What CW recipe do you want to learn....part one?

 

 Yes, you read it correctly......within the world of CW there are recipes that one finds they are following but before you follow a recipe you have to learn the ingredients for that recipe. The CW recipes that I am aware of are POTA including the other variations, conversational CW, DXpedition hunting and contesting. Most who want to learn CW do so with a particular interest in mind. Every recipe involves ingredients and each of the above CW recipes involves certain recipe ingredients that one needs to learn and get better and better at. So in part 1 let's begin with the one I am most familiar with....contesting. This was the main reason I wanted to learn CW. 

If you are interested in contesting then what are the ingredients for CW contesting.... Letters, numbers, speed and accuracy. How serious you want to get will determine such areas as speed but letters, numbers and accuracy will always be a mainstay in the recipe. Once you have the letters and numbers down you are then good to go for call sign and number string practice. There are many call sign and number practice programs on the internet. There is LWCO, Morse Code World, Morse Code Ninja and then there are programs as well such as Morse Runner, G4FON contest and RUFZxp contest programs to name a few. Best of all there is the real deal and that is getting on the air and operating contests. Start out doing search and pouncing call signs in a contest. Avoid call sign spotting programs as these do not exercise recall, retention and eventually instant recognition. As you continue to practice you will find with some letters and numbers that instant recognition is happening.

 There is a rhythm to CW contesting and you will find like all of us you will get used to the rhythm.....how do I know this you ask? Well in a contest when a station goes off script you can get lost. For example, you get asked to QSY to 14.023 or PSE UR CALL AGN not to worry as I have read even the seasoned contesters get thrown off now and then. In contesting you will only have to instantly recognize a few phrases. Such as NR?, TU, and AGN? (sometimes with or without "?") and that is about it. 

There are some things if you choose you don't have to worry about in contesting. Because contesting programs such as N1MM+ do everything for you. Sending manual code is optional as macros within N1MM+ look after everything. You won't have to worry about recognizing common QSO words and phrases. 

So what will contesting do for you......your code accuracy will improve, your speed will improve and instant recognition will happen. Also when you dip your toes in the big boy pool and call "CQ TEST" you will have the joy of multiple stations coming back to you. The brain is an amazing thing and I can attest to the fact that when you practice (using the above-named contest programs) multiple stations come back to you in time your brain will pull out one station. You may or may not get the complete call but you will have something to go back to them with. 

In closing the recipe of CW contesting can include as many ingredients as you like. As you master one you can add another and so on. Not all like contesting and that is why in CW there are other recipes one can follow. Next time we are going to look at the CW conversational recipe. As a side note to have access to the G4FON program you need to join the Long Island CW club or LICW. I am a member and its an amazing group. Check out the link and see what they are all about.

Stepping thing up a notch.

 

Very small Hard Drive

I do a lot of things on my desktop PC and for that reason, I try to keep it at a reasonable speed and try to have decent quality hardware in it. My annual clean the PC day was coming and I was thinking of upgrading my solid-state hard drive in the PC. I decided on an M.2 SSD I have a few slots in my MSI motherboard for this type of drive. The drive I decided on was the Western Digital Black SN770 1TB and when it did come in I was shocked at how small the drive was. I gave my motherboard manual a good read-over while the drive was on its way from Amazon. I am glad I did as it indicated that when I installed the M.2 drive and it came online my hard drive SATA 2 port would stop functioning. It was good I read that as my operating system, C drive is connected to that port. I have 6 SATA drive ports so it was a matter of swapping it to another port. But that could have given me a big headache for sure. 

M.2 drive as Unallocated.

After doing a cleaning to the inside of the PC it was time to install the M.2 card and move one hard drive from the SATA 2 position to an unused one. The M.2 drive was very easy to install and as it turned out the hard stuff was yet to come.
Once the PC was all back together I hit the power button and hoped for the best....well the PC started and Win10 loaded without issue as I expected. At this point, it was just another drive added to the PC but I did swap out the SATA position for the C drive but all was good. I then looked at the drive status for all the drives in my PC and the new drive was there but was shown as unallocated but that is not a big deal as it is a simple right mouse click and select "new simple volume". I did that and I was good to go and it was now called Drive G. 

M.2 SSD as Drive G

Now the fun begins I want my M.2 SSD known as Drive G to have an up-to-date clone copy of my present Drive C which is my boot drive. Then I want my M.2 Drive G to be designated as Drive C my boot drive and then my old Drive C (to soon become the new Drive G) my new drive to hold clone copies of my new Boot drive.....are you still following the hard drive bouncing ball..... I like having a clone of my hard drive this way if anything happens to the main drive if a Windows update screws things up or if a malicious program gives my hard drive issues. I simply go into the Motherboard BIOS and tell the PC to boot from the drive that has the latest clone of my boot drive and I am good to go. I have done this twice when the Windows update messed some things up. This is one of the main reasons before I download a Microsoft update I do a fresh clone of the C drive just in case. 

I used Macrium Reflect (free version) to clone my new M.2 SSD with a copy of my Boot drive C. I then restarted my PC and went into the BIOS and to the Boot menu. I wanted to do a test boot from the newly cloned Drive G to make sure it worked. I tested it and all went well so then I used Disk Genious (free version) to swap around my Drive C and Drive G with each other. I then crossed my fingers and restarted the PC to see what happened. All was good but I wanted to double-check as computers can do funny things. I wanted to be sure that it was booting from my new M.2 drive (new Drive C) and not somehow from the old Seagate SSD drive. So it was back to the BIOS to view the boot drive menu again. It confirmed that my Boot drive was the Western Digital SN770 drive. 

New M2 SSD now cloned

I did make all this sound easy and that it went without a hitch but there were "what the"moments, "are you kidding me" situations and "I better sleep on this one" times but in the end, all worked out.

Below is the speed comparison from old Drive to new M.2 drive 

Old SSD what is now my clone storage drive

New M.2 WD Black drive New boot drive

 

Whats going on with Morse code?

   It would seem from the blog reading I have been doing that CW seems to be on the rise within our ranks. I am not sure what it has to do with but Parks on the air, summits on the air and so on are getting popular these days and maybe folks are realizing you may get more bang for your buck with CW. If you have read my blog for any amount of time you know that I am "into" CW. Way back CW was a must if you wanted your ham licence to get onto HF. At that time I forced myself to learn CW to get my licence and that was it. I hit the needed 12 wpm for advanced and then put CW on the sidelines. 

I moved into a townhome and had to operate stealthily as the HOA cops were always out and about and antennas were a BIG no no. I set up an antenna in the attic the Alpha Delta DX-EE and it worked great. I was operating SSB in the Canada Day contest and having a blast. Later that day my next-door neighbour said she could hear "CQ contest" from her speakers!!! If I wanted my love for ham radio to continue I had to change things up. I had to drop the power and in doing so SSB was going to be tough for contesting. It was then I decided to take up CW again and go QRP with it. 

This meant basically relearning the code, I did it before but this time it was for keeps! Below is my journey with the code and some of the pitfalls and joys. I found the second time around learning the code was not like the first. This time I wanted to learn it and not have to and that made a big difference. 

Certain letters came easy such as M, O, T, E, C, Q and then there was J, H, B, S, F, L. As I started out I thought my frustration would subside as I learn more of the code. It did but I found it reared its ugly head for various reasons. Frustration comes with most learning and is not specific to CW. Learning a language, playing an instrument, or driving a car they all come with frustration but we press on. When learning anything one must understand that you may not become a pro. You may not be Peter Frampton, Mario Andretti or top-end CW ops. We may not be wired that way but we have to be thrilled with where our ability, hard work, work and family constraints fit us onto the scale of skills. 

What is the best way to learn the code....well it's personal and the short answer is we have to ferrite out the method that works for us. Understand this can be one of the most frustrating parts and if you are not committed to learning the code this could be your excuse to give up. Through trial and error find the way that greases your wheels to learn the code. I tried code-learning CDs in the car at home and so on that was a flop for me. Getting on my laptop for short sessions and having the program throw letters at me and I had to type in the correct letter did it. 

Things you will run into while on the journey: 

- Moving 3 steps forward and sometimes 4 steps backwards. Get ready for it will happen and understand it will pass. 

- You feel there are certain characters you will never get. Hold on and I guarantee you will get them some just take longer than others. I see parents who are all concerned that their little one is not walking at the same age as everyone else. I tell them to look around and see how many adults are not walking but crawling ...some take longer than others but we all will get there. 

- Counting the dits and dahs, I found this more so with the numbers learning. Understand it will happen and later I will tell you what I did to break this habit.

- So you know all the letters and numbers but why then all of a sudden are you have issues with certain letters or numbers that you had mastered? Understand this is part of learning and will happen. Remember 3 steps forward and 4 steps back. As you increase your speed this for sure will happen. 

- As you begin to listen to words or QSOs's your going to hear a letter and not get what it is. You then will stop to think about it and then get behind in your coping and frustration. This happens to all of us you have to learn what they said in the movie The Goodfellas "forgetaboutit", It's time to train your brain to skip over it and move on.
- As your speed increases you will have a tendency to assume the next letter and when it's not that letter you will be thrown off. Guessing the next letter is normal and you are going to have to ignore it and wait and see. This is very true with copying call signs. For me, it was I hear V and I think VE and it's VK. I hear D and I think DL and it's DF. Guessing ahead with CW will get you further behind. Let me be clear thinking ahead is not the same as listening ahead. 

Ok, enough of that for now let me go back to counting the dits and dahs and how I overcame that. I increased the sending speed to a point where it was impossible to count any part of any letter or number. This trained me to listen to the complete sound of the letter or number. With this over time came instant character recognition. We all know CQ in Morse and most of us don't hear individual C and Q but we know the sound of it and know it's CQ. 

For me, morse code is an adventure and my understanding is to get to your happy place with it in regards to speed and understanding. Why are you learning the code POTA, SOTA, Contesting or general QSO's or a combination of them? Depending on what you will be doing with the code will determine your learning path. For example, I love contesting. So accuracy, speed, letter and number recognition and being able to keyboard without looking at the keyboard. Other Morse code adventures require word recognition, sending code via a key and adjusting to weather and operating.
Enjoy the journey, have fun and keep expanding on the art of Ham radio.

 

NanoVNA and checking a common mode choke

 

Last week a new toy arrived a Nanovna and I have been playing around with it and learning the ins and outs of the unit. This unit allows me to check antenna SWR, attenuation and coax switch isolation to name a few things. I am not going to get into the details of the Nanovna as there is lots of information for those interested available on the internet. My first project was to check the attenuation on one of the common mode chokes I made. It was made from RG316 coax, FT 240-31 mix toroid and had 10 turns on it. I never put this common mode choke through any testing as I did not have anything to test it. I was going by some charts, the type of toroid mix and the number of turns needed for 40m to 10m. 

Now that I had a Nanovna I could perform an attenuation test on the common mode choke I was using and see some actual numbers. I have been reading and -30dB or more across 40m-10m is great for a common mode choke. I calibrated the Nanovna and performed an attenuation test and to my surprise, the common mode choke I made failed! The common mode choke I made was above -30dB from 40m to 10m. It was not time to fix the problem and bring my readings below -30dB. 

The red line is the results

 

I tried reducing the windings around the core increasing them and doing a Nanovna sweep each time to see the results. My final result was 14 windings and that gave me the ideal results. The Nanovna indicated -35dB on a full band sweep (6.5MHz to 30MHz) on individual band sweeps the readings were 10m -44dB, 15m -34.5dB, 20m -35dB and 40m -35dB. I am much more pleased with these readings. 

Full band sweep

The software to display the readings is called Nanovna saver, it's free and works great. I am very pleased with the results from the Nanovna and I was able to check and fix my common mode choke. I will now move on to the next project and that is the isolation between antenna 1 and 2 on my LDG AT200pro2 but more on that in another post.