Another week of amateur radio has expired. Expired Ham, get it? 🙂
Welcome to another issue of Expired Ham, a weekly newsletter where I discuss the ways I participated in the amateur radio hobby this week.
I’m getting excited for my upcoming CWOps Academy Intermediate class which begins at the end of August and runs until mid-October. The curriculum, I believe, is more aligned with CW contesting and faster speeds. That sounds right up my alley! I’ve been focusing on head copy skills these last couple of weeks in preparation for class. I’m not entirely sure what level they expect students to be at exactly at the beginning of class. I feel pretty comfortable copying with 95% accuracy up to around 20 WPM with some Farnsworth spacing between words bringing overall speeds down around 15-18 WPM. On the sending side, I’m getting more fluent with fewer mistakes being make at 20+ WPM. I practice faster speeds from time to time to push my upper boundary a bit. I find that it makes my sending at 20 WPM even better.
In other news, I branched out and bought a miniature straight key to start learning how to use one of those. It arrived Saturday and I immediately plugged it in and got it going with VBand. It turns out that you really should learn Morse code on a paddle because you learn to hear the proper timing of the dits and dahs and their relationship toward one another. I found it rather easy to hit the ground running on the manual straight key. VBand’s speed meter was showing me sending around 13 to 15 WPM with 99.9% accuracy right out of the gate. It makes me wonder whether having a properly-sized straight key would be even easier. As if I need to buy more stuff though, right?
I didn’t really do much actual operating this week. I tried to get the KH1 out on one or two occasions and made one contact during last Sunday’s SST on 40m, but when I try to use 20 meters, I get no callers. I have not even been able to get picked up by the RBN on 20 meters. I hope that is not an indicator that something is wrong with the radio and is just a byproduct of running QRP in my area. Sometimes buying used is great. Other times, it can be a bit of a pain in the ass. Fingers are crossed that this is not one of those times.
My KHPD1 paddle for the KH1 arrived from Elecraft finally, as well as did the N6ARA paddle and some Tufteln stuff. I have to say that I wasn’t a huge fan of the N6ARA paddle at first. The paddles seem to really require a lot of effort to actually use, even when adjusted so they are nearly touching their contacts. I’m not crazy about that. Also, I can’t leave the paddle attached to the KH1 and still fit everything into the carrying bag. That’s also a pain and invites lost parts out in the field, maybe. The KHPD1 paddle is better in most regards, but that’s just my personal opinion. The N6ARA paddle will take a bit of getting used to due to its size. I’m able to send on it fine, but it just feels awkward in practice. I reached out to K6ARK about his KHPP paddles, but never got a response. He’s got the build instructions for them on his website, but there are no kits or pre-built paddles for sale on there. Maybe one will turn up on QRZ or something someday and I’ll be able to grab it before someone else.
The Elecraft KH1 Edgewood package fits entirely within the carrying case that Elecraft sells (ES20). This means that it is ultra-portable and I am planning to carry it around everywhere with me, as long as it’s feasible to do so. Read that as I’m taking it to work with me everyday for those opportunities that I may find myself having after a work day where I want to play radio from the parking lot or a nearby park.
I found the KH1 paper log sheets to be lacking some room for important information, such as frequency for when you’re hunting instead of activating or name when you’re participating in a contest where name is part of the exchange. Sure, this may not be the intended use-case for this radio, but especially for POTA, if you’re not the one activating, you’d probably enjoy having a column available to write in the frequency of the activator you’re hunting. So, with that said, I created my own log sheets. They are available for download in the Downloads section of the website. There is a link at the top of page (in a desktop browser) or in the menu (in mobile browsers). Feel free to download and use as you wish. I welcome any feedback anyone has about them, so feel free to reach out to me either in a comment on this post, via email (find it on QRZ), or on my Instagram account.
I got nothing else to share for this week and the XYL is trying to talk me into going out for dinner, so I’m going to wrap this up and say 73s all. Enjoy your upcoming week.
de Matthew, K2MAS
K2MAS.net is not affiliated with any of the sites or products listed in this article. All opinions are the author’s own.
As a member of Amazon’s Associate program, I earn a small commission on qualifying purchases made through referrals. This helps offset the costs of hosting this website and are greatly appreciated.
K2MAS.net 