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Author Topic: Good Call For CW  (Read 1481 times)

G3EDM

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Re: Good Call For CW
« Reply #45 on: July 05, 2021, 10:59:46 AM »

Martin,
You're beginning to enjoy ham radio at its very best-- copying signals across the pond on a set you built yourself. I like the picture of your station. BTW, I used a similar clock in my 1959 station, you can see it in a photo on my QRZ page.
Cheers & 73 de Chuck NI0C

Thank you Chuck. Ironically, that General Electric clock that I brought to England from America has its own story now. The only way I could get it to keep correct time in the UK was to use not just a voltage converter, but also a frequency converter (from 50Hz AC to 60Hz).

So I purchased a wonderful little converter from a specialist clock-restoration company here in the UK. Trouble is, the converter is a prolific source of RFI: there are bad spikes about every 30KHz on 40m and other bands.

Because of this I have now torn out the original American GE movement and purchased a battery-driven Seiko quartz movement to replace it. Lest the preservationists scream: my vintage GE alarm clock is the kind of clock you will find at almost any large garage sale in America. It is not a rare item by any stretch of the imagination.

Only problem is that I want to fit the original GE hands onto the new movement, but the shaft diameters on the Seiko are smaller. So I am trying to figure out how to deal with that, with the assistance of a lot of really helpful people on a clock-restoration forum. I cannot find ready-made bushings for this. Gluing the old hands onto the new ones is, for various reasons, quite hard to do successfully.

Anyway, this is straying far from CW, indeed, straying far from ham radio.

73 de Martin, G3EDM
« Last Edit: July 05, 2021, 11:02:15 AM by KB1WSY »
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NI0C

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Re: Good Call For CW
« Reply #46 on: July 06, 2021, 03:48:48 AM »

Martin,
You're beginning to enjoy ham radio at its very best-- copying signals across the pond on a set you built yourself. I like the picture of your station. BTW, I used a similar clock in my 1959 station, you can see it in a photo on my QRZ page.
Cheers & 73 de Chuck NI0C

Thank you Chuck. Ironically, that General Electric clock that I brought to England from America has its own story now. The only way I could get it to keep correct time in the UK was to use not just a voltage converter, but also a frequency converter (from 50Hz AC to 60Hz).

So I purchased a wonderful little converter from a specialist clock-restoration company here in the UK. Trouble is, the converter is a prolific source of RFI: there are bad spikes about every 30KHz on 40m and other bands.

Because of this I have now torn out the original American GE movement and purchased a battery-driven Seiko quartz movement to replace it. Lest the preservationists scream: my vintage GE alarm clock is the kind of clock you will find at almost any large garage sale in America. It is not a rare item by any stretch of the imagination.

Only problem is that I want to fit the original GE hands onto the new movement, but the shaft diameters on the Seiko are smaller. So I am trying to figure out how to deal with that, with the assistance of a lot of really helpful people on a clock-restoration forum. I cannot find ready-made bushings for this. Gluing the old hands onto the new ones is, for various reasons, quite hard to do successfully.

Anyway, this is straying far from CW, indeed, straying far from ham radio.

73 de Martin, G3EDM
Those old synchronous motor clocks kept perfect time, assuming no power interruptions. When I was growing up, my ham station clock was the time standard for the whole family, as I checked it frequently against WWV.
Good luck with the restoration.
73 de Chuck NI0C
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KC0W

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Re: Good Call For CW
« Reply #47 on: July 09, 2021, 08:49:58 AM »

 Here's a very easy & quick callsign to send on CW. Takes even less time to send than EE5E.     

 https://www.qrz.com/db/ON70REDSTAR


                                                                     Tom KH0/KC0W
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K3TN

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Re: Good Call For CW
« Reply #48 on: July 12, 2021, 02:50:42 AM »

I always envision EE5E as a really skinny guy and OM0O as weighing about 250kg...
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John K3TN

WD0EGC

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Re: Good Call For CW
« Reply #49 on: July 14, 2021, 07:18:10 AM »

My Novice call (~1974) was WN0MXZ.  I'm sure there are >worse< CW calls out there, but not by much, lol.

Jay (formerly WD0EGC, now WS0Y)

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G3EDM

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Re: Good Call For CW
« Reply #50 on: July 14, 2021, 01:15:46 PM »

Those old synchronous motor clocks kept perfect time, assuming no power interruptions. When I was growing up, my ham station clock was the time standard for the whole family, as I checked it frequently against WWV.
Good luck with the restoration.
73 de Chuck NI0C

With a tinge of sadness, I have now butchered my 1950s GE synchronous clock. I removed the original movement and glued in a modern Seiko quartz movement. The point is that this is now a usable shack clock again, with zero RFI. Better than being landfill fodder. The photo shows the result.



73 de Martin, G3EDM
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NI0C

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Re: Good Call For CW
« Reply #51 on: July 14, 2021, 03:45:07 PM »

Quote
I removed the original movement and glued in a modern Seiko quartz movement. The point is that this is now a usable shack clock again, with zero RFI. Better than being landfill fodder. The photo shows the result.
Very nice work, Martin!
73 de Chuck NI0C
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G3EDM

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Re: Good Call For CW
« Reply #52 on: July 15, 2021, 01:20:46 AM »

Thanks, Chuck!

It was a bit tricky and I was apprehensive because, with extensive use of Superglue, non-reversible mistakes can be made. My biggest worry was when gluing the old GE hands on top of the hands of donor movement (necessary because the donor movement has a smaller-diameter shaft than the GE). The concern was that the resulting combined hand would be too thick for the Seiko shaft and the hands would bind against each other. So I filed down the GE hands gently, removing a lip around each hole that originally served to help bind the hands to the old shaft. This was possible to do with precision because the GE hands are metal -- the donor hands are plastic.

The movement was glued to the back of a custom-cut aluminium plate, and the old clock face was glued to the front of the plate. There, I was worried that the Superglue would damage the paper-thin clock face material, a kind of floppy, brittle early plastic. The glue did dissolve some of the black paint on the back of the face, but fortunately none of that is visible from the front.

I glued the white GE alarm button in the "on" position and made no attempt to make this into a working alarm clock. The "set alarm" hand was discarded.



73 de Martin, G3EDM
« Last Edit: July 15, 2021, 01:25:04 AM by KB1WSY »
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SM0AOM

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Re: Good Call For CW
« Reply #53 on: July 15, 2021, 02:00:09 AM »

The selection of a call for Morse traffic can be a "tricky business".

There are several "schools of thought" in this; ranging from being "short", here the "machine-gun burst" of contester special call SE5E stands out, or to having a balanced composition between short and long elements.

I am the second holder of my call, as in the "old days" calls were re-issued if the holder let them lapse.

If someone let the call lapse, usually by not paying the annual fee, it became available to others after a period of one year. In practice, the period became somewhat longer. Calls held by SK:s could be re-issued after three years.

This caused un-wanted consequences, as some did not like their issued calls, and went to great lengths to change them. There also was a considerable waiting-list for two-letter suffixes.

After dealing with a particularly obnoxious call-sign change case in the mid-80s, the regulator lost patience and announced that from now on any issued call-signs would be final and not subject to appeal.
A non-payer would be assigned a new call if coming back. No old call-signs were re-issued after this.

In 2004 the call-sign issuing system was changed with SM being the prefix of the calls previously issued by the regulator.  No new SM calls can be issued.
The SA prefix calls are those issued in the new regime by the national society after much easier exams.

Should an SM old-timer that have let his old call lapse want to take up amateur radio again, the old call can become re-issued if it is not taken by someone else before 2004, otherwise an SA call is issued. No SA calls may re-issued, and there are no two-letter suffix personal SA calls. Then we have the cases of "special" or "vanity" calls which are a different subject.

Back to the question of call-sign information content.
My own major interest in 1970 was VHF weak-signal work, and after examining the energy content in Morse characters, it was realised that long signal elements have more energy and are more easily decoded in white noise. This is incidentally the idea behind the TMO signal reporting system used in early EME.

So, when AOM surfaced as a choice, it sounded like a good alternative. The prefix, SM4 in my then case, was not subject of choice.

The call-sign does also have a reasonably nice rhythm and is quite easily recognised.
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KM1H

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Re: Good Call For CW
« Reply #54 on: July 15, 2021, 05:21:53 PM »

Quote
Back to the question of call-sign information content.
My own major interest in 1970 was VHF weak-signal work, and after examining the energy content in Morse characters, it was realised that long signal elements have more energy and are more easily decoded in white noise. This is incidentally the idea behind the TMO signal reporting system used in early EME.

My current call was issued ~ 1983 when I decided to build my own contest/DXing station instead of as a perennial guest operator. It was a sequential regular 2x1 call that has served me well. I also found it to be good on meteor scatter for whatever reason and altho Ive heard my own moon echos from 6M to 70 cm using that mode never interested me.

Carl
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NI0C

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Re: Good Call For CW
« Reply #55 on: July 17, 2021, 06:24:05 AM »

The selection of a call for Morse traffic can be a "tricky business".

My own major interest in 1970 was VHF weak-signal work, and after examining the energy content in Morse characters, it was realised that long signal elements have more energy and are more easily decoded in white noise.

That's very interesting, thinking about the energy content in a sequence of Morse characters. Through the 1960's, I held the call sign K0VSH (surely a low energy call!) and earned my first DXCC award entirely on CW, running about 50 watts output to wire antennas. After letting my license lapse for a long time, I was issued my current call in 1984. It seems a little easier to get through the pileups!
73 de Chuck NI0C
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K3UIM

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Re: Good Call For CW
« Reply #56 on: July 17, 2021, 06:54:46 AM »

Oh, darn it, Martin! It appears to have stopped.  ::) ;D
Charlie
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Charlie. K3UIM
Where you are: I was!
Where I am: You will be!
So be nice to us old fogies!!

G3EDM

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Re: Good Call For CW
« Reply #57 on: August 29, 2021, 02:00:56 AM »

Update: After several days of actually operating on the air (finally!), I am very pleased with the G3EDM call. It has a great rhythm, and so far, no-one has failed to copy the single dit at the start of the suffix.

I am sending slowly, to encourage others to answer QRS. I am keying the characters at about 12wpm to 15wpm, but with huge Farnsworth spacing between the characters, and between the words, so the overall speed is slower.

My copy skills are still very rough but just good enough for the basic QSOs I have been engaged in so far. I am sure this will improve reasonably fast now that I'm involved in "real" QSOs.

73 de Martin, G3EDM
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AC9QC

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Re: Good Call For CW
« Reply #58 on: October 03, 2021, 02:36:20 PM »

As a person learning cw I will say 7 through 0 for the number seems easiest to pick out, 6 would be am avoid due to D and B being similar especially B. I do think dahs are easier to pick out than dihs in numbers tbh.
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