Thanks Josh! Yah, Yesterday’s KH1’s SOTA Maiden Voyage started out with a brutally steep 3+ hour bushwhack hike up through a unrelenting deadfall for a few merger 4-pts. What?! Forget the points! Our sweet reward was that KH1 produced 40 some QSOs including @F4WBN/@JH1MXV on 20/17/15m just using it’s 4’whip/17’CP My partner being SSB/FM only was so impressed he immediately signed up for CWops upon arriving home. I was totally blown away by the performance of that small 4’ whip antenna …but admit location 10,300’ with 360 degree in the clear view and solar activity helped. Despite our exhausting 2-hour struggle downclimbing in the dark (almost a full-moon) carefully GPSing our way through deadfall jungle to get to our ride. Quite the SOTAdventure!! …and YES, I kinda like that KH1 …Yah Think?
As the KH1 is expected to store the TX CW log in the same format as the KX2, I already wrote an online converter that generates a Fast Log Entry (FLE) template from the transceiver CW log (retrieving time, callsigns and band changes).
Hopefully, this should allow the lucky owners not to log anything while using the KH1 and to rely entirely on the internal logging feature.
Of course, it is still purely experimental.
Real logs for testing, comments and suggestions welcome.
I had this problem when I first learned code because I learned by writing everything down. It took a lot of work to overcome this and learn to head copy and remember callsigns, but it can be done. A very useful tool for this is the ‘echo trainer’ mode on the Morserino-32. It sends you a call (or a word) and you have to send it back using your paddle. This will help you build up a ‘buffer’ in your head. It will also teach you to recognize words rather than hearing the letters and figuring out what is being spelled out.
And now back on topic… KH1! I’m eager to find out if that tiny ATU will tune a 41’ EFRW antenna =)
I think relying solely on the rig for logging is not a good idea. In my experience there are times when the signal is too weak or the characters too ill formed for the internal Morse decoder in my KX2 to decode the incoming Morse but I am still able to make out the callsign, etc. So, I would always want to make a pencil & paper log and use the logging data for confirmation once back home.
I forced myself to learn head copying callsigns by operating CW on satellites as there isn’t a fourth hand available for a pen!! If it’s over 6 characters long, however, my memory drops the whole thing haha!!
Carlo, I don’t know how old you are but I don’t have 7mins to waste listening to someone talk when he could have said “Wow it’s here!” and attached the antenna and turned it on and let us listen to it. YMMV