Field Day!
Jun. 24th, 2012 11:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgp"Field day" is a collocation with multiple meanings.
To farmers, it's a trade show. To Marines and sailors, it is a painstakingly thorough cleaning of some area, though the expression is commonly used as a verb ("You people better 'turn to' and field-day this pig sty!"). In some more genteel communities, a "field day" is a day devoted to sports competitions. In the common idiom, "to have a field day" means, roughly, "to be productive in a satisfying way" (as when the press jumps all over, say, a scandal).
To an amateur radio operator, Field Day is an annual event, held the fourth weekend in June and coordinated by the American Radio Relay League. (How do you have a "day" event over a weekend? Easy! Have the event start Saturday at 1800 UTC—aka Greenwich standard time—and last until 2059 UTC on Sunday.)
I attended my first (and still only) amateur radio Field Day the year I got my license, back in 1992. I had gone with Andrew, to see if perhaps being exposed to the hurly-burly of CW, SSB, amateur television, contacts with amateur radio satellites, and so on would spark some interest in him about the technical end of the world. Apparently it didn't (at least, not immediately), and six months later, I was caught up in the "Mournful Thursday" layoff at Borland, which resulted in our family leaving California.
It only just happens that this is Field Day weekend, and I only just happened to give a listen to the 40 meter CW band last night (CW stands for "continuous wave," which is used for Morse Code transmissions), and let me tell you, it was really hopping!
When I tried making contacts using CW back in '92, there was still a 5 word-per-minute Morse Code requirement if you wanted to progress from the Novice rank to Technician, and a higher speed (12 wpm, if memory serves) requirement if you wanted to advance to the General class. I distinctly recall how, as I called "CQ" during that Field Day (a reference to a transmission "calling any station"), all of the CW operators I was competing with were pretty much as slow as I was.
My, how times have changed.
Last night, I could only catch a snippet here and there, with the only truly recognizable (to me) code being that for "CQ" itself (dah-dit-dah-dit dah-dah-di-dah).
* * * Why my fascination with CW, when it's not even a requirement for a ham license anymore? When it's been years since the last Morse key officially went off the air aboard merchant ships? When we've got cell phones and fiber optics and satellite communications and computers and wifi and Twitter and network backbones and ...?
Well, aside from being a fun skill to develop that doubtless works out new sections of gray matter, I am painfully aware (having lived through two Northeast blackouts) that all that good technology can be pretty fragile. Whenever news comes of an event like Hurricane Katrina or the earthquake in Haiti, you'll often find reports of how, if it wasn't for amateur operators, there wouldn't be any communications. And when things get really harsh, CW—as primitive as it is—is often the only technique that'll get the message through (precisely because it's "primitive").
I suspect the uniformly faster CW I heard last night was an interesting side effect of no longer having a code requirement to get a ham license. After all, operators who do hang out on the CW bands these days are fairly passionate about doing so, and hence, nobody sends at 5 wpm (indeed, the current conventional wisdom is that learners should start learning Morse at 15 wpm or higher). I suspect I didn't hear anything slower than 10-12 wpm during my little eavesdropping session last night. That'll be food for thought as I continue to reacquaint myself with Morse.
Cheers...
To farmers, it's a trade show. To Marines and sailors, it is a painstakingly thorough cleaning of some area, though the expression is commonly used as a verb ("You people better 'turn to' and field-day this pig sty!"). In some more genteel communities, a "field day" is a day devoted to sports competitions. In the common idiom, "to have a field day" means, roughly, "to be productive in a satisfying way" (as when the press jumps all over, say, a scandal).
To an amateur radio operator, Field Day is an annual event, held the fourth weekend in June and coordinated by the American Radio Relay League. (How do you have a "day" event over a weekend? Easy! Have the event start Saturday at 1800 UTC—aka Greenwich standard time—and last until 2059 UTC on Sunday.)
I attended my first (and still only) amateur radio Field Day the year I got my license, back in 1992. I had gone with Andrew, to see if perhaps being exposed to the hurly-burly of CW, SSB, amateur television, contacts with amateur radio satellites, and so on would spark some interest in him about the technical end of the world. Apparently it didn't (at least, not immediately), and six months later, I was caught up in the "Mournful Thursday" layoff at Borland, which resulted in our family leaving California.
It only just happens that this is Field Day weekend, and I only just happened to give a listen to the 40 meter CW band last night (CW stands for "continuous wave," which is used for Morse Code transmissions), and let me tell you, it was really hopping!
When I tried making contacts using CW back in '92, there was still a 5 word-per-minute Morse Code requirement if you wanted to progress from the Novice rank to Technician, and a higher speed (12 wpm, if memory serves) requirement if you wanted to advance to the General class. I distinctly recall how, as I called "CQ" during that Field Day (a reference to a transmission "calling any station"), all of the CW operators I was competing with were pretty much as slow as I was.
My, how times have changed.
Last night, I could only catch a snippet here and there, with the only truly recognizable (to me) code being that for "CQ" itself (dah-dit-dah-dit dah-dah-di-dah).
Well, aside from being a fun skill to develop that doubtless works out new sections of gray matter, I am painfully aware (having lived through two Northeast blackouts) that all that good technology can be pretty fragile. Whenever news comes of an event like Hurricane Katrina or the earthquake in Haiti, you'll often find reports of how, if it wasn't for amateur operators, there wouldn't be any communications. And when things get really harsh, CW—as primitive as it is—is often the only technique that'll get the message through (precisely because it's "primitive").
I suspect the uniformly faster CW I heard last night was an interesting side effect of no longer having a code requirement to get a ham license. After all, operators who do hang out on the CW bands these days are fairly passionate about doing so, and hence, nobody sends at 5 wpm (indeed, the current conventional wisdom is that learners should start learning Morse at 15 wpm or higher). I suspect I didn't hear anything slower than 10-12 wpm during my little eavesdropping session last night. That'll be food for thought as I continue to reacquaint myself with Morse.
Cheers...
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no subject
Date: 2012-06-24 07:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-25 03:15 pm (UTC)I remember flipping through ham magazines as a kid, and got the distinct impression that part of the challenge of amateur radio was to gain some knowledge and then actively invest it in some aspect of the hobby: build a radio, learn Morse, do direction-finding, communicate at low power over long distances, design an antenna, and so on.
With high tech comes comes the temptation to buy it and not really understand it. In my opinion, a ham whose radio came off-the-shelf from a factory in Asia and whose knowledge of CW degrades 98% without a computer and a keyboard is little different—in principle—from a kid playing Angry Birds on a game console.
Cheers...
no subject
Date: 2012-06-25 04:16 am (UTC)1. The KX1 puts out 1-2 watts at most. Field Day isn't really meant for QRP operation.
2. The antenna wouldn't match better than 3:1 on 20m, which knocked my effective power output down to maybe a quarter watt. See #1.
3. Like you, I had a very difficult time even copying the callsigns of stations on CW. I can comfortably work between 12 and 15 wpm, and can push myself up to maybe 18, but what I heard was closer to 25-30 wpm.
The last is what annoyed me most. It's been proven time and time again that CW gets through when nothing else can, but it also seems like those who are skilled at CW want nothing to do with anyone who's trying to build their speed up through the 10-15 wpm range. It's almost turning into a "good ol' boys" club; if you can't copy fast enough, you can't join them, and they won't even acknowledge a call below 20 wpm. Despite the great hue and cry from that quarter when the FCC did away with the Morse requirement, they seem to only be concerned with maintaining THEIR hold on it, instead of trying to Elmer anyone else up to speed, or even trying to get anyone interested in operating CW.
I had to pass a 5 wpm test when I got my Tech license. That was the last code test I had to take. But I still want to pick my speed up to at least 18 wpm, which is the speed at which the ARRL bulletins are sent. If the Big One hits, I intend to have as many means of communicating at my disposal as I'm able to muster. But if established operators won't acknowledge me, let alone have the patience to respond, where's the incentive?
I hope they realize they're swinging a two-edged sword, before they cut themselves as well as their intended target.
I've ranted long enough for one night.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-25 03:22 pm (UTC)And I also noticed, when I ramped the program back to just two letters (the starting point of the Koch method), I could distinguish the letters (W and B) in my head pretty well, but it would appear that my hand muscles are simply no longer capable of writing that fast. (Whether that deserves a :^) or :^( is open to debate.)
I've seen your point made in other places on the web, just not as well. I guess I'll just have to deal with the problem when I come up against it. In any event, I have a couple of local hams in mind as potential Elmer candidates.
Cheers...