They must have liked it and told their buddies. About a half hour later, another group showed up. Fortunately, I was already in another QSO (with W3BEE), and he was gracious enough to talk to everyone in the second group.

W3BEE is a very interesting guy. As his vanity call implies, he’s a beekeeper as well as a ham. I’ve often thought about trying beekeeping—especially because of the bee crisis. He encouraged me to look into it further, noting that now is the time to start preparing for next year.

We have made Feld Hell, SSTV, RTTY, PSK and Olivia contacts. We use HRD/DM780 and it works well.  Although we use DM780 and I have no complaints I would like to try other software. ROS sounds cool too but is not legal in the USA due to it using spread spectrum.

Unfortunately the tower and beam are not up yet. It was going to be installed in May and here it is July and we are still waiting. So we are still using our inverted V dipoles at about 30 feet. 

If you are in the area or just want to visit email me Jim k8elr or Dan kb6nu and we would be glad to give you a demo and let you operate the station.

Later and 73!

Jim K8ELR

What was notable about this class is that we had two of our youngest students ever—two brothers, aged ten and twelve. Normally, kids don’t do well in the one-day format, and I mentioned this to their mother. She turned to the kids, who quickly told her that they were sure they could pass.

As we got into the material, it was evident that they had been studying. They had a little trouble doing the math—at one point one of them exclaimed, “We haven’t had fractions yet!” I slowed down a bit, though, and I think they got the idea.

They did have the other material down, though. As we covered the other sections, they were quick to answer the questions.

I was very impressed that the kids were able to stick with us through the whole six-hour session. They did get distracted from time to time, but I tried to keep them involved by asking them questions and speaking directly to them. In the end, it paid off. They both passed the test!

While we were waiting for their tests to be scored, I spoke briefly with the parents. As it turns out, it was their mother who encouraged their interest in amateur radio. As a girl, she’d built a crystal set and learned Morse Code. Now, I’ve got to get her into my next class.

I got to the museum around 10 am, and the contest didn’t start until noon, so I fiddled around a bit, trying to figure out how the bands were. I made three contacts on 40m and a couple of contacts on 20m, so it looked like band conditions were going to cooperate.

When noon hit, I was off and running. Switching back and forth between 40m and 20m, I made a total of 90 contacts in the next two hours, including three DX contacts. Not stellar, but not bad, either.

Having my WinKeyer certainly helped. As I’ve mentioned, the Omni VII doesn’t have a built-in memory keyer, meaning that in previous contests, I had to bang out the CQs myself. The WinKeyer improved the process immensely.

On Sunday, Jim, K8ELR, opened the station up around 12:30. I joined him about 2:15.

Unfortunately, the band conditions weren’t so good on Sunday. We managed to eke out only one CW contact on Sunday.

Coming Up
Next Saturday, April 24, we’ll be conducting another One-Day Tech Class. There’s still room, so if you know someone that would like to attend, have them e-mail me at cwgeek@kb6nu.com.

The first was with Fred, KI4XH. Fred was operating his Collins S-Line gear, and keying it with a bug. About halfway through the QSO, he switched over to a VibroKeyer single-lever paddle, keying a Hallicrafters HA-1 keyer.

The HA-1, or T.O. Keyer, was a commercialization of the vaccum-tube keyer designed by W9TO. in the 1950s. It occurred to me that maybe building one of these things is something that I could do with al the tubes that I have. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find the schematic on the Net.
There is an an article in the May 1959 issue of QST by W9TO, but this is for the first transistor keyer. If any of you have a schematic and can scan it for me, or can point me to where I can find it, I would appreciate it.

Titanic Duo
After making a couple of CW contacts, I thought I’d try making a phone contact. Tuning to 7220 kHz, I found our favorite frequency occupied by W0S, a special event station commemorating the sinking of the Titanic. W0S was operating from the Titanic Museum in Branson, MO. According to their website, “This event will commemorate the heroic efforts of Harold McBride and John ‘Jack’ Phillips as they sat at the Marconi radio in the Titanic sending the first ever SOS.” They’ll be on the air until 2200 UTC Sunday, April 11.

My last QSO was with W1T, a station that was also commemorating the sinking of the Titanic. I made the contact on 14.050 MHz. W1T was operating from somewhere in Maine. At first, I thought that perhaps this was a CW operation from W0S, but it was a completely separate operation. I was unable to find any information on the Net about this station.

What I did find, however, was a third special event station commemorating the Titanic. This is an operation of the Titanic Historical Society, which is located in the Springfield, MA area. If I’d known about this, I bet that I could have worked them. Maybe next year.

In other news:

• John, the museum exhibits director, said that the Morse Code display is almost complete. It’s set to go alongside the “see your voice” exhibit.
• For the third tabletop exhibit, they were working on a crystal radio exhibit, but they’re still not 100% sure how well it’s going to work. I suggested that perhaps instead of the crystal radio, we set up something along the lines of the Diana Eng video that visually shows how directional antennas work. This kind of display could also demonstrate antenna polarity.
• I had a discussion with J.P. Golden, the curriculum director of Elderwise, about teaching a class for seniors. We had a good discussion about how to best structure a class for seniors.
  Their website says, “Elderwise is an independent, member-driven organization offering learning experiences and camaraderie for the over-fifty community in Southeast Michigan.” My thought is that I could teach a class there and perhaps get some of them to come down to the museum and operate the station during weekdays.

At one point, Quentin was calling CQ to no avail on 7.220 MHz, our favorite frequency. He had called a couple of times with no answer, and then we started talking about something or another. All of a sudden, we heard a call from Neil, K8IT.

I hadn’t talked to Neil for years. Back in 2005, Neil and I ran (unsuccessfully) for Director and Vice Director of the Great Lakes Division. Since then, he’s moved away from the Detroit area (he worked for an auto supplier that closed up operations here) and now lives in Virginia.

Anyway, we had a very nice chat, catching up with one another. He was also very gracious in talking to one of the kids who was visiting the museum. One of the cool things about ham radio is that you never know whose voice is going to come out of the speaker. Yesterday, I was glad that it was Neil’s.

• Dan, KB6NU
• Jim, K8ELR
• Eugene, KD8HSU
• Susan, KD8MZR
• Richard, KD8MZS

Susan and Richard were two of the students in our latest One-Day Tech Class. They’re planning to take a six-month cruise down to the Caribbean soon, and are planning to use ham radio to keep in touch with folks back home.

After answering a bunch of questions about ham radio in general, and trying to figure out how they could use the marine radio that they currently have on their boat on the ham bands, I got Susan to sit down and make a couple of contacts. I wrote out a simple script for her to read to call CQ, and on the second try, she got a reply! So, now, we have another new ham with her first contact under her belt.

We also had quite a bit of visitor activity. We had a group of kids come in, and four different adults signed up to be on our mailing list for the next one-day class.

We were so busy that I wasn’t able to actually get to the “hands-on” activity that I’d planned. Make: Magazine recently posted a new video by Diana Eng, KC2UHB, that shows a very simple way to visualize radio waves. Rather than describe this more fully, you can just watch the video:

Cool, isn’t it? Hopefully, I’ll be able to do this next week.

Shortly after, Jim, K8ELR, and Ovide, K8EV, showed up. Then, Quentin, KD8IPF, and his kids arrived. A little later, Ralph, AA8RK, came for a visit, and Mike, one of the students from last week’s class arrived.

K8ELR, who is now our “digital modes specialist,” got all set up to do Hellschreiber. He called CQ a couple of times, and got a few responses, but apparently the band was a little up and down, and was never actually able to complete a contact.

At about 3 pm, I sat down to demonstrate CW for Mike. After QSYing to 40m and calling CQ a couple of times, we connected with Roger, W1OJ. After a nice QSO with Roger, we got a call from Lynn, NG9D. I think I appropriately impressed Mike with my CW skills.

We also were visited by a couple of museum visitors who turned out to be hams. So, overall it was a great day down at the museum.