[600MRG] Modes?

[John Langridge]

Hi Jim,

My 2 cents:

Give yourself the flexibility to use TX vertical or RX only antennas.  I started out with only capabilities to listen with the RX antennas.  That was a mistake.  There have been times when the band was quiet that the TX vertical was just better than the loops or low wires.  I have since gone back and added capabilities for me to select which antenna to listen on.  The old topband mantra of having many different rx antennas available is true here, even if they are only good some of the time.

There is plenty of opportunity for CW and many of us who use it regularly.  XJM Eric and I have had many enjoyable QRQ (by MF standards!) CW QSO's with one another at 20+ wpm but the band could support those speeds at the moment and Eric has a good, quiet location and RX system.  We had a QSO earlier this week where the band was in the pits at that moment and were way down in speed and repeating a lot... So be prepared to be flexible.  The more CW operators active on the band, the more chances for CW QSO's.  This is one reason I have been courting the QRP crowd so much - lots of good CW ops willing to dig in the noise. 

Full breakin or not is a personal preference.  i do not run full breakin here because i have an array of relays that have to be properly sequenced and it was not worth the headache of making that work with PIN Diodes, etc so i just use a foot switch.


73!

john XIQ



________________________________
 From: Jim Miller <jim at jtmiller.com>
To: "600mrg at w7ekb.com group" <600MRG at w7ekb.com> 
Sent: Saturday, February 8, 2014 12:19 PM
Subject: [600MRG] Modes?
 

I'm not yet on 600m but working on some sketches for a RSN transverter for
this band for my K3.

One thing I'm not yet settled on is separate antennas for TX and RX.

I have beverages that I use on lowbands now that I could potentially use
for 630m. I could also just put up an amplified short vertical for RX if
those don't work well.

Or I could use the TX antenna (likely a wire vertical with loading top and
bottom suspended by tall oaks) as my RX antenna.

The latter would need TX/RX switching rather than just overload protection.
This would mean extra work if CW and QSK was desired.

So (finally) my question: how prevalent is CW now or expected to be as a
mode and do you find QSK on this band to be useful? Do you use normal CW
speeds of around 20-30wpm or is it normally slower and with lots of repeats
and less conversational?

Thanks!

Jim ab3cv
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