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Hi After listening to some weak (to me) stations
on 136 this morning it occured to me that I was getting a solid, well above the
noise dash, but the dits were not at the same peak strength. Noise was fairly
low at the time, so it was not being carved up by static. It occurs to me that
it may be that some keyers, or even some 'fists', are producing very shorts dots
even at the relatively easy speeds used on 136. Can it be that the Q's of
aerials and tuning are such that the TX is not rising to full power during a
'dit'?? I find that a bit hard to believe. I do know that when I was learnimg my
morse thanks to an old PO Telegraphist up in Liverpool with a G3K call. He used
to say that 'you had to send real SOLID dots on old long trans-oceanic cables'
otherwise he reckoned they would not get to the other end! I wonder
whether this is a lesson for us ...its not so much the slowing down that helps
copy on a weak signal so much as the SOLID dot that the slower more deliberate
transmission gives. Being basically lazy and not having been an HF morse user I
can't express an opinion either way. It would certainly be interesting to know
what the tx rise-time (or maybe the aerial current rise-time) actually was with
some of your fairly high Q aerials.
Cheers de Alan G3NYK
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