There is a way to improve the signal to noise of the CW signal. It is called the yagi or beam antenna. The tower, guy system, beam, feedline, connectors, and switching, all have considerable appeal for some of us, the same as a good paddle, or a K3 radio. My four towers and yagis were built by me--solo on the tower--and I do relate to my antenna system in the same way I do to my German-crafted cw paddle (even though I did not build it). The details about how to do anything is subject to standards about how, exactly, to do it (and without harming yourself or others). Of course you could decide that an egg is an egg no matter what you do to it (I have seen some tower systems that I would not climb). I had several tower Elmers starting with Dave Bunte, k9fn, who put up my first tower, a BX tower, at the tall height of 32 feet. I was fearful of that 32 foot tower. Now I routinely go above 100 feet with two towers at 130 feet. I turn 70 years old in September. If I had more than 4 acres I would have gone to 160 feet, for the sake of 80 meters. We all have our limitations (4 acres in my case but a ponderosa compared to many others) as well as our different ways of making art but, like a good omelet, the love of art is what makes life so pleasant, and far less dangerous. 73, Will, wj9b
CWops #1085 CWA Advisor levels II and III http://cwops.org/ On Sunday, July 12, 2020, 7:07:32 PM PDT, Wayne Burdick <[email protected]> wrote: > On Jul 12, 2020, at 6:57 PM, David Gilbert <[email protected]> wrote: > > Think of it this way ... CW works fine as both a contest mode, DXing mode, > and conversational mode. Underlaying CW with a well configured digital > signal processing scheme like that which is under FT8, except with a > different user interface than either WSJT-X or JS8, could be equally > versatile but with maybe 6-8 db better S/N ... possibly by an even greater > margin if the decoding allowed errors instead of being all or nothing. Except that (a) you don't have to know CW, and (b) you don't need a key. There goes 73% of its charm :) Wayne N6KR ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to [email protected] ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to [email protected]
