I’m Twitch-y!

Last night, I worked Luis, EA1TG, and this morning, he sent me a link to a video on Twitch that he made of our contact. (Click on the image to go to Twitch. For some reason, I couldn’t embed the Twitch video here.)

This is kind of cool. I’ve been thinking of setting up my own Twitch channel to stream my contacts. I’m not sure if anyone would actually watch them, but who knows?

Bye-bye X-6100

Last summer, I purchased a Xiegu X-6100 from Radioddity when they put it on sale. I had a lot of fun using it. In some ways, it’s  more fun to use than my Elecraft KX-3. I attribute that mainly to the brightly-colored waterfall display.

It’s just not the radio that the KX-3 is, however. For one thing, the KX-3’s antenna tuner is much better than the X-6100’s antenna tuner. The KX-3 tuner almost always achieves an SWR of 1.1:1 or less with my 66-ft. doublet antenna, while the Xiegu is satisfied once it hits 1.5:1. The color choices are also terrible, making it hard to read, especially in bright sunlight.

So, after making 36 contacts with it on my latest POTA activation, I sold the X-6100 last week. I hope that the new owner will have as much fun as did with it. And, find its shortcomings less annoying.

Bring on the toroids!

To replace the X-6100, I purchased a QRP Labs QMX kit. For less than $100, the QMX provides five band coverage (either 80m – 20m or 20m – 10m), CW and digital modes, an SDR receiver, a 24-bit 48 ksps USB sound card, CAT control, and synthesized VFO with TCXO reference. Since I’ll be using this for POTA, and propagation on the higher bands is headed in the right direction, I opted for the 20m – 10 version.

I also purchased the enclosure and power cord, so the price came to just short of $140, including shipping. Even so, that’s quite a deal, I think.

When I told my friends Rick and Paul about my purchase they jumped all over me about the toroids. One of them in particular has a trifilar winding and is supposed to be difficult to fabricate. I’m not a big fan of winding toroids, but I’m not scared of them either. Bring on the toroids!

In the meantime, I’ve been watching this video:

After watching it, it seems to me that the biggest thing to watch out for is how crowded everything is inside the radio. For example, there are several warnings about how close some of the components and traces are to one another. Forewarned is forearmed, though, so at least I’ll know what to look out for.

Stay tuned for reports on how I get along with the kit. Who knows? Maybe I’ll live-stream my toroid-building on my YouTube or Twitch channel.

The pastime of Learning Morse code has been on a huge upswing these last few months. Reddit posts have increased, LCWO usage is at an all-time high, and Google trends are showing an obvious bump in interest in “morse code” during the last 6 months. It seems that people have taken a liking to learning or getting better at Morse code. It might have to do with renewed interest in ham radio, COVID-19 stay-at-home impacts, or just people looking for something fun and interesting to do.

It’s definitely translated into quite a bit of on-air activity, but what I’m more impressed with are people across the Internet asking for advice learning the code.

I for one am glad to be a part of what seems to be a Modern Morse Code Renaissance.

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I’ve neglected to write about my progress on becoming proficient in Morse code, but thankfully that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped practicing. I’m too busy trying to get good to write about it!

Some background for new readers – Back at the start of the 2020 (before it turned into the worst year ever), I embarked on a journey to practice Morse daily. I streamed every session to Twitch.tv and YouTube (you can see some goofy highlights and bloopers here).

It’s been several weeks since then, and mostly thanks to the COVID-19 outbreak, I’ve been able to find the time to not only stay (somewhat) consistent with practice, but to also commit my Monday and Friday evenings to CW Academy. I’m in the basic class with Dave W8OV, who has been an excellent instructor, with a group of hams that are right there with me trying to improve our ability to translate Morse code in our head, without writing, instantly.

I have definitely seen a massive improvement in my proficiency. I’ve completed all of the letters, numbers, and symbols. But still, I learned last night that I still have a long way to go before I have a FB QSO at 20-25WPM, but I can hold my own at an effective WPM (a.k.a. Farnsworth speed) of around 10 WPM. Not bad. But a ways to go.

Now I just need to get on the air.

True Morse code proficiency comes from on-air practice, not from LCWO drills or even classes like CW Academy or Long Island CW Club. It comes from the grueling embarrassment of flubbing your first QSO and getting better with every QSO after that. Absolutely nobody will disagree with that (unless you’re one of those super-human High Speed CW wizards like Fabian DJ1YFK).

I wonder who is going to be the lucky ham on the end of my first real CW QSO? If you’re reading this, sorry in advance for my awful copy.

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