[UK-CONTEST] Keyer or Keyboard? (Longish)

[Dave Sergeant]

On 8 Jun 2005 at 22:45, G3SJJ wrote:

> Just reflecting on my experiences during NFD over last weekend and
> wondered if I could illicit some from differing schools of thought on
> CW contesting.
> 
> I was recently looking at a photograph of myself operating NFD around
> 1970 using an ETM2 transistorised keyer, I recall using one of the
> first logic designs in the late 70s and then G3RVM's Ultimatic, moving
> to the N0II, on to the ETM90 and finally the microHam Keyer using
> WinKey, (Curtis A, Auto Character Spacing.)  Throughout all this I
> have been an active contester moving from paper logging to computer
> logging about 16 years ago. For me, operating technique consists of
> two important aspects:

Perhaps I am also an 'Old Fogey', I have never ever used keyboard CW 
sending in any contest and never seen the need of it. Use of a normal 
key gives you far more control - you are in charge at all times. 
Perhaps this is linked to my QRP operating, which means most of the 
time I am in S&P mode, and also using QSK where an instant change 
from sending to listening is very useful. No point in sending when 
you know the other bloke has already come back to somebody else. I 
cannot see how you can get that instant response from a keyboard, 
short of hovering your finger over the escape key all the time. As it 
happens I can send perfectly for many hours quite effortlessly with a 
normal key, why should I need a keyboard to do that?

By the way, I now have a Compaq Armada laptop to replace my broken 
one, which will be used in vengeance in next weeks club challenge. 
But that doesn't solve the NFD problem as it won't run off 12V!

Anyway, there have been very few postings on here with NFD results, 
so here goes. At Bracknell G4BRA/P we operated again in the low power 
section (using this time the 10W limit, so cannot call it QRP!), and 
battery powered. Results are:

                         160m    80m   40m  20m  15m  10m  Total
 
Valid QSOs:         105    134     84     52     10      0      385
Total Points:         804    496   299    176     32      0    1807

We operated the first twelve hours (well not quite, we didn't start 
till 1615z). Operators were just myself and John G3NCN (an even more 
old time operator than myself..). Station worked well apart from a 
couple of glitches. It was decided to use John's K2 instead of mine - 
that was the first delay as its sidetone was too low to hear in the 
tent and then its serial interface wouldn't talk to SD. So we went 
back to my K2 which got round those problems. My old 386 laptop we 
had used in the past gave up the ghost just before WPX when its 
backlight failed. We had no other laptop available to run off a 12V 
supply except an old Zenith floppy disk based 8086, so used that - it 
was actually magic - big display, interfaced to the K2 no problems, 
and flawless. The only problem was the delay after each QSO when it 
wrote away to the floppy. Bring back the old technology...

The only other problem was the main battery in the trailer, powering 
only the computer and lighting as the K2 was off gel cels, decided to 
go flat at 3am. Managed to keep going with that battery on charge 
from the car and the lights turned off.

Anybody work much on 10m? Every time we listened it was stone dead!

73 Dave G3YMC

http://www.davesergeant.com