Alan and others:
Personally, I never use a keyboard on the air. I type with only one
finger (and have no interest in learning to type with all ten), and
I'd make too many mistakes trying to use a keyboard under the stress
of on-the-air operating. Where a keyboard is useful is in programming
the messages into a memory keyer. The other reason I prefer keyer
paddles is that my hand sending ability is fairly hard earned, and I
do not want to lose it.
I do not know how many operators used keyboards on Field Day, but
everybody seemed to be going the normal 20-22 wpm that one typically hears.
We did have one instance of a FD operator slowing down in response to
a slow call from one of our GOTA operators.
Why didn't they call slow CQs and hope for slow answers? They were
using an antenna only 20 feet up, and did not have a very strong
signal. The chances of their CQ standing out in the din were not
great. All our GOTA contacts were "search and pounce."
I've had quite a few very constructive suggestions from list members
of how to find people with whom to make slow contacts. I am very
appreciative of the information, and will pass it on to the people who need it.
Our FD operation was class 2F. We operated from the local chapter of
the Red Cross (our club does quite a few emergency exercises, and
real emergency operations in cooperation with the Red Cross). There
is a permanent ham station (along with a great deal of non-ham comm
gear) in the comm room of the chapter house, and we used that as the
GOTA station. The GOTA station made about 60 QSOS mostly on SSB. As
mentioned before, the CW was just too fast for our GOTA operators.
We lashed up three temporary stations in a chapter house conference
room. One of our two transmitters was set up for PSK on 40 and 20 m;
it made about 120 PSK contacts, with 100 of those being made by a 12
year old ham. The other transmitter was a regular SSB/CW rig
operating on 80/40/20 m; on that one we made about 420 QSOs, about
280 on CW and 140 on SSB. (Curiously, we did not make a single QSO on
75 m SSB.) We also ran an "extra VHF" station on 6m and had about 60
QSOS on SSB and a handful on 6m CW. Remarkably, our PSK operation
scored more points than our SSB operation.
We set up the lashup configuration in about 4 hours, including the
installation of antennas (in the rain, naturally). It also took about
an hour to knock it down, and put the site back into pristine condition.
Some traditionalists may look askance at an F class FD operation. Can
you do a real Field Day indoors? Absolutely! In a real emergency, we
do not set up out in the woods; we converge at the Red Cross and
coordinate operations from there. Our F class FD operation is just
like the sort of temporary lashup that we'd put together in a real
emergency. We had several emergency response officials and several
elected officials including the Chair of the Homeland Security
Committee for the Maine House visit the site, and they were all very
impressed with how smoothly everything was running.
It was the best FD we ever had.
73,
Steve
AA4AK
At 06:13 PM 6/26/2006, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I remember reading the results of a poll on K3WWP's website that indicated
about 1/3 of cw folks used keyboards. I wonder if during contests if you may
have a higher percentage on keyboard making it a bit more difficult to slow
down (change settings) for the slower operators?
I sort of like my CW drawl and probably won't change much in the next few
years. But are many of you changing to keyboards?
Alan KB7MBI
Woodinville, WA
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