Jim,
Boy if that ain't the truth. It has been years since I worked a teenager on
CW and that used to be the norm. Sounds like that vertical is doing its
thing.
Phil.
K0NX
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Shaffer" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2014 7:52 AM
Subject: Re: What CW Isn't
> I'm sure many of us have noticed that if you get on CW these days and rag
> chew, you'll be hard put to find an operator under 60 years old. It's
> probably a good thing we have so many contests, otherwise the CW bands
> would
> have little activity. I actually notice less activity on HF in general,
> all
> modes. I'm sure most of the new hams are spending time using digital
> modes
> on VHF/UHF. VHF/UHF is, in addition, being essentially promoted by the
> home
> owners association restrictions. Like many on this list, I can't have a
> tower and beam where I live now.
>
> By the way, I'd mentioned on this list some time ago that I was getting a
> 29
> foot Zerofive vertical. Well I got it up back in mid February, and it's
> been working great. I can tune it on 6 through 80 meters including 60
> meters. I've worked a lot of dx with it. It out performs my dipole,
> especially when transmitting. There are situations when the dipole is a
> better receiving antenna than the vertical, while the vertical out
> performs
> it on transmit. This has a lot to do with signal/noise of course, the
> vertical being noisy by nature.
> --
> Jim, KE5AL
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Howard, W A 9 Y B W
> Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2014 5:07 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: What CW Isn't
>
> Currently, there are approximately three quarters of a million licensed
> Hams
> in the United States
>
> 73
>
> Howard #3
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Phil Scovell" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Monday, April 28, 2014 11:34 PM
> Subject: What CW Isn't
>
>
>>I never figure the code made somebody a better operator but when I was a
>> novice in 1966, I read somewhere there were about 150,000 licensed hams.
>> What are there now? I read sometime back there were 450,000 hams in the
>> U
>> S
>> alone and something like 2 million in Japan or something like that. Of
>> course, we didn't have satellite communications back then and CW was a
>> requirement for emergency communications nationally. With sats and cell
>> phones, that's not so important any longer but look at those places after
>> tornadoes, earthquakes, and hurricanes. Cell phones are worthless then
>> but
>> battery and generator powered ham stations still work pretty good. I
>> used
>> to love to listen to the CW operators aboard ship talking to each other
>> or
>> to land based operators but that's long gone, too. 75 meters, and to
>> some
>> degree 20 meters, have always had operators of bad behavior. The side
>> band
>> wars on 75 back in the early and mid sixties between SSB and A M
>> operators
>> who never wanted to change were amazing. I hear groups even on 20 side
>> band
>> today with 5 to 10 guys in the group, all friends apparently, who won't
>> acknowledge a new comer or if they do, they make fun of whatever it is he
>> wants; usually just to join their conversation. That's one thing you
>> don't
>> often hear on the CW bands, haha. Too much work to yell at somebody who
>> can
>> filter you right out. One night, when I had my 40 meter 2 element beam,
>> two
>> Mexicans SSB guys were sitting right on 7002 and they both were really
>> loud
>> and taking up all the 5 KHz of the bottom of the band. A guy, who is
>> probably passed away now, had a 5 element beam in California so he was a
>> big
>> gun on 40 meters. These X E stations, at least one of them anyhow, were
>> about 40 over S9 here in Colorado. I heard this W6, I forget the rest of
>> his call, but his name was Sam I think, try, using CW of course, to get
>> those guys to move out of the bottom of the band. Of course, they paid
>> no
>> attention to him so I called CQ on top of them and this W6 answered me
>> and
>> we talked for about 10 minutes on CW, our beams pointed right at them,
>> before they finally moved. Did you know that many countries haven't ever
>> required a CW test at all? The Mexico signals are loud even on 75 side
>> band
>> here in Denver and through the southwest so sometimes that amp and big
>> antenna comes in handy.
>>
>> Phil.
>> K0NX
>>
>
>
>
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