last’ and final kit design or just his ‘latest’ kit project, but I’ve little doubt this will be yet another winner in a long line of K1SWL designs.
All the details here. The first run is sold out but another is on the way. An optional enclosure will soon be available. $63. How can you go wrong?
Seasons Change
I remember not long after my Dad turned 80 he decided it was time for a new roof on his house and I recall him saying that given the 20-25 year expected service life, it would be the last roof he would ever have to deal with. That kinda stuck with me as I had never considered life in such finite numbers. When I was 30 it seemed Christmas just came every year and there would always be another Christmas. Now at 65 I think if I live to 75 there are only ten more.
That kind of thinking can be a sobering slap in the face so I try not to dwell on it too long, but I reached a similar inflection point last week when I decided to order a new Elecraft K4 and I expect it to be the “last” major amateur radio transceiver I ever purchase. That seems a little surreal considering this has been a lifelong hobby for me. I was licensed in 1977 while still in high school and nearly fifty years later I remain on the same course, there’s simply a lot more of it behind me than whatever remains.
Seasons change and I’m not just talking about the recent transition from summer to autumn, though that is always an exciting development! But the seasons of our lives change too and I’ve reached a point in my life where I want to downsize and simplify all aspects of it, including my hobby, while continuing to enjoy and appreciate it.
So I ordered the K4 on Saturday morning and received notice it had shipped on Monday afternoon. UPS will tote it and a few accessories around the country for a week before it crosses the transom here. I chose the K4 for this honor because, deep down, I’ve been an Elecraft fan since their beginning and the K4 seems an excellent transceiver as it has successfully survived infant mortality and the early bugs of brand new gear, yet looks to have at least another ten years of runway for additional development and continuous improvement.
Now begins a new adventure of learning and exploration and I find that exciting.
It also means it’s time to bid adieu to a lot of equipment and I don’t think that will be as much fun. I have the IC-7610, the IC-9700, the TX-500, the TR-45L to name just a few of the transceivers. And yes, I’m even planning to unload the IC-705. Oh, and I can’t forget the brand new and never used KM3KM Mercury IIIs amplifier and matching high-power auto-tuner. The TH-D72 and TH-D75 handheld transceivers. The never opened LEO-pack antennas with G-5500 azimuth and elevation rotors. And all the accessories. It’s a big cache of stuff to unload and I’ll start down that road soon enough.
Hopefully, in less than a year, the dust will have settled and my final station build will be complete, save for the occasional shiny radio toy because, what’s life without a little whimsy?
Requiem for a Ragchew
Based on the listed bios of most radio amateurs, chewing the rag is a favorite pastime. Or at least the desire for a good “rag-chew” session is a consistent hope. It’s nearly impossible to pin down exactly what that means as the actual definition is pretty fuzzy. I’ve listened to both ends of a CW QSO that included the exchange of names, signal reports, locations, equipment and antennas, followed by profuse 73s that was later referred to as “a great rag chew”. Perhaps that was based on QSO duration given that some CW QSOs with precious little information exchanged can take upwards of thirty minutes or more?
When I think about a good rag-chew session it’s almost always a phone contact where I sit down at the radio without a specific purpose. I’m not chasing anything. A casual CQ sometimes results in a contact with someone who is an interesting conversation partner. No DX, no contest, no nets, no special events, just casual chatter.
I’ve often recounted the best conversation I ever had was a long 20 meter chat with a retired NASA engineer who was living alone with his parrot on a fifty-acre “ranchette”, as he called it, somewhere far from civilization in New Mexico. I could have gone on for hours with this old timer, our QSO eventually ended only due to the band fading into the night. I looked for that guy many times after but never worked him again.
There are simply some who are better at conversation than others. Any ham can bore you into a coma with the excruciating minutia of their station equipment and antennas. Yet others can spin those details in a manner that is actually interesting. We should never take for granted the elusive art of conversation as a skill worth honing. Some hams spend years, decades even, practicing CW, yet mastery of that skill doesn’t equate to popularity at a cocktail party. A little work mastering the art and skill of good conversation could go a long way towards making ham radio a lot more interesting for everyone.
Consider it a recruiting tool.
No one cares about your politics, even if they are part of your tribe and agree with you about everything, it still doesn’t make for a good rag chew. On the other hand, I always enjoy hearing theories about the JFK assassination, Bigfoot, UFO’s you’ve seen, and assorted tales of the paranormal. Who would ever get bored listening to a good ghost story? I like to learn about different places and would be interested in hearing something unique about your home town. Or the story of how you built your own house or rebuilt that ‘59 Chevy. What was the last movie you saw at the theatre? Last concert you attended? What pipe tobacco do you prefer?
The list goes on, but do make a list!
Ham radio QSOs don’t HAVE to be all about ham radio. I want to live in a world where hanging out in my ham shack and chatting late into the night is more interesting than watching yet another NCIS re-run on the boob tube.
Elecraft Adventures
Having the KX3 out and in operation for a few days this week was a bad idea. Using it always reminds me of how good it is and how it could so easily anchor my ham shack. And it’s not even the best Elecraft radio I own. That title belongs to my old Elecraft K2, number 524 that I built and put into service in 1999. Yeah, it’s the finest receiver I own and I don’t mean to offend you and your new Yaesu, but I’ve found nothing that can carry its jock strap.
Let me qualify that a bit, it’s super power is as a simple CW transceiver.
It doesn’t have two-hundred knobs and buttons and a hundred selection deep menu system. The K2 doesn’t have multiple ways of connecting to a computer, and it doesn’t have a built-in sound card. Mine is the original 15 watt version. It no longer appears regularly in all the major contest stations and DXpeditions.
But for the CW purist without need of a million creature features, it contains the sweetest receiver this side of heaven. My family have strict instructions that I am to be buried with my K2 just in case heaven doesn’t yet have anything that sweet.
It doesn’t occupy the central position in my shack because of the desire for BRE (big rig energy), vanity, and knee-deep levels of marketing bullshit from various vendors compounded with amplified nonsense from Sherwood and as my buddy calls them, “these young guys with beards who look like they drink only craft beers with ham radio YouTube channels…”
I bring this up because using the KX3 created crazy notions of ordering a K4 and continuing the Elecraft tradition spinning in my head. I have owned and built everything they offered right up to the K3 and I’ve tried to own a few more, but grew weary waiting for them to deliver. Now I see they have the shipping time for the K4 down to around a week. I could order one today and be on the air sometime late next week. A recent announcement from Eric says prices are going up in October so no pressure, but a quick decision could save me some money.
That same announcement also said, “KX2 and KH1 wait times have also rapidly decreased and we hope to be shipping them within 1-10 business days after order in several weeks” which should make long-suffering fans happy.
If I buy anything new it will replace my IC-7610. That transceiver has performed well, but is getting a little long in the tooth especially now that ICOM has released an upgraded version of it making ‘right now’ the peak re-sale value season for the 7610. If I order anything I will be forced to unload at least $10k worth of other equipment or build onto the house. Unused gear is stacking up so high around here it will take a year or more to sell, box, and ship it all.
Is that a possibility? Maybe. A definite maybe.