Lou:

I'm hoping the TS590 sidetone is set up similarly to that of the K3.

I have a preferred pitch for CW listening, and I always thought that the
TS590 would allow me to use that side tone as a reference when zero beating
the other station.

I am just a bit concerned that the tone frequencies don't perfectly match
when I listen to another station in CW and then in CW reverse modes.

I'll be curious to see what other have to say about this.

Tom Behler: KB8TYJ

-----Original Message-----
From: For blind ham radio operators [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Lou Kolb
Sent: Sunday, March 09, 2014 9:41 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: 4WeWhoDoCW,AGudRtikl;dd:Zero beating, what is it, how do we do
it and why should we do itf, By N3EF

Danny,

Great article on something that has long been a pet peev of mine. Most ops
probably don't even know  where they have to tune a signal for it to be
exactly zero-beat with the other station. They just tune to a pitch they
like which may or may not be right on frequency. The K3 sidetone tracks the
transmitter offset frequency so its extremely easy to zerobeat. You just
choose a sidetone you like and make sure your receiver matches it when you
tune in a signal and you're good to go. I think several newer transceivers
are set up like this but for far too long it was harder than it should've
been to zero-beat on CW.
Lou Kolb
Voice-over Artist:
Radio/TV Ads, Video narrations
Messages On-hold:
www.loukolb.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dan B Dyer Jr,/Danny" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, March 09, 2014 8:03 AM
Subject: 4WeWhoDoCW,AGudRtikl;dd:Zero beating, what is it, how do we do it
and why should we do itf, By N3EF


> Found this referenced on the QRPL list, and thought it a good simple, 
> wake up call-reminder, and one which will cause me to make sure my 
> side tone is set as required. HTH, Wb4idu.
> Zero beating, what is it, how do we do it and why should we do it
>
> By N3EF
> First, lets define what zero beating is in general. Zero beat is the 
> condition reached during a measurement or calibration when the beat 
> frequency between two input signals is no longer detectable. And the 
> beat frequency is the frequency produced when two signals are mixed or 
> combined.
> The beat frequency equals the difference or offset between the two 
> frequencies. In cw, we are using two audio frequencies to do this. One 
> frequency is your sidetone and the other is the pitch of the received 
> cw signal which changes as you adjust the tuning dial. In reality, we 
> are not listening for the beat frequency. We are listening for the 
> sound of the two signals going in and out of phase with each other as 
> the two frequencies get close to each other. The two frequencies are 
> so close, you can barely tell the difference between them, but you can 
> hear a change in intensity as they go in and out of phase with each 
> other adding and subtracting in level. It is a "wow...wow...wow.." 
> sound that gets slower and slower as the two signals get closer and 
> closer in frequency. It is more pronounced if the two signal levels 
> are the same so you may need to adjust your volume and/or sidetone 
> level. It is easier to hear the "wow...wow" sound when listening to 
> two steady tones, but you can also detect it with one steady tone and 
> one switching on and off such as cw morse code. Once you get the hang 
> of it, it becomes second nature and you can do it very quickly. Here 
> is the sound of two steady tones of around 750hz that start out at 50 
> cycles apart and gradually get closer until they are identical in 
> frequency. The sound of the two frequencies going in and out of phase 
> with each other is very
> distinctive. wowwow.mp3   And here is what it sounds like when receiving a
> cw signal as I tune above and below his frequency. You can clearly 
> hear the distinctive sound made when the two frequencies are at or 
> very near each other. They start out with just the received cw and 
> then you hear my sidetone come on. zerobeat.mp3, zerobeat1.mp3, 
> zerobeat2.mp3.
> Now, some of the old timers will tell you that this isn't "real"
> zero-beating. They will tell you that zero-beating is the way we use 
> to do it when we had separate transmitters and receivers. Well, they 
> are wrong in telling you that. The way they did it was just another 
> way of getting your transmit frequency the same as the one you are 
> receiving and was also known as zero-beating. The way we do it now is 
> different, but it is still zero-beating.
> So why should we zero-beat anyway? Well, if we don't, then we are 
> transmitting on two different frequencies and using more bandwidth 
> than necessary. You may be QRM'ing another nearby station. The other 
> op may not like the pitch of the tones he hears and must use his RIT to
change it.
> The
> other op may be using a narrow filter and not even hear your reply. I 
> recently operated with a special event callsign during the Straight 
> Key Century Club's first anniversary special event. There were 
> operators from each call district using the same callsign appended 
> with their respective call district. I was calling CQ 1Kz away from
another SKCC operator.
> People
> answering just threw out their callsign without indicating who they 
> were responding to. This is normal and acceptable as a response but 
> some of them were 500Hz off frequency directly between us...so who 
> were they responding to? And what about the QRM they were causing 
> because they didn't take the time and effort to zero-beat. There was 
> no big pile-up going on here as it is an often used tactic to be heard 
> when there IS a pile-up. I was amazed at how many stations were 
> calling me so far off frequency. Some people don't know what 
> zero-beating is, some do but don't know how to do it, and some know 
> how but think it is totally unecessary. You don't have to spend a lot 
> of time and be exactly on frequency, but you should try to get close.
> There
> are many aspects of working CW that mark you as a good operator. I 
> think zero-beating is one of them.
> There are other ways to zero-beat the other station. If your rig has a 
> cw-reverse mode, you can just switch back and forth from cw to 
> cw-reverse and adjust your dial until the tone sounds the same in each 
> mode. You can tune until you think your close and then turn on a 
> narrow filter and tune for max signal level. Some rigs like the Yaesu 
> FT-897 have a zero-beat indicator lamp. There are also zero-beat 
> indicator kits that you can adapt to your rig. If you have an audio 
> output to your computer you can use one of several programs available 
> to do it via your soundcard.
> One other thing you need to be aware of is that some rigs have an 
> adjustable sidetone pitch that does not track the rigs transmit 
> offset. If you change the sidetone pitch, you can't use it to 
> zero-beat properly.
> I hope this article and sound files have been of help and I hope you 
> consider zero-beating an important part of your operating practices.
> Long live CW!