KN3I, John, and AF3Z, Jim, were talking on 985 about Sideswiper keys. Technically, it’s a straight key. It’s 2 straight keys together, so it’s not considered an automatic keyer. You can optionally use either key to manually key a dit or a dah. Sideswiper is sometimes called a Cootie Key. It sounds interesting, since it’ll not race me on dits.
VE4ARM Beacon
I was able to hear a 10M beacon today at 28193.180kHz:
E E E E E VVV DE VE4ARM / B AMATEUR RADIO MUSEUM / AUSTIN MANITOBA / EN 09 E E E
US-1398 Pine Grove Furnace: 2024-10-20
I went camping and activating Pine Grove Furnace, US-1398, and Michaux Forest, US-5471. I stretched the EFHW over the parking lot, because I thought it wouldn’t be busy. I got 21 FT8 contacts and 2 CW contacts to other parks.
First CW Hunting POTA
I got in W1JMA’s log when they were activating US-7545. on 7047.5kHz. They looked me up in QRZ, so knew my name and location. I sent 599 and received 599. It was a super-minimal exchange, because I fumbled a lot.
I had to read a bit about how to correct errors, and I soon stumbled into AF3Z on 7036kHz, and I saw a funny series of attempted corrections: “a littr eee a littr eee a bit”
Later, I Got a second contact, KV4UD.