Hello.

Great news (for me), I found a Norcal 40A kit on Ebay! It isn't sold as a kit but as a PCB with a bag of components. I call that a kit, but oh well. The Norcal 40, precursor of the Elecraft K1, was designed by our member Wayne, co-founder of Elecraft; or was it K8IQY? I can't remember. The PCB files were released in the wild and some people made runs of the board. A club in England put a kit together for its members and apparently had some left over... I don't know if they have more but a quick search on Ebay for "Norcal 40" will answer that question.

The Norcal 40 is a single band CW transceiver with the amazing receive current of 15mA! Power output is around 2.5W, drawing around 200mA. It will run seemingly forever on most battery packs. It is in the same category as the Small Wonder Labs SW+ from Dave Benson.

There will be a video of course, if it works, and I don't see why not...
Anyone here has used one before?

Gil.

Hello. I made a lot of great contacts from Florida to Eastern Europe using a PAR 10/20/40 end-fed half-wave hanging vertically, including one to Estonia using 1.3W. Stateside contacts fell into a 800 to 1300 miles radius... I had very few contacts with Western Europe. Not much success between 50 to 800 miles, though Ray and I had almost daily contacts at 820 miles.

I observed the same thing here in the South of France: Easy contacts to England, Germany and Eastern Europe, all around the same distance; nothing to, say, the Paris region...

Gil.

QuoteNo tuner needed and you don´t have to care about ground connection.

Same as an end-fed half-wave...

Gil.

You can probably just lower your power on 10m, which doesn't need much to skip very far...

Gil.

Some DMR handheld radios have built-in encryption, like the TYT MD-680.

Gil.

Hello. I use the Mini PRO SC, so far no problems, but I don't use digital modes much...

Gil.

This antenna seems overly complicated compared to a simple 49:1 or 64:1 transformer...

Gil.

Hello. I think it will take paint well if you sand it before then clean it with acetone. Why 36ft? You can't make a half-wave on any ham band with 36ft... Do you mean an end-fed random wire?
Watch this video:


Gil.

It certainly isn't what it used to be... A half-wave end-fed wire with a 49:1 transformer would be the best antenna for CB IMHO. Height is your friend for local comms...
Gil.

Great, thanks for sharing :-)

Gil.

QuoteI am interested in participating in CW traffic nets, even though it's completely obsolete

Great. It isn't obsolete at all though. Even if it is no longer officially used by most countries, Morse code is still the most efficient way to make contact with the simplest radios. That won't change any time soon.

Gil.

QuoteThat is you wait until you recognize the word before writing it down, and while writing, you're listening for the next word. It's not easy, but it's kind of fun.

I doubt I could do both at once... Maybe at 15wpm, but not 20... More practice needed...

Gil.

QuoteBut does this method work when you are using insulated wire ?

It should... I prefer to spool the wire on a stick... What I usually do though is simply cut the wire little by little, noting how many KHz change I get per inch.

Gil.

Hello. I just can't really write much faster than about 15wpm... I might be able to push to 20 on a very good day, but not faster. That said, I have never really tried using a keyboard. The reason is that since I operate mostly portable, I do not carry a computer with me... So for me, above 20wpm, it's head-copy only, but I miss a lot...

Gil.