I highly recommend the Black Widow paddle.  It has the feel of a much more expensive paddle and it
comes as an easy-to-finish kit. Everything is predrilled you just have to do a bit of sanding, finishing
(i.e clear coat) and assembly.  At $67 delivered to your door it is a very good deal.  I borrowed a friend's
and it compares very well against  my much more expensive Bencher Hex key.

The URL :

http://www.w5jh.net/Black_Widow.htm

Michael VE3WMB

Antennas do interact with their environment so it is not always possible to accurately predict / model what the
real impedance and resonance point will be.  I think that the advice of making the base wider to raise it is worth a
try. You can even slope the antenna a bit if that helps to get the bottom corners a bit higher off the ground
(note that this will raise the radiation angle slightly). With your feed-point positioning you are getting
vertical polarization with low angle radiation, which is what I hope that you want.

If this antenna is to be used for portable operation at different locations then perhaps the most simple solution is to feed it with parallel line (ie Twin-lead, Ladderline or open-wire line) and use a balanced tuner. That would allow you to account for impedance and resonance variations from location to location.  This should also allow you to use this antenna multi-band. Note that to use it on 80m would require you to open the loop, opposite the feedpoint.

I have a sloping 30m delta loop in my backyard (apex at about 20+ feet, base at about 7 feet) and it is fed about
1/4 wavelength (on 30m) from the apex with about 8 feet of HB open-wire to a 4:1 balun connected to an LDG tuner housed in a waterproof box attached to my side fence. This antenna works quite well on 40m and 30m and will match from 40m through 10m. Because of the extreme slope, my antenna, at least theoretically, has a somewhat higher takeoff angle than your vertical loop but in practice it still works quite well and gives me a 2-S unit S/N
advantage over my vertical.

best of luck

Michael VE3WMB

Another option to consider is rubber truck tie-down straps.  These work pretty well and I think are more durable
than regular "bungee" cords but I have found over the years that the UV stability varies from brand to brand.
I use these at the center and ends of a 204 ft doublet that I have up at 50 ft at my cottage. I have learned that it is best to replace them yearly to avoid failure. What I have also started doing is to bridge the tie-downs with a rope loop. That way if the tie-down breaks the antenna stays up but goes slack.

Michael VE3WMB

My best guess is that it was the WB4VVF Accu-keyer as I believe that this was the original Iambic Mode-B keyer.
BTW it is horrific trying to switch between the two. I have been an Iambic-B user for 30+ years and when I built my Elecraft K1 I didn't realize at first that it defaulted to mode-A keying ... I really thought that I was losing it for a while ... couldn't send an "R" if my life depended on it :-)  then I realized that the rig was set to mode-A ....

Michael VE3WMB / VA2NB

I use a paddle and straight key with my left hand and a bug with my right and my brain seems to be able to keep it all straight.  I was a dual paddle user for about 20 years (left handed) and after much off-air practice with a CPO I was able to develop sufficient proficiency with my right hand to use a bug on the air.  I have found that using a bug
requires a lot less fine motor skills than a dual paddle so using my "wrong" hand to send with a bug wasn't too
bad.

Michael VE3WMB / VA2NB 

Yes I have one that I picked up on eBay a few years ago.  The lid was yellowed and cracked (often the case)
but I managed to get a replacement cover from Morse Express. These bugs have a pretty decent feel, somewhat
crisp, but a bit clacky with the lid in place.  Mine gets used on occasion (too many keys ;-) ). BTW the square weights
from the Vibroplex Lightning / Champion / Zephyr will fit if you need to add more weight, you just may need to
temporarily remove the pendulum to get the Vibroplex weights on.

Michael VE3WMB / VA2NB

I think that the SW20+ is a good first radio kit. I have built both an SW40+ and an SW80+
and they are excellent little radios for $55.

The instruction manual has some good reminders of how to properly solder, including pictures and if you have built a few kits before you should be fine. The key to building any kit is to be well organized and to take your time and ensure that you have the right component in the right hole before you solder it in.

I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the SW+ series and Dave is a great guy to deal with.

Cheers,

Michael VE3WMB / VA2NB

I use fldigi on a Acer Aspire One netbook running Ubuntu Netbook Remix and it works well for digimodes.
I also use WINE to run the N3FJP Windows Logging programs and they run fine. Actually I have even
run Digipan V2.0 on this machine under WINE and it works fine with the exception of setting the audio levels (no
windows mixer on Linux ;-) but I was using a SignalLink USB with physical TX and RX gain controls
so it didn't matter.

Michael VE3WMB

The convention is "thumb" is DIT and finger is DAH, regardless of which hand you send with.
So for a right-handed person the left paddle is DIT and the right paddle DAH. This is reversed
for a lefty but many left-handed people just learn to send with a right-handed paddle. Fortunately
these days most keyers allow you to switch the paddle sense via a command.

When wiring the paddle using a stereo plug, the DIT paddle is connected to the TIP, the DAH paddle is
connected to the RING and the ground is connected to the shield of the plug.

Michael VE3WMB / VA2NB

When I started to head copy what worked to help me visualize was to close my eyes and print the character on the palm of my other hand using my finger. It didn't take me too long to make the transition from that to
just visualizing in my head. The hardest part about developing the ability to head copy is to "let go" when you
hear something that just doesn't register. Once it starts to "click" it is an interesting feeling .. a bit like reading
a good book, where you can get so into the story that you are not even consciously aware of reading the words, the ideas just sort of appear in your head. Also I suggest slowing down a bit so that you are in your comfort zone at first, but just like learning to hand-copy code you want to push the speed beyond your comfort zone to improve.

Best of luck ...

Michael VE3WMB

I agree with STAYVERTICAL. The 500 hz mechanical filter is the best place to start (either the Yaesu (Collins) or INRAD). If you go with the 300hz filter you will likely find that it is a bit too narrow to have engaged while tuning around.  You can always add the 300 hz filter as the second filter later on if you feel that you really need it.

Likely part of your dissatisfaction with just the audio DSP filtering in the FT897D is that even though
the DSP audio filtering may filter out the audio of of interfering stations, those stations are still within the passband of your 2.8 KHZ IF filter and thus they will have an impact on the AGC, causing it to pump. No doubt you have
experienced this. Usually you will hear a bit of a thump and the station you are trying to copy drops out because
the rig is responding to the overload caused by the stronger interfering signal, thus drastically reducing the
receiver gain.

Personally I find that the FT897D with the 500hz Collins filter + the DBF feature of the
built-in DSP audio filter works pretty well for CW operation.  If you find that the DSP filtering is too narrow for
your liking I believe that the bandwidth can be varied by one of the internal menu settings so you might want to
experiment with this once you have a narrower IF filter installed.

Best of luck

Michael VE3WMB / VA2NB

It is hard to beat an 88 ft doublet, center-fed with open-wire line, ladderline or even TV Twin lead to an autotuner. This is an Extended Double Zepp for 20m and will yield gain of about 9 dBi broadside on 20m.  You mention that the QTH is rocky so you want to stay away from vertical polarization. You will want to put the antenna up as a flattop at least 1/2 wavelength (on 20m) if you want the gain and a low radiation angle. Using an inverted vee will make the pattern more omni-directional and will kill the added gain. This antenna should match from 80m through to 10m with a decent auto-tuner.

http://www.tomochka.com/na7u/doublet/w4rnlbackup.html

If you can take advantage of sloping terrain and a clear shot at the ocean, putting the antenna part-way down the hill (as opposed to at the top) will further enhance the signals in the direction opposite to the hillside.

Michael VE3WMB

P.S. If you do manage to operate from the beach near the waterline then be sure to use a vertical.

The 4BTV is extremely good value for the money. It is well made antenna constructed with good materials and will stand up to a lot of abuse. There are also a couple of very simple mods to add 12m and 17m coverage (small gauge wires running more or less parallel to the vertical and connected to the base .. virtually invisible).  Put down as many
radials as you can, as long as practical.  You can always experiment with small gauge wire antennas if in the future
you want to get on 30m or 80m. There are lots of options for HOA-friendly attic loops, dipoles etc that can give
you coverage of the "missing bands".

Good luck

Michael VE3WMB - A happy 4BTV owner !

I think that the SW+-series is still one of the best values in Ham Radio today. For $55 you get a real radio!

I added both a Freq-Mite and a K1EL K12 keyer to my SW-40+ and it makes an excellent little mono-band
portable rig. At  ~2W out on CW a lot of contacts can be had with a simple low dipole on 40m.

I wish you many hours of enjoyment with your SW40+.

Cheers,

Michael VE3WMB

P.S. BTW there is a yahoo group dedicated to these rigs ( SWkits) and I believe that Ten Tec used to supply the
custom enclosures for SWL. According to someone in the SWkits group it is the Ten Tec TG-24
(or alternately TPB-19) that SWL used. You can purchase these directly from Ten Tec, but you will have to drill the holes and supply your own labelling.

I forgot to note that you should also be able to shift the 70 Khz "tuning window" by adding the appropriate
amount of offset to the frequencies used during the alignment. For instance if you wanted to cover the SKCC
and Fists frequencies and still keep coverage from 7.100 MHZ to 7.120 Mhz (slower code window) you could
use 2135 KHZ (2085 + 50 Khz) to start tuning at 7.050 MHZ  and 2205 Khz (2135 + 70 KHZ) to end tuning
at 7.120 MHZ (I hope I did the math right ! ).

You would need to do some mental math to figure out what your frequency is based on the dial pointer location but installing a Small Wonder Labs Freq-Mite to give you an audible frequency readout could also be an option.

Michael VE3WMB

P.S. I have both the 30m and 40m Explorer IIs and they are nice little rigs .. simple but very fun to operate
and the RX on both is surprisingly good.