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Hi friends!

I am in search of a small Morse Code trainer/electronic keyer small enough to fit in my pocket, and has the following features:

• Speed selectable
• Works with an iambic key, and is Type B selectable
• Has a key jack for an external keyer
• Polarity selection, I key southpaw.
• Headphone jack

Bonus:

• Can adjust tone pitch down to 440Hz

Google turns up a few things here and there, I’d just like to see if any of y’all have any immediate recommendations.

Thank you!

E: autocarrot

I got it into my head that I would like to see a spherical depiction of my QSOs. Azimuthal and other representations weren't cutting it for me.

I managed to coax an LLM to output my ADIF into a KML so I could better visualize the reach of my QSOs, and I am quite stunned. 20m has almost complete global reach, as you'll see below. Admittedly, on CW it probably does. In these visualizations, the vast majority of contacts are on FT8 20m, but there are a few dozen SSB contacts as far as Indonesia. Usually I made these contacts well before sunrise.

This is a representation of my entire logbook, so any QSO not from the SW US are 10m.

Setup: IC-7300, barefoot, 15m mast, and a 20m twinlead j-pole. Having been temporarily based in a residential area, I had quite a high noise floor from various EMI sources, and could have probably done better with weak stations had my noise floor been lower.

Moving to the west:

More west, Australia prominently visible:

Antipodal view:

Looking toward the east, the west coast of Africa coming into view:

Africa; the lonely QSO east of Madagascar is Reunion Island, got this one on FT8:

You can see a sharp decline in activity about mid-screen.

About 1m 15s remaining:

45s after 1200Z:

Granted, this is the IARU Championship. But that's a lot of people on the radio.

20m at 1500Z.

Side note: for the last three days I’ve enjoyed nearly bottomless noise floors; been making SSB QSOs to Japan, Indonesia, and even Rarotonga. Then–today of all days–the AirBnB beside my house has turned on their aircon and it’s completely wiping out all but the strongest signals. My waterfall looks like college ruled notebook paper:

1830Z Update:

1900Z. This is wild.

I currently use a ~35' (~10m) fiberglass telescoping mast, and I love it. It's great when I hoist my 10m window line j-pole (thank you KB9VBR!) and now that I'm messing around on 20m, it's just too short. My SWR is a bit higher than it ought to be on account of ground reflection since I can't get the base of the radiating element more than about ~1m (~3') off the ground.

The antenna I use (currently, at least) is fairly lightweight, so I'm not worried about mast flexion since the wight will largely be just outside mast center.

I am not to deterred by cost, and I am trying to avoid metallic antennas for fear it will mess with my radiation patterns and SWR in a new way. I am greatly interested in telescoping options.

Are you familiar with fiberglass or carbon fiber masts which get the top to a definite 15m (~50')?

Nearly all of my operations are /P, so it really has to be fairly convenient. I recognize that these requirements may be a little mutually exclusive.

Updated 5/29/2024

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I have a small dilemma regarding logging a QSO, and I'm wondering if you can guide me through it. I made a contact the other day while doing POTA, but I did not capture the entire callsign. The error was only revealed after I saw their re-spot on the POTA site; if it weren't for that small glimpse, I would never know, and we'd never confirm in QRZ.

The Eagle Scout in me suggests that I should not change my logs based on the 3rd party information, but my QSO sent me a QRZ confirmation request.

On the other hand, borrowing from aviation, I am keen to "use all available resources", recognizing that so long as we have the tech and tools, we should use them, even if that may fly in the face of radio purity.

What say ye?

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Brought the 7300 out and erected the 7-band OCF; it was huge! Literally. It spanned nearly 200’ in its longest dimension. While I could probably have done better if I were able to have gotten the feed point to 30’, I managed to make 24 contacts and participated in a 10-10 net via relay that I had chanced on while zipping around 10m.

It was a beautiful day down in EL96, I setup the radio bench under the tree for shade and kept a close eye on the antenna in case someone wandered around it.

Running barefoot, I managed QSOs with Namibia (7000+ miles), Chile, Spain, Costa Rica, and New Foundland. Amazing people all around.

Got my mom spun up and handling the radio (we got licensed at the same time a couple years ago) and the contacts nearly poured in for her.

An all around amazing day.

E: Updated the photo; the klansman look was terrible. Do not recommend.