Hi All, pleased to meet some of the well known call-signs at the Donnington
Park rally. Thanks to John G4GVC for braving the 'snuffles' to bring us all
together. It makes me all the more determined to get down to Windsor and for
handshake with Andre. I stopped off for a family visit on the way back so
missed the band on Saturday morning, I copied Geri DK8KW solidly at 1450z
through a local thunderstorm working DF6NM. Good 'O' for Geri but coundn't
see a trace of the other station. Also heard Mike CQ a little higher in
frequency towards the end of Geri's qso. I saved the screen on this one.
Sunday morning two QRS signals both CQs were logged, Mike G3XDV at 0608z and
0630z and ON4ZK at 0720z. ON4ZK was badly cut up by static on FFTDSP but
fully readable on Spectrogram. Other stations logged on normal speed CW were
PA0SE working G8RW, G4GVC, G3XDV, G3YXM working MM0ALM who was quite weak
as Scotland was in the null of my loop. Mike mentions seeing weak signals
from Petr on Spectrogram. I also saw a number of weak signals around 136.5
to 137 area, all too weak to copy hand keyed but would be fully 'O' on QRS.
There is a signal as I type this on 137.37kHz which looks like a beacon, it
has run continously for about 30 mins, ceasing at about 2112z Sunday (my
clock
about 90secs fast)
If anyone has a really OLD computer, you don't need to tie up the PC as a
slow
keying machine. By old, I mean one with a cassette port!! Don't laugh...many
of
these have a motor control relay, for switching the motor on and off, which
can be
used to key the transmitter. Processor power is not a problem at these
speeds
I use a NEC 8201 which has a 2 Meg CMOS Z80 chip in it. The program is a
modification of a CW keyboard from G4ANB's book (RSGB) and is written in
interpreted Basic. It will actually key at up to about 16wpm on my machine.
The
program was developed for some of the MRS microwave group to use as beacon
keyers.So come on fella's dig out the old Sinclairs and Dragons and Acorns,
mouldering
away in the loft and give them a new lease of life as a dedicated QRS keyer.
Copies of the program available if required, but you must be willing to
translate
them to the 'flavour' Basic your machine uses.
The NEC Basic is very Microsoft-ish. It is not too difficult to 'waggle' a
printer
control line in this sort of language if you don't have a casette MOTOR
command. The real plus point is you DON'T NEED TO RUN WINDOWS (hurrah!).....
REAL computing for REAL radio!
DX cluster spots from GB7DXM were:-
136.9 DJ2EY 26-Sep-1999 0916Z 539
<DL1SAN>
136.9 DJ2EY 26-Sep-1999 0916Z 539
<DL1SAN>
136.9 OK1FIG 26-Sep-1999 0912Z 559 in jn48wl
<DL1SAN>
136.9 OK1FIG 26-Sep-1999 0912Z 559 in jn48wl
<DL1SAN>
136.4 DL3FDO 25-Sep-1999 0925Z 519
<DL1SAN>
136.5 OK1FIG 25-Sep-1999 0910Z 419 in jn48wl
<DL1SAN>
136.8 DJ2LF 25-Sep-1999 0909Z
<DL1SAN>
G3NYK de GB7DXM 26-Sep 2037Z >
1800.0 DF3LP 26-Sep-1999 0823Z QRS CQ 136.68kHz <G3NYK>
1800.0 OZ1KMR 25-Sep-1999 1614Z 136.65kHz <G3NYK>
1800.0 DK8KW 25-Sep-1999 1558Z QRS qso 137.72kHz <G3NYK>
1800.0 G3XDV 25-Sep-1999 1557Z QRS cq 137.7kHz <G3NYK>
G3NYK de GB7DXM 26-Sep 2040Z >
73 de Alan G3NYK
[email protected]
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