Readers’ Letters

Send your letters to: Practical Wireless Letters, Warners Group Publications plc West Street, Bourne, Lincs PE10 9PH E-mail: practicalwireless@warnersgroup.co.uk

Topics this month include entering the hobby, straight versus paddle keys (and is Morse dead?), QSLing and more.

Dear Don,

I cannot help but feel Edward Martin’s letter ‘Morse is dead’ was penned a little tongue-in-cheek, knowing fine well the can of worms such a missive would open.

He is correct to point out machine Morse is soulless, and that such a mode is not necessarily progress.

Where the point goes awry however is firstly that straight key Morse is better somehow than a paddle. It is indeed a skill, but I have heard some lousy Morse sent by fist pumpers. There is a tendency for instance for straight keyers to extend the da, and just as some paddle users do, insist on rolling letters together, CQ for instance becoming one long string of characters, joined together without a gap between them.

I would not send Morse without my trusty paddle keyer. That way I can improve the characters I send for the recipient to decode more easily. Equally I will not use a keyboard and screen.

In addition, we know a carrier wave can get places a microphone cannot. This is another reason for the mode to persist.

To lump paddles in with keyboards and

screens is disingenuous. The recipient using the paddle still has to decode the incoming message. Receiving and decoding the signal is a skill in itself, probably a greater skill than sending.

As for using hacksaw blades on a piece of wood, well, that’s just cheating surely. Let’s just use two bits of wire, presumably sent on a cat’s whisker.

I would get out more, but this COVID thing has me glued to the radio.

Thanks for a great magazine.

Richard Baker G0AIH Darlington

Dear Don,

I read with interest the letter by M5UF and to a point I totally agree, However, in the early 60s I met G3JRE in Malta who had designed a keyer using micrologic ICs with auto character spacing. I built one and used it for several years, and was glad I did so because in 1974 while serving on HMS Hermes the Turks invaded Cyprus, ex-pats wanted relatives to know they were safe so telegrams were sent by myself and the late G3JFF direct to Portishead Radio (over 1,000 between

us). I never did meet the guys on the other end (No wrist ache either).

I have never used a straight key since, apart from my test at Portishead, and don’t intend to, but I have respect for those who do.

‘Mac’ McPheat G4OEC

Holford, Somerset

Entry to the Hobby

Dear Don,

You ask about barriers to entry to amateur radio but, as someone who has been studying since 1978 (not full time!) I may be able to shed a light on some of the issues.

OK, there is an exam. If you don’t want to do an exam, you can always get a CB. I think the exam does give a civilised nature to enthusiasts. Your point about jargon, though, is agreed. Arguably this is contra to the licence conditions!

The main issue I have had over the years is booking the exams – online invigilation has sorted this – hopefully! Before, you had to fit into someone else’s schedule, which rarely fit mine.

Then there is the practical – forcing people to spend two days with others is not my cup of tea.

But then there is the syllabus – with a handheld on the front of the Foundation Licence Manual. But the training does not give any indication of an ideal first setup. So, I got a handheld, and in the first day had one contact. I am convinced I need a better antenna but have you tried finding a 2m antenna? Ideally, I want to listen but the barrier is crazy.

So, what about listening – I may as well not go there. The receivers cost as much as the transceivers.

Do I go handheld, 144/430MHz, or full base. So, the pricing is £29 to £2,900 plus.

It is more than the syllabus – you really have to know a lot or know someone to get into this hobby.

Ross McManus

Derby

Dear Don,

I must agree with your conclusions regarding the Foundation Licence in October’s issue. I am an Intermediate Licence holder who passed the exam in the first round of the new syllabus of November last year. I would really like to progress to the Full but I know my limitations as regards the technical aspects of the exam so will not be able to progress any further.

Maybe there is a case for a Full Operators Licence whereby you can use your modern equipment. I have no intention or desire to take the lid off a radio, I just want to communicate with other like-minded amateurs around the world and not delve into the innards of the equipment. Today’s radios (mine is an Icom IC-7300) will be sent back to manufacturers for repairs. This is 2020 after all.

Adam Wake 2E0NVL Wareham, Dorset

Dear Don,

Re Keylines, Foundation Licence PW, October 2020. Rarely am I prompted to put pen to paper, but I felt some of your remarks in the above required comments.

Questioning your need for the Foundation Licence to require only the most basic knowledge of certain technical facts and comparing the activity to that of driving a car without knowing how a car works. A driver would quickly learn, perhaps painfully, the consequences of driving anywhere on the road he chose, or at any speed.

Whereas, an amateur radio operator transmitting on any frequency or power of his choice could, without being aware, seriously endanger life. An example being that some of the early cheap Far Eastern handhelds transmitted spurious signals on civil Air Traffic Control frequencies near an airport. With no requirements for technical expertise, the Foundation operators had no idea that was happening until the authorities identified it.

From experience, I challenge the remarks about railway modelling costs, which can be even more costly than simple amateur radio equipment. Also, the railway modeller is unlikely to cause any interference to public systems outside his model installation. Therefore, why would he require any licence to operate in the same way as a radio amateur? There is no comparison in the two hobbies for this reason.

Your comment that a pass of 19 out of 26 questions should warrant a Distinguished Pass. Having taken many professional and recreational examinations over the years, I have yet to see a Distinction Pass awarded for a 73% pass! That is normally reserved for a 98-100% pass. Distinction is defined as being of ‘special honour, recognition, achievement or fame’. Another example of how our world now accepts declining standards, perhaps?

All due respect for a 10 year-old passing the Foundation Licence examination, but our hobby is not simply buying a transceiver and just operating it. That can be done without examination on CB Radio. A 10 year-old simply hasn’t been on this planet long enough to acquire much in-depth experience or knowledge of the many facets of amateur radio operating or technicalities in our ‘self training of the operator’.

John Lockwood G3XLL

Norfolk

Dear Don,

I’ve tried holding back on the Foundation exam debate, but can’t any longer.

My daughter passed her Foundation exam three years ago on the second attempt, aged eleven. What made the difference for the successful attempt was the ability of the instructors at the Dragon ARC, North Wales, themselves to make the taught material much more easily understood.

For example, the ‘inverse square law’ was made infinitely less intimidating by an instructor asking, as he walked away, making a humming noise, whether he was getting louder or quieter. That kind of thing sticks much more easily in all our minds, let alone a youngster’s. But even though the lesson material can be made more accessible, the exam wording continues to be criticised as needlessly stuffy by many.

Very few of us build a transceiver from the ground up these days, not always because we couldn’t do it, but because there is no real need to do so. It’s no longer the 1930s where you scavenged bits and bobs and made a radio out of them. We mustn’t hold the future ransom to nostalgia. Almost all of us now simply buy a radio and use it. Of course, people who want to build radios can and will, and absolutely deserve every encouragement.

The distance learning course I took was very well presented, but it was the most boring thing I’d ever studied, and many say the same thing about courses today. All I wanted to do was speak to other people, far away. If my radio broke I would, then as now, take it to someone who knew what they were doing.

There was never any point in me pretending that working as a microbiologist would make me somehow equally skilled at fixing radios as someone who did that particular job all day, every day.

Amateur radio is not a professional career. But it has often traditionally been a blend of what people or their fathers did ‘in the war’, or ‘in their day job’, and what they did in their spare time. That’s why there was quite a bit of snobbishness in the hobby, and why people who had passed a full C&G exam on radio theory were nevertheless blocked from using the HF bands, simply because they had not also passed a CW course. It was a flagrant attempt to keep things ‘the way they had always been’, and a way to preserve the bands for those who considered themselves a cut above the new intake. That attitude did amateur radio a huge amount of entirely avoidable damage up until it was changed due to external forces as the 20th century closed.

It strikes me that we need to get our priorities straight. Above all, we need more people to join, regardless of age or aims in the radio hobby. If they fall out of the equation, there is no point arguing about exam content or what people can and can’t do with radios − nobody will be there to take any interest! We need to make exams a lot friendlier,

accepting that the hobby has, for a long time now, ceased to be the natural hobby progression for people who were often professional electronics and communications workers. Very few of us are ‘GCHQ families’ (G8PMA in Letters, November 2020), so that path to radio, where the subject is always somewhere in the background already, is not really there any more.

For my money, a good Beginners’ Licence should focus, above all, on considerate operating, with almost all the electrical theory held back until the Intermediate and Full courses and exams. In support of that argument, just turn on your rig and see how long it is before someone with a Full licence and years of experience operates contrary to law or convention. A few minutes is all it will take...

John Rowlands MW1CFN Anglesey

Dear Don,

I wish to give my opinion to your nice piece in Keylines about the Foundation Licence. You are totally right. I agree 100% with your arguments even though I am 70 years old, as probably 80% of your readers are. Even I have known the difficult times most of us, elderly now, had in the last 50 years to get a licence and nice rigs/accessories. I think we should forget those times immediately after the war, where we indeed had to make by ourselves and experiment with mistakes and success some mysterious propagation and material. If somebody feels he likes radio, whether HF, VHF or UHF, let him experiment in a club or on his own, and give the girl or guy the licence after six months experimenting, after a short exam in front of experienced amateur radio operators on how to handle material, rig, antenna and connexions. Most of them usually came from CB and will know. Give them a licence with 100W (as most rigs offer 100W) and let them go and make our frequencies alive again because nowadays 70% of transmissions are digital.

Etienne Vrebos OS8D/ON8DN Belgium

( Editor’s comment: I certainly seem to have stirred up plenty of emotion as a result of that particular editorial, both for and against. I imagine most readers will stick with whatever opinion they held at the outset so I suggest we now give this one a rest!)

An Error Corrected

Dear Don,

I have just been reading October’s PW and can see an error in Tony Jones’ explanation of the operation in Fig. 3. He states that C1 starts to charge via R2. This should read as R3. This could be confusing to a newcomer to electronics. Also, in Fig. 6 the capacitor mentioned in the text as C1 is not marked, going to pin 2 of the LM324 circuit. This is in no way a criticism to Mr Jones as it was an excellent article.

David Pentin G1ZEW Merseyside

( Editor’s comment: Well spotted, David. Tony agrees that this slipped through the net and I am happy to carry your correction.)

Weather Watching

Dear Don,

The feature on Weather Watching and Radio by Georg Wiessela in the October issue contained so much useful information most of us will be working on it for months to come. Checking out the links alone will keep me busy for many a rainy day.

However, there was one minor glitch in the text when he referred to Volmet as being a ‘portfolio’ word. What he meant was ‘portmanteau’ word (first referred to as such by Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking Glass when explaining ‘mimsy’ and ‘slithy’).

Colin Hall GM4JPZ

Dundee

Mains Supplies

Dear Don,

Referring to Letters of November 2020.

I believe the American mains feed to a USA house is a 230V volt Bi-phase (centre tapped) supply to provide two115V supplies to the home from the transformer on the pole in the street.

Cookers, water heaters and other appliances that take a lot of current are wired across the 230 volts supply.

I think that information came from a Television magazine item years ago.

I did like your story about the HR joint on the pole. Which reminded me of another story in the Television magazine about a TV repair man who replaced the timer clock in his VCR, which had the clock motor winding burnt out. The replacement clock that he fitted had a similar fate.

One night going to the bathroom and turning the light on, the light was super bright! Being a television repair man, he measured the mains voltage as Very High! The reason being that the neutral connection at the substation transformer had become disconnected and the three phases were floating.

During the day the phases were loaded equally, balanced, so the voltage to his home was OK. During the night (less load on his supply) the phases were not balanced. The voltage to his home was high enough to overload the clock winding.

John Ashmore G8GXF Wolverhampton

QSLing

Dear Don,

I just had to write. I was licensed in 1981 and operated HF/VHF until I left the hobby in 1986 (abandoning my equipment and records, including QSL cards, many of which I would be proud to display now). I was persuaded by a long-term friend, G4VHL, to return to the hobby in mid2017 and what a shock was in store for me. The technical advances and superb equipment on the market just overwhelmed me. A lot of new good friends rallied around and got me up and running again. Fortunately, I was able to resurrect my original callsign and without a fee.

Another big shock, apart from the apparent relaxing of rules and regulations, was the deterioration in operating skills and general good manners on the air, which left a lot to be desired (in my mind anyway). I was military trained and am, I expect, rather over-critical and no doubt I will be told that by your readers.

I wondered whatever happened to the ‘ultimate courtesy’, the good old QSL card? LoTW and eQSL seem to have taken over and the question must be whether or not you will get the same satisfaction from these electronic facilities, as you will when you are holding that precious paper QSL? I have heard the comment “we don’t bother any more − too expensive and time consuming”. Not so, say I. Joining your national society and availing yourself of the QSL bureau does not cost the earth – probably less than you would spend on a night out or two with the boys (or girls). QSL card printing these days will not break the bank and if you have a logging programme that will print out contact details on adhesive slips, it is not going to

tax your energy that much. From my SWL days to the date I gave up the hobby, QSL cards were the most important thing to drop through my letterbox and still are. Stephen Reading G4LZD Dartmouth

Resistors

Dear Don,

Reading GW8LJJ’s article Resistors and Resistance inspires me to write some comments.

The first statement to attract my attention was the suggestion that the rating of a resistor is that below the point it burns up. Not so. Long before that point, it will become unreliable, its value changing, usually increasing, to the point where it will impair or prevent operation of the equipment in which it is fitted. For some resistors, to further illustrate the point, makers state two ratings: for normal operation or precision operation. A case from a catalogue being 0.25W or 0.125W.

An explanation of the way values are chosen was needed, as they may well seem odd to the uninitiated. They are chosen so the high end of one value’s tolerance range does not overlap the lower end of the value above.

For example, a 10Ω 20% resistor can be between 8Ω and 12Ω. Therefore, in the E6 series, there is no 8.2Ω, as it would overlap the 10Ω, as the range is 6.56Ω to 9.84Ω. As the tolerance is reduced, there are more values.

It may have been clear, but was not stated that the E values are the number between decades. Some values in the higher ranges are not the same as in the lower. For example, 6.8Ω becomes 6.81Ω, though you may think this is rather pedantic.

The E series applies to capacitors too, but as it is harder to make them to close tolerance, most values are not generally available. Electrolytic caps vary so much with time, applied voltage and aging that trying to have close-tolerance would, in any case, be futile.

It further needs to be understood that these values are what the maker guarantees were true at the time of manufacture, not what they may be by the time they get to you. They will drift with storage, and when soldered, and then with further time and with dissipation. Normally you can forget all of this, but not in precision applications. The maker’s datasheet will have all this information, but we rarely bother, or even think about these things when using them.

There are those who when ‘renovating’ equipment fail to understand the above: and change lots of resistors even if they are in tolerance, because they seem to think what they measure should be what is on the markings. The late Chas Miller of Radiophile fame labelled this ‘CCCD’ − Compulsive Component Changing Disorder. You need to understand tolerance, and what is important in a circuit, which will normally work fine with components well outside their initial tolerance, but some are more important.

The article states always replace like with like. This is not necessarily true. Often you may find a resistor that ran very hot, not because of a fault, but because the maker used too low a wattage for economy. With modern resistors it is often the PCB that suffers, the resistor still being within tolerance.

The answer here is to use either a higher rated component or to stand it off the PCB, by either kinking its legs, or putting loops in them, or both.

Philip Moss

Corrosion in Antennas

Dear Don,

I was given a 50 MHz dipole last year and a few months ago 6m was open to Spain and Portugal at fantastic signal strengths. I called six stations but couldn’t make contact. Something wrong here I thought, even with my 5W they should hear me.

The coax looked fine and not much can go wrong with a dipole, maybe corrosion at the gamma match. The SWR was good at first then increased a little after a short time. A simple RF meter showed RF present at the dipole.

I removed the SO239 socket to find corrosion underneath it, which I cleaned off, nothing wrong at the gamma match. After re-assembling it I checked with the RF meter and was pleased to see more RF coming off the dipole as indicated on the meter.

I wonder if this was why I had been given the dipole? Its performance on transmit had gone down and couldn’t be explained. If you feel your antennas are not working like they used to, check everything for corrosion.

I’ve yet to work any distant stations but am confident it’s working much better now.

Bill Kitchen G4GHB.

Ashton under Lyne

More from Bob

Dear Don,

(Thought I knew all the contests but this one below I’ve only just discovered from 2017.)

RaDAR (Rapid Deployment of Amateur Radio) Originally called SIAS (Shack in a sack), this radiosport combines speed, a portable station and efficient communications. The operator picks a four-hour timeframe within which to operate and deploys his portable station as quickly as possible. Once deployed, the operator makes a maximum of five contacts, exchanging name, signal report and exact (8 digit or more) Maidenhead location digits. Once five contacts have been made, the operator packs up the station and moves it at least 1km on foot or 6km by car.

Other modes of transport are also used, each with its own minimal distance. The operator then deploys his station at the new location, makes five more contacts, packs up and moves again, until the four hours are up. The operator with the highest contact count at the end of the day, for his chosen four-hour period of operation, wins. (Source: Wikipedia)

Here at Verulam ARC St Albans we now have so many Covid-19 inspired links that I’ve put them all on just one web page via link below. g4pvb.eu5.net/morse.htm

Possibly the most useful and timeless subject for amateur radio study is propagation. Valves, transistors, integrated circuits all come and go but propagation lives forever. Not only is it useful to study but it can be relatively easy to have a conversation about propagation with civilians as, after all, it is primarily about the sun of which we all have some understanding. Steve Nichols G0KYA presents his recent (April 2020) Understanding HF Propagation via the link below: tinyurl.com/rjbkmsv

A big thank you to David Seymour 2E0EYR for americanradiohistory.com

( Letters, June 2020). As I browsed the content it occurred to me that civilian internet has been available for some 26 years. We all know that websites come and go but maybe we don’t all know about WayBack Machine Internet Archive. Websites as old as 21 years with text and GIF images are likely saved for... well, seemingly forever. So, if you’re browsing past copies of PW and a web link is broken, then surf on over to the link below and search there:

https://archive.org

With the deepest respect to Colin Redwood G6MXL and his excellent article page 32 PW September 2020, I would be wary of using a car battery for hobby radio. Doing so could quickly ruin it beyond repair and your car won’t start. Car batteries are designed for heavy starter motor discharge then immediate recharge.

Instead use a 20A gel-cell (no leakage) leisure deep-cycle battery as used by golfers for their carts. Many are changing to lighter lithium cells so ask politely at the pro shop and they will likely be delighted to offload free old batteries along with charger. I used to have one. It petered out at the 17th hole but after fitting a lower value fuse it was ideal for my previous humble Heathkit HW8 CW activity for a couple of years. Here are some leisure battery tips: tinyurl.com/leisure-batteries

Bob Houlston G4PVB

St Albans

Morse Sounders

Dear Don,

To prove that [a] I am not yet a silent key and [b] that old dogs do know tricks, I comment on Tony G7ETW’s article ( Morse Practice Oscillators) in the November Issue.

A long time ago, but ‘After Marconi’ I belonged to the Vange club. One evening they decided to hold a construction contest. The test was to produce a circuit that made a noise in the fastest time, and the junk box was open.

While lots were scrabbling for transistors and the like, I wired a relay through its own Normally Closed contacts and, lo, a buzzer.

Should Tony G7ETW have included this in his article?

Alan Gordon G3XOI Shoreham-by-Sea

Antenna Theory?

Dear Don,

Well done to you and those around you keeping PW rolling out. These last 6 months are an ongoing serious business and I missed a couple of issues as I bought my copies at the local newsagent. My daughter then bought me a subscription so I’m back on track. It is a hard balance. We want both the magazine and the local store to survive so I view this with quite mixed feelings.

Editorial is no doubt a pressure with fewer rallies, DXpeditions etc. to report on but it’s good to have some ‘practical’ articles to read.

I think the newcomers and back to basics What Next pages are great for the many ops returning to the hobby. I have been back about 15 months now and there are many more ops listed as returning so refreshers are good.

A lot of us I think will have taken the opportunity of summer months to build and experiment with antennas. The lost cost NanoVNA devices giving even more opportunity if you really know how to use them. With this in mind I am writing to suggest or ask for articles on balun making and using an analyser such as the NanoVNA.

There are articles and webpages out there but most dive straight into

R, X, L with complex formulae without any refresh or necessary preliminary explanation of these terms, what they mean (in antenna terms) and how to use them when making or tuning an antenna. This is before we hit Smith Charts! Is there any possibility you have a good lead out there that could run a series on this subject area in PW for us please?

Wishing you and PW team the best. Phil Cracknell G0KDT Teignmouth

( Editor’s comment: Thanks Phil for the kind comments. Yes, it would be nice to run one or more articles along the lines you suggest. I will do my best – any budding authors out there who fancy tackling this topic?)