Stuart Longland VK4MSL wrote:

My only gripe is that Yaesu for some reason decided that it would use
NiMH cells in its battery packs... Li-ion would have been lighter and
higher density. Heaven forbid, gel-cell batteries would do better
than NiMH! But that's the choice they went with, and we all have to
live with it.

It's because lithium cells are a disaster waiting to happen. If you charge
them improperly they will catch fire. If you discharge them to "empty" they
are permanently dead.

They also die after around 300 charge cycles. ANY power put in is a charge
cycle, so laptops made in the last couple of years will no longer "float"
a lithium battery. They let it discharge to at least 95% left before
recharging it.

The latest NiMH batteries will go through 1000 cycles. Compared to litium
batteries they are bulletproof. They are also a lot cheaper.

The main reason they are so common is that people don't understand their
problems and like them because they are so light in comparison to
NiMH cells. The lightness disapears when you find out a 450mAH battery will
be trash if you use it anywhere near that amount.

BTW, they are dangerous corosive trash, much worse than NiMH cells.

Companies like them because they can claim the device has a long battery
life, low weight and in 6 months to a year be back buying a new battery.
Since the battery is proprietary at best and permanently installed at worst
it's a win win for them either way.

The bigest problem I have with NiMH batteries is that they no longer sell
large size batteries to the general public. Yes you can get real C or D cells
from battery specialists (which are rare here), but generally all you can get
is AA batteries or C or D cells which are just sleeved AA cells (with the
corresponding capacity).

I would not mind if I could get the sleeves, but no one carries them here. :-(

After all, in my 290RII which takes a lot of C cells, sleeved AA batteries
with 2700mAh capacity would far out last the NiCad ones I had in it.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel N3OWJ/4X1GM
New word I coined 12/13/09, "Sub-Wikipedia" adj, describing knowledge or
understanding, as in he has a sub-wikipedia understanding of the situation.
i.e possessing less facts or information than can be found in the Wikipedia.

Mark Conrad wrote:


If one rig stands out head and shoulders above others for CW work,
then I would be strongly tempted to favor that rig.

dave wrote:

That would be the K3.

http://www.sherweng.com/table.html

Maybe forehead above, but certainly not head and shoulders. One receiver test
does not make a radio and many people prefer the Ten-Tec to the K3.

It's a matter of taste, ergonomics and what you want to do with the radio.
If you like full QSK, the older Ten-Tec and Drake rigs with their almost
noiseless receviers, exact PTO tuning, and "good sound" are more
comfortable in a relatively empty band.

Being able to extract that one weak signal in a pile-up is a different matter,
but many people don't care to. I would not want to spend an entire afternoon
listening to a 250Hz filter, no matter what it was made of (crystal, mechaincal,
digital, etc). Someone else might.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel N3OWJ/4X1GM
New word I coined 12/13/09, "Sub-Wikipedia" adj, describing knowledge or
understanding, as in he has a sub-wikipedia understanding of the situation.
i.e possessing less facts or information than can be found in the Wikipedia.

Mark Conrad wrote:


If one rig stands out head and shoulders above others for CW work,
then I would be strongly tempted to favor that rig.

(assuming of course diversity antennas to minimize fading)

Playing with CW is just a personal choice, in my case.

Mark

That would be the K3.

http://www.sherweng.com/table.html

In article , dave
wrote:

If one rig stands out head and shoulders above others for CW work,
then I would be strongly tempted to favor that rig.

(assuming of course diversity antennas to minimize fading)

Playing with CW is just a personal choice, in my case.

Mark

That would be the K3.

http://www.sherweng.com/table.html


I must admit, I was overwhelmed by the technical
terms in that website.

Are there any books that explain the practical
significance of those terms as applied to rating
one rig higher than another rig for a particular
purpose or use?

I somehow doubt if the ARRL handbook will go into
enough detail about those terms.


I realize that all-in-one rigs are a compromise,
some manufacturers favor one use over another.


Imagine the extreme difficulty of building a rig from
scratch, trying to build one that has all the features of
a commercial rig.

What surprises me is that all the commercial names that
I recognize from 55 years ago are still in business. g

Mark

In article , Geoffrey S.
Mendelson wrote:

Mark Conrad mused...
If one rig stands out head and shoulders above others for CW work,
then I would be strongly tempted to favor that rig.

If you like full QSK, the older Ten-Tec

Good Grief, do they still sell the Ten-Tec, I used to own one
in the old days, a nice little full break-in rig.


Being able to extract that one weak signal in a pile-up is a
different matter, but many people don't care to. I would
not want to spend an entire afternoon listening to a
250Hz filter, no matter what it was made of (crystal,
mechaincal, digital, etc). Someone else might.

What! - watch it, that would be heaven for me ;-)

Of course I would demand a few modern touches, such as
automatically generating morse code by first speaking
into a microphone and converting my voice to text,
(very easy to do, BTW, using modern
speech recognition software, like "MacSpeech"
for the Mac, or "Dragon NaturallySpeaking"
on a Windows computer)
- then feeding that text into a device that would change
the text into morse code and store it temporarily in
a computer buffer - - - to be dumped into the xmtr
at a touch of a button for morse-code transmission
to the distant station.

I fantasize about finding a device that will change
morse code into text, because modern computers
can easily change text to an artificial voice,
which nowadays sounds exactly like a real person.

Perhaps the very high speed "burst" guys (RTTY?)
know of such a device.

As regards listening to the high-pitched hiss of a
narrow CW filter, seems to me in the old days that I
kinda got around that by first using a somewhat wider
filter, like 500Hz, then shutting off my receivers
BFO entirely. (is shutting off the BFO still possible
on modern CW rigs?)

Then I would fire up a small independent BFO I kept
on the table next to my rig, to generate the necessary
audio signal for my ears.

The independent BFO was extremely weak by design,
so that any strong CW signal next to the weak one
was reduced to the same weak audio.

Mark

Mark Conrad wrote:

Good Grief, do they still sell the Ten-Tec, I used to own one
in the old days, a nice little full break-in rig.

Ten-Tec is alive and well, still selling ham rigs. Their current top of the line
the Orion II is as good as or better than the K3, depending upon whom you ask.
I've never used either, so I am not one to ask. :-)

Their older rigs still work, Ten-Tec still fixes them when they can, and
just recently stopped selling the manuals and now has them online for free
download.

There may be some changes coming, the head of the ham radio division just
left. He bought Vibroplex, is moving the company to where he lives and will
run it. There were some joint Ten-Tec Vibroplex projects in the past if I
remember correctly, maybe there will be more.



Being able to extract that one weak signal in a pile-up is a
different matter, but many people don't care to. I would
not want to spend an entire afternoon listening to a
250Hz filter, no matter what it was made of (crystal,
mechaincal, digital, etc). Someone else might.

What! - watch it, that would be heaven for me ;-)


How long has it been since you've been on the air? It may not be as wonderful
as your memories. If it is, good there are plenty of rigs with filters like
that out there for you to buy. There are also DSP audio filters to add on
as you please.



Of course I would demand a few modern touches, such as
automatically generating morse code by first speaking
into a microphone and converting my voice to text,
(very easy to do, BTW, using modern
speech recognition software, like "MacSpeech"
for the Mac, or "Dragon NaturallySpeaking"
on a Windows computer)
- then feeding that text into a device that would change
the text into morse code and store it temporarily in
a computer buffer - - - to be dumped into the xmtr
at a touch of a button for morse-code transmission
to the distant station.


Sure but why? Why not just use SSB.



I fantasize about finding a device that will change
morse code into text, because modern computers
can easily change text to an artificial voice,
which nowadays sounds exactly like a real person.

My AEA Morse Machine 3 did that, I expect there are programs around to do that.
Come to think of it so did my PK-232. My guess is that there are a lot of
people out there using such devices (keyboards to morse and morse to ascii)
than you would think. It's easy to tell the spacing and timing is too perfect.

As regards listening to the high-pitched hiss of a
narrow CW filter, seems to me in the old days that I
kinda got around that by first using a somewhat wider
filter, like 500Hz, then shutting off my receivers
BFO entirely. (is shutting off the BFO still possible
on modern CW rigs?)

What is a BFO? Seriously, the high end rigs don't use them. They detect CW
using the product detector (SSB) or some similar method.

If that's what you want there are still a lot of older rigs out there,
lovingly maintained and updated.

There are yahoo lists for Yaseu (fox-tango) and other lists for ten-tec and
drake. You should be able to find someone with the exact rig you want if that's
what turns you on.

BTW, there is no law that limits the amount of radios you own, and since
you are in the US, you don't have to register them when you buy them and
notify the authorities that you sold them. You don't even need a license to
buy them so you can scrounge around, buy an older rig (or a new one if you
want) and start out by listening.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel N3OWJ/4X1GM
New word I coined 12/13/09, "Sub-Wikipedia" adj, describing knowledge or
understanding, as in he has a sub-wikipedia understanding of the situation.
i.e possessing less facts or information than can be found in the Wikipedia.

On Sat, 20 Mar 2010, Mark Conrad wrote:


Now ya see what happens when an old ham is away from his ARRL
handbook for 55 years.

If you know about Ten-Tec, and coherent CW, then it hasn't been 55 years.

Ten-Tec started in '68 or '69.

Coherent CW didn't arrive till the early seventies.

Michael VE2BVW

In article , Geoffrey S.
Mendelson wrote:

Mark Conrad wrote:
Good Grief, do they still sell the Ten-Tec, I used to own one
in the old days, a nice little full break-in rig.

Ten-Tec is alive and well, still selling ham rigs. Their current
top of the line the Orion II is as good as or better than the K3,
depending upon whom you ask. I've never used either,
so I am not one to ask. :-)

Okay, then that is yet another rig for me to check out.



How long has it been since you've been on the air? It may not
be as wonderful as your memories.

I am guessing at 55 years, and as you state memory is a very
fickle thing, often wrong. I had two licenses, both extra class
over a period of years, after I let one of those licenses lapse.

I am not certain of the call sign, I think it was W6IXC, but the
other I am _certain_ was W6TAM because one of my friends
suggested that meant "Terrified Ancient Mariner" after my
sailboat exploits offshore the California coast in various small
sailboats ranging in size between an 8 foot "sabot" to a 27 foot
"Ericson" sailboat.



Of course I would demand a few modern touches, such as
automatically generating morse code by first speaking
into a microphone and converting my voice to text,
(very easy to do, BTW, using modern
speech recognition software, like "MacSpeech"
for the Mac, or "Dragon NaturallySpeaking"
on a Windows computer)
- then feeding that text into a device that would change
the text into morse code and store it temporarily in
a computer buffer - - - to be dumped into the xmtr
at a touch of a button for morse-code transmission
to the distant station.


Sure but why? Why not just use SSB.

No rational reason, there is no accounting for why some
people prefer to do things the hard way. ;-)



I fantasize about finding a device that will change
morse code into text, because modern computers
can easily change text to an artificial voice,
which nowadays sounds exactly like a real person.

My guess is that there are a lot of people out there using
such devices (keyboards to morse and morse to ascii)
than you would think.
It's easy to tell, the spacing and timing is too perfect.

Hmm, I suspect I did not get across my exact meaning,
my fault, sorry about that.

I _meant_ a device that will change the _incoming_
morse code dots and dashes to an artificial voice.

In other words, change this code at 60 wpm:

_ _ . . . . . . _ _ _ _ _ _ _


....into this artificial voice from an audio speaker:

"Best Wishes, Old Man"


....such that a ham newbie who did not even know the
morse code would be able to listen to a CW signal
rattling along at 60 wpm and have that signal
converted to speech that he could understand.

In theory it is possible, given a loud clean
CW signal.

I would hate to be the guy to design such a device,
it would not be a trivial project.



What is a BFO? Seriously, the high end rigs don't use
them. They detect CW using the product detector (SSB)
or some similar method.

Well that shows how behind the times I am. Heck, I still
think in terms of vacuum tubes (Fleming valves?)

The below website considers the ancient BFO technology,
explains it in words even a senile old ham like me
can understand:

http://www.tpub.com/neets/book12/51.htm





Consider using a very weak RF Beat Frequency Oscillator
(BFO) to discriminate between four very close CW
signals, such as:

7,250,500 Hz (desired signal)
7,250,520 Hz (interfering signal #1)
7,249,500 Hz (interfering signal #2)
7,249,520 Hz (interfering signal #3)

A very weak, very stable, tunable BFO can create a local
RF signal at a frequency of say 7,250,000 Hz

Two resulting audio "beat frequecies" result, assuming
a ham can "turn off" the regular BFO or "product detector"
that usually creates the audio coming out of the speaker:

1) 500 Hz
2) 520 Hz

Heh, I am in deep doo-doo, so I shift my local RF BFO
to a slightly different frequency of 7,251,000 Hz

Four resulting audio "beat frequencies" result:

1) 500 Hz (desired signal)
2) 480 Hz (interfering signal #1)
3) 1500 Hz (interfering signal #2)
4) 1480 Hz (interfering signal #3)


An audio filter should be able to separate the
desired 500 Hz audio from the 480 Hz audio,
I hope.


Anyone have any experience with those audio
filters for a CW signal? I never used one,
do they really work?



BTW, there is no law that limits the amount of
radios you own, and since you are in the US,
you don't have to register them when you buy them
and notify the authorities that you sold them.
You don't even need a license to buy them...

Good Grief, are those restrictions common in a lot
of countries?

USA will likely become that way also, if our present
political ding-ding gets his way to turn this country
into a socialist paradise, with Big Brother taking care
of all our problems from cradle to grave. [sic]

I am so old I can remember when the people ran the USA,
now the politicians are busy taking away a lot of our
freedoms, one by one, and they have no intention of
ever returning control to the people.

Mark

Mark Conrad wrote:

Hmm, I suspect I did not get across my exact meaning,
my fault, sorry about that.

I _meant_ a device that will change the _incoming_
morse code dots and dashes to an artificial voice.


No, I got that. My AEA MM3 could do that, and so could my Pk-232. I still
have the MM3, I traded the PK-232 to someone who had better use for it
when I moved here in 1996.

In other words, change this code at 60 wpm:

_ _ . . . . . . _ _ _ _ _ _ _


...into this artificial voice from an audio speaker:

"Best Wishes, Old Man"


...such that a ham newbie who did not even know the
morse code would be able to listen to a CW signal
rattling along at 60 wpm and have that signal
converted to speech that he could understand.

In theory it is possible, given a loud clean
CW signal.

I would hate to be the guy to design such a device,
it would not be a trivial project.

Actually it is quite trivial. There is lots of digital decoding software
for the PC out there and morse code is one of the simplest forms of
digital encoding. Since probably 99% of all high speed code is machine
generated, either by computer or keyer, it's uniform enough to be
easily decoded.

There is basicly 3 levels of code out there, the slow hand code which ranges
from really well done to almost impossible to copy sloppy, the mid range
keyer code and bug code where the individual characters are perfectly spaced,
but the spacing between them varies as the operater has to think between
them and the computer sent buffered code, where all of the thinking is
done before the send button is pushed, so it all comes out perfectly timed
and spaced.

The last two really are trivial to decode compared to any digital mode,
and the first ranges from easy to almost impossible.

A few years ago, it was theorized that one of the highest scoring stations
in a CW contest was exactly what you asked about. A ham who could barely
copy code using a decoding and sending program. It extracted the
callsign from the received code and replied with a signal report of 599
in perfectly sent perfectly spaced machine generated code.

A web search on "morse code decoding programs" found plenty, and
this is probably the cheapest device on the market:

http://www.mfjenterprises.com/Produc...ductid=MFJ-461

73,

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel N3OWJ/4X1GM
New word I coined 12/13/09, "Sub-Wikipedia" adj, describing knowledge or
understanding, as in he has a sub-wikipedia understanding of the situation.
i.e possessing less facts or information than can be found in the Wikipedia.

In article , Geoffrey S.
Mendelson wrote:

I would hate to be the guy to design such a device,
it would not be a trivial project.

Actually it is quite trivial. There is lots of digital decoding software
for the PC out there and morse code is one of the simplest forms of
digital encoding. Since probably 99% of all high speed code is machine
generated, either by computer or keyer, it's uniform enough to be
easily decoded.
A web search on "morse code decoding programs" found plenty, and
this is probably the cheapest device on the market:

http://www.mfjenterprises.com/Produc...ductid=MFJ-461


Great, I will also search the web for others, as you suggested.

I can see I have quite a lot to catch up on. With any luck,
my books should arrive today at my rural post office.

Really looking forward to getting back, only hope my
ancient brain is up to the task.

Most of my neurons have mutated into morons,
my synapses have not snapped in ages. My brain has
shrunk so much that I am afraid to shake my head,
for fear of hearing a rattling noise.

Mark