KB6NU's Ham Radio Blog

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Operating Notes: 20m on Sunday afternoon, new key, shack reorg

Posted: 20 Mar 2017 12:08 PM PDT
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/kb6nu...m_medium=email


Yesterday afternoon, I was tuning around on 30m, but the band sounded dead.
For some reason, I decided to give 20 m a try. I dont know what possessed
me to do that, because a) If 30 m is dead, 20 m will be, too; b) Im not a
big fan of 20m.

Nevertheless, one of the first signals I heard on 20m was CT1BQH calling CQ
DX on 14044 kHz. He had a reasonably strong signal, so I figured that I had
a good chance of working him. Sure enough, he replied to my call and gave
me a 559. It turns out he has a six-element Yagi, so no wonder he was so
strong.

Next, I tuned down the band, found a quiet spot on 14032 and started
calling CQ myself. F5TIL responded to my second call. I love it when DX
stations answer my CQ. He was using only a three-element Yagi, but signals
were still 559.

Right after I signed with F5TIL, I got a call from Mike, K8XF, my friend
down in Florida. We had a short, but nice chat. I always like working Mike
because hes such a good operator. Hes been playing around with a bug
lately. It was funny to hear him send with a bug because he slowed it way
down.
New key

One of the things that Mike and I chatted about are our Begali paddles.
Mike recently bought a Signature, while I recently added a Begali Magnetic
Pro (see right) to my operating desk.

I love this paddle. Its the first paddle that Ive used with magnetic
tension. It really does feel different from my Begali Simplex, which uses
spring tension. Its hard do describe.

Another thing that I like about it is that you can adjust the space between
the paddles. You cant do this with most paddles.

The one regret is that I didnt also get the aluminum finger pieces. The
plastic finger pieces—as show in the photo—feel kind of cheap to me. Ill be
buying some aluminum ones at Dayton.
Shack reorg

I inherited some furniture from my mother-in-law, including a computer desk
and chest of drawers. The computer desk replaced the homemade workbench
that I was using as an operating desk, the chest of drawers replaced the
small desk that I was mainly using for storage, and the homemade workbench
is now actually my workbench, replacing a folding table that I was using
for building things.

The previous setup had served me well for the past 15 years, so this new
arrangement was a bit difficult to get used to. The computer desk, for
example, is a foot narrower than the workbench, so I had to move things
around, and the workbench is not as deep as the folding table, so Im still
getting used to that.

I think its a good thing to mix things up once in a while, though. Maybe
the reorganization will help me break out of some of the bad habits Ive
fallen into.

The post Operating Notes: 20m on Sunday afternoon, new key, shack reorg
appeared first on KB6NUs Ham Radio Blog.