In regard to your question No. 4 about a signal that seems to sweep across a band quickly, in all likelihood you are hearing an ionosonde.

Use this link to read about them. I've been hearing them quite a bit lately on several bands. There's about five of them in the U.S. operated by the military. They are testing HF propagation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionosonde

73, Dave, N4KZ
P.S. You asked some very good questions. Good observations from a new ham. Congrats and welcome to the world's greatest hobby. I've had a 42-year love affair with ham radio and still going strong.

I used HamSticks for 15 and 17 meters on a ball mount on my SUV and made quite a few SSB contacts while running my FT-817ND at 5 watts. Even worked some DX -- South Africa, Caribbean, several in South America and a few Europeans. Of course, this was back around 2003 and 2004 - propagation was much better then. Even so, I had worked CW QRP off and on for years but still didn't know if I could work SSB QRP successfully with a mobile antenna. The answer was - yes, I could and did. But the better propagation back then made a big difference.

73, N4KZ

Considering their design, I would expect very similar performance on the bands the two rigs have in common. I seriously doubt either one is a "hands down" winner over the other on 160-6 meters.

In this race, the radio with the features you value most will win since performance is likely to be quite similar.

73, N4KZ

Sorry that I got in on this topic a bit late. This year was my 35th consecutive Dayton Hamvention. Not a singe miss since my first in 1976. Hara Arena was showing its age back in 1976 and continues to look more ragged each and every year. But the fact is there is zero chance of making this a traveling convention moving from city to city to make it more convenient for attendees in different parts of the country. Why? Staffing, experience, expertise and volunteers. Tons of volunteers. Putting on such a show is a huge endeavor. Far more difficult than most folks can appreciate it. If the Hamvention had a full-time, professional staff, maybe it could move about from region to region. But it doesn't. It's the product of a local ham club that had a good idea and the good fortune to be in the right place at the right time with the right product and it's grown and thrived for a long time.

The Dayton Hamvention simply wouldn't exist without its army of volunteers. Yes, there is a small group of paid staff but they make the decisions that the volunteers than carry out. Without the army of volunteers, there is no Hamvention.

In my real job, I do some convention planning. Been doing it for a decade now. All of my shows are tiny compared to Dayton but it still requires working on it for 8 hours a day for 4-5 months to make my conventions happpen -- and that's with attendance of 800 or so and about 10 vendors. Figure in Hamvention's vastly larger crowd and vendor list and you can see the enormity of such an endeavor. There are speakers to be recruited, forums to be organized, vendors to be contacted, programs written and printed, flea market spaces to be sold, tickets printed and sold, door prizes to be secured, everything laid out in the arena and the list goes on and on and on. And I can tell you all this isn't easy. People don't return their phone messages and ignore their emails. It can take weeks or months to reach some people.

Hamvention is no local hamfest. It's Dayton's largest annual convention and puts millions into the local economy.

That's why it's so pie-in-the-sky to think Dayton could just easily leave the city and relocate elsewhere in the U.S. Theoretically, yes, it could happen. If some real go-getter radio club existed elsewhere with a super-duper planner who could take on such a project and then recruit a huge army of volunteers. Not impossible, but very, very unlikely.

I wish as much as anyone that a nicer, newer, cleaner venue could be found. One with decent bathrooms, working A/C, better parking and more room. Maybe someday. But in the meantime, we're stuck with Hara. But I wouldn't miss it every May for the world.

73, N4KZ

As others have said, the secret is to use a computer logging program that supports LoTW. So, once you're set up with an LoTW account, the daily uploading or downloading is super easy. Of course, you don't have to do either daily -- just whenever you want. But it's so easy for me now, I do it every time I operate which is just about daily. It has saved me lots of time and money. I got a LoTW WAS award without sending in a single card. I got 5 band WAC by only having to send in one card because the others needed were LoTW QSLs. In fact, I credit LoTW for getting me off my butt to finally get my DXCC. I'd been a ham for about 35 years but never bothered to send in the cards for a basic DXCC. Just put it off and put it off. But after signing up for LoTW, I soon have 100 confirmed electronically. That motivated me to start culling through 35 years worth of cards. So the first DXCC was a hybrid -- 100 electronic QSLs from LoTW and 155 more countries I had on cards. That made me a first-time DXCC member with 255 confirmed right off the bat. Then there was no stopping me as I worked more and continued culling through years of cards and entering rare DXCC QSOs from paper logs from decades back. Now, just as few years after that initial LoTW 100, I now have 332 confirmed. Frankly, without LoTW motivating me, I'd probably still have zippo for a DXCC country count.

73 and GL,
N4KZ

Still waiting here.

73, N4KZ
Frankfort, KY

Use of identifiers such as "mobile" and "portable" are optional when operating in the U.S. At one time, they were required by the FCC but that hasn't been the case for many years -- well over 25 by now. However, that being said, if you are operating mobile, by all means say so after your call when giving an ID. Same for portable. But it's optional, by current FCC regulations.

73, N4KZ

I would put the shack in the basement.

Here's why:

1. Getting an RF ground -- or DC ground for that matter -- will be hard on the second floor. Running a long ground wire up to the second floor could cause more problems than it would solve. I speak from experience.

2. Having your gear and antenna in close proximity also could create RFI issues. The likelihood of getting RF in your gear is high if you have a second floor shack with the end of the dipole nearby. Again, the voice of experience here.

3. Putting your shack in the basement gives you easier access to ground and removes your gear from the close field of your antenna anchored to the side of the house at the second floor. And any coax running from your basement up to the end of the 2nd floor dipole would still be considered a short run at HF, not a long run as you mentioned.

In 42 years of ham radio, I have lived in 14 residences since getting on the air. I've had ham shacks in the basement, main floor and second floor. I'd take a basement shack every time. Prevents grounding issues, RF in the rig issues and gives more privacy if you want to ham while others want to sleep.

73, N4KZ

About 4 years ago, funny, swooshing-like noises appeared suddenly on my Icom Pro 3 when I was tuning across 80, 40 and 30 meters. They were spaced every 50 khz. But they were strongest and most annoying on 30m. I'd never heard anything like it before. To make a long story short, I walked around my house with the Yaesu FT-817 in hand and finally located the culprit -- the switching power supply in my wife's desktop computer. She really didn't use it much anymore after she got a new laptop. I turned it off permanently and fixed the problem.

73, N4KZ

The HF ham bands are not channelized. Although it would seem from recent practice you'd almost think they are from this silly operating practice that's sprung up in the past few years of lining up all QSOs right on even numbers, like 7.200.000 and the such.

Well, I got news for you. There's nothing wrong with your rig or antenna. It's just some folks don't get their rigs lined up right on the zeros. And that is perfectly fine. That's the way we all operated SSB from the 1950s up until about 3-4 years ago when this channelized nonsense hit us. The HF bands aren't the VHF bands, where FM activity is channelized, and it isn't, or shouldn't be, the freeband where people use VFO rigs to operate on channels.

Long live 7.201.45739 MHz.

73, N4KZ
P.S. See ya between the zeroes!

The freebanders are bad enough but the other day while on my way to work in the morning I was tuning across 40m SSB on my Icom rig and heard an upper sideband signal. I changed to USB and there about 7161 or so I heard a conversation between what was apparently two fishermen. New England way I would guess from their slight dialect. I've heard a few fishermen before on the high end of 10m on FM but this was a first -- right in the middle of the 40m phone band. I listened for about 10 minutes. No, they weren't hams. And their signals, which had been running about 56 at first, had faded down into the noise by the time I reached work.

Darn brazen if you ask me.

73, N4KZ

I bought a Palstar SP-30H at the Dayton Hamvention and love it. It's the best speaker for SSB and CW that I've used. I'm using it with my Kenwood TS-590 and Icom Pro 3 and it sounds great. Nice big wooden enclosure, attractive and sounds wonderful. Highly recommended.

73, N4KZ

I started doing head copy of CW around 1980 -- mainly out of necessity. I could copy CW faster than I could write it down. Once I decided that writing it down was holding me back, I just put the pencil down, began leaning back in the operating chair to relax my mind and just listen to CW. But as a previous poster said, the biggest requirement is good short-term memory so that once you begin copying a word in your head, you don't forget the earlier letters by the time you get to the end of the word.

I do recognize some short, frequently used words by their sound. I tend to hear those as a single sound in my mind rather than individual letters. The, name, rig are such words. But for the most part, I am still copying letter by letter -- just retaining the info in my mind rather than writing it down one letter at a time.

How do you get there? Practice, practice, practice. Copy CW until it's coming out your ears. Uh, wait a second. Don't let too many letters fall on the floor. Try to keep as many as possible in your head. Strung together, they tend to make words.

73 and GL,
N4KZ

I, too, played a bit at Dayton with the Begali Mono Sculpture paddle. Not only was it a thing of beauty but I loved its feel. Very smooth. Just a slight movement needed to send good CW. After trying unsuccessfully for years to truly master iambic keying -- and squeeze keying every letter -- I gave up and converted to a single-level paddle. Yep, you kinda slap them and that's what I had been doing with various iambic paddles, sometimes with good results and sometimes not.

I finally bought my first single-lever paddle, a Kent, last year and immediately noticed I was making fewer mistakes. I did buy a K8RA single-lever paddle at Dayton last weekend. Really like its feel. Maybe not as smooth as the Begali but then I am still adjusting it and getting used to its feel. It too is a thing of beauty and Jerry does tremendous work for his modest prices.

73, N4KZ

It's a bad practice to let rare QSLs fall through the cracks, but, heck, stuff happens. I've done it a few times but have been successful in getting cards from operations that went back 8, 10 and in one case, 28 years! No harm in trying. You might be out a few bucks if it doesn't work but it's worth the effort. And I got lucky in three cases and it paid off. Fortunately, all the managers still had logs and blank cards. YMMV.

73, N4KZ