On 10 Apr 2014 at 8:10, Wade Staggs wrote: (in part)
> I actually had a Newly Minted General Class last night, tell me that I
> was 30 Hz. Low in Frequency. I WAS THE NET CONTROL! 30 Hz. my left
> elbow! Looked at my Net Preamble again and sure enough .... it does
> say on or about 3xxx KC. which causes more Grief when they ask what
> the heck Kilocycles is supposed to be!
It's not just "newly minted Generals". As a former net control for our section
cw traffic net I
often ran into old timers that apparently had no concept of "zero beat". Our
preamble
included QNZ yet often stations several hundred hertz off frequency (the
frequency of net
control station..not published frequency :-) would attempt to check in. In my
case as NCS
that was a problem as I am nearly deaf and could not even hear them.
Sooo......... perhaps Ten Tec could include a simple automatic zero beat
indicator for use in
CW mode. It's not hard...I made one for my own use since I cannot reliably get
to zero beat
without help. The circuit is a PIC processor which reads the incoming audio
and matches it
to whatever CW offset one has programmed. When within +/- 40 hz or so of ZB a
led flashes
following the dits and dahs. When within +/- 25 hz or so the led brightens
(and still flashes).
I've been using this thing now for several years and it works well for me.
Very simple and
automatic.
I think this would be a good teaching moment for TT also. In the early days
they had a
section of the transceiver manual dedicated to teaching us about the
differences between
tube and solid state finals. That was interesting and informative. In this
case they could
teach us that net control (or the station calling CQ) sets the net frequency
and the ZB
indicator helps us to get on that frequency.
Of course not everyone is nearly deaf so most don't need the indicator. I do
wish more folks
would learn how to zero beat and do it though. :-) Not ranting. Just
pointing out that some
of us need a little help as we age. :-)
73,
-Lee-
WA3FIY
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