The Higher Bands Open Up

I have just been skimming across the bands and this morning 28MHz is wide open, I’ve heard VKs VUs and ZLs and it’s a refreshing change to the normal quiet hiss of the band!

Interestingly there never seem to be any slow operators in the early morning, whenever I switch on first thing you always hear the diehard Dxers tapping away, mostly at speeds that I find difficult to keep up with.

Always first thing in the morning when I fire up I'm too keen and I have the typical CW operator’s problem I find I can send faster than I can receive. I call it BNC (Brain Not Correlated).

Sometimes when I hear a distant station and dive in giving a quick reply they come back at me like a machine gun because I’ve gone in at such a quick speed.  I then have to put my brain in to gear and concentrate very hard to translate the reply.

If it’s a standard reply such as “gm es tnx fer ur call ur rst 599 etc”, then I’m ok but if the conversation alters then I really need to buckle down and think! Its classic mistake that operators can make, but it’s not the end of the world, after all it’s your hobby so enjoy the challenge and it's a great way to speed up your code!

I’m still at a loss at what kit to build next, I’ve been looking at my ultimate build, the Elecraft K2, I just love that transceiver and a real challenge to build, but like all things it comes at a price which is something I just cannot afford at the moment, but one day I am going to buy it, it’s just a matter of time.

I’d also love to have the K3 the ultimate CW operators rig, but its a lot more money (nearly £2k) and I already have my super rig, the FT1000 MkV which is a very good radio. So if I ever did buy the K3 the MkV would certainly have to go to part finance the K3, which I'm not sure I could do.

In the meantime while I dream for my super kits I now want something to fill the gap of the RMs, basically it must be a challenge above the build of RockMites so more than likely its going to be a Hendricks or Oak Hills Research kit.

It must be a minimum of 5 watts with CW only and definitely have a VFO as I’m not too keen on being limited to a small section of the chosen bands.

Certainly with the RockMites it can be a pain when you switch on and the band is swamped within your particular frequency, you have little or no ability to move away. I know you can mod the RockMites but I feel I want to keep them as they are and move on to something new.

In the meantime I’ll carry on tapping away at the key especially whilst the higher bands are open.