"N2EY" wrote

There was an ARRL HQ station before W1AW. What was its callsign?

----- W1MK


There's a second callsign for the ARRL lab. What is/was it?

----- W1INF


More trivia: There is an IARU HQ call sign. What is it? While it may
have a certain familiarity about it, especially the suffix, what is the
significance of the prefix?

73, de Hans, K0HB

"KØHB" wrote in message
hlink.net...

"N2EY" wrote

There was an ARRL HQ station before W1AW. What was its callsign?

----- W1MK


There's a second callsign for the ARRL lab. What is/was it?

----- W1INF


More trivia: There is an IARU HQ call sign. What is it? While it may
have a certain familiarity about it, especially the suffix, what is the
significance of the prefix?

73, de Hans, K0HB

4U1ITU is the station of the International Amateur Radio Club at ITU
HQ in Geneva ... I've operated the station. The significance of the
prefix is that 4U's are UN callsigns.

73,
Carl - wk3c

In article k.net, "KØHB"
writes:

"N2EY" wrote

There was an ARRL HQ station before W1AW. What was its callsign?

----- W1MK

You are correct, sir! And before that, it was 1MK

There's a second callsign for the ARRL lab. What is/was it?

----- W1INF

"It's Never Finished" - again correct.

More trivia: There is an IARU HQ call sign. What is it?

That's easy: NU1AW

While it may
have a certain familiarity about it, especially the suffix, what is the
significance of the prefix?

The original system for licensed amateur calls was a number and two or three
letters. Maxim held 1AW, for example. This worked fine until amateur began
working internationally and there was no way to tell what country a ham was
in. When the first shortwave QSO was made by in November of 1925, the stations
involved were 1QP, 1MO and 8AB - the last one being in France.

So amateurs invented the idea of unofficial prefixes. "NU" meant "North
america, United states". So while Maxim's call was shown on the license as 1AW,
on the air he would use NU1AW to indicate where he was. Other countries had
different prefixes, all according to the unoffficial system

To emphasize that the prefixes were unofficial, they were usually written lower
case: nu1AW

The situation was finally sorted out at one of the radio conferences of the
'20s (1927, I think) and the USA decided that American ham calls would all
start with W (in CONUS) and K (outside CONUS).

73 de Jim, N2EY

Mike,

Sounds to me like you were experiencing front end overload in your
receiver ... when the signal exceeds the dynamic range of your receiver,
all sorts of things happen and the signal can appear to be MUCH wider
than it actually is.

To verify this, turn off the preamp (if you have one), and switch in about
20 dB of attenuation before the front end of the receiver and see if it
all gets better ...

73,
Carl - wk3c

"Mike Coslo" wrote in message
...
The question kind of states it. I suppose that the BW might be wider as
the speed increases.

The reason I ask is that on 3580 tonight, we're all sitting there fat,
dumb, and happy, when W1AW starts it's CW broadcast. And it's some 700
kHz wide!!! And now I'd swear it's almost 3kHz wide. That's like SSB!!!

Needless to say, their strong signal was pretty tough on all us 5 and
ten watters. you could get most of a message through, but it took a lt
of the fun out of it.

What the heck , over?

- Mike KB3EIA -

Carl R. Stevenson wrote:

Mike,

Sounds to me like you were experiencing front end overload in your
receiver ... when the signal exceeds the dynamic range of your receiver,
all sorts of things happen and the signal can appear to be MUCH wider
than it actually is.

To verify this, turn off the preamp (if you have one), and switch in about
20 dB of attenuation before the front end of the receiver and see if it
all gets better ...

Will do. Thanks Carl. The other users wer complaining about it too, but
they could have been experiencing the same problem.

- Mike KB3EIA -

From the ARRL License Manual 1976:
CW Bandwidth = wpm X 4 (e.g., 40 WPM = 160 Hz)
"With proper shaping, the necessary keying bandwidth is equal to 4
times the speed in words per minute for International Morse Code;
e.g. at 25 words per minute, the bandwidth is approximately 100 cycles."

--
73 From The Wilderness Keyboard
==================================
"Mike Coslo" wrote in message
...
The question kind of states it. I suppose that the BW might be wider as
the speed increases.

The reason I ask is that on 3580 tonight, we're all sitting there fat,
dumb, and happy, when W1AW starts it's CW broadcast. And it's some 700
kHz wide!!! And now I'd swear it's almost 3kHz wide. That's like SSB!!!

Needless to say, their strong signal was pretty tough on all us 5 and
ten watters. you could get most of a message through, but it took a lt
of the fun out of it.

What the heck , over?

- Mike KB3EIA -

From the ARRL License Manual 1976:
CW Bandwidth = wpm X 4 (e.g., 40 WPM = 160 Hz)
"With proper shaping, the necessary keying bandwidth is equal to 4
times the speed in words per minute for International Morse Code;
e.g. at 25 words per minute, the bandwidth is approximately 100 cycles."

Also -- suspect your receiver bandwidth and dynamic range -- try some
attenuation and reduce RF gain or Kenwoods AIP -- helps with strong adjacent
signals.

73 From The Wilderness Keyboard
==================================
"Mike Coslo" wrote in message
...
The question kind of states it. I suppose that the BW might be wider as
the speed increases.

The reason I ask is that on 3580 tonight, we're all sitting there fat,
dumb, and happy, when W1AW starts it's CW broadcast. And it's some 700
kHz wide!!! And now I'd swear it's almost 3kHz wide. That's like SSB!!!

Needless to say, their strong signal was pretty tough on all us 5 and
ten watters. you could get most of a message through, but it took a lt
of the fun out of it.

What the heck , over?

- Mike KB3EIA -

"Mike Coslo" wrote in message
...
The question kind of states it. I suppose that the BW might be wider as
the speed increases.

The reason I ask is that on 3580 tonight, we're all sitting there fat,
dumb, and happy, when W1AW starts it's CW broadcast. And it's some 700
kHz wide!!! And now I'd swear it's almost 3kHz wide. That's like SSB!!!

Did you mean 700Hz wide (you typed 700kHz).

Cheers,
Bill K2UNK

Bill Sohl wrote:
"Mike Coslo" wrote in message
...

The question kind of states it. I suppose that the BW might be wider as
the speed increases.

The reason I ask is that on 3580 tonight, we're all sitting there fat,
dumb, and happy, when W1AW starts it's CW broadcast. And it's some 700
kHz wide!!! And now I'd swear it's almost 3kHz wide. That's like SSB!!!


Did you mean 700Hz wide (you typed 700kHz).

Yikes! Yep that was 700 Hz. A 700 kHz signal would be something indeed!
I see I misspelled Morse too......

Just got a new computer, and was probably too excited last night! 8^)

- Mike KB3EIA -

"Mike Coslo" wrote

The question kind of states it. I suppose that the BW might be wider as
the speed increases.

There are three different bandwidths that come into play. They are
"necessary bandwidth", "effective (or actual) bandwidth", and "apparent
bandwidth"

Necessary bandwidth in hertz for copying a morse signal is defined as Bn=BK
where B is modulation rate measured in Baud, and K is an overall numerical
factor which depends on the allowable signal distortion. The commonly used
values of K are 3 for non-fading paths, 5 for fading paths, and 8 for
fading/multipath smearing. From the formula you can see that higher speeds
(Baud) require more bandwidth, just as you supposed. The nominal "necessary
bandwidth" presumed for CW is 100Hz which is based on 25WPM (20 Baud) over a
fading path (B=20, K=5). Quite honestly, "necessary bandwidth" is primarily
an academic exercise and planners tool, as it ignores some practical 'real
world' issues and doesn't answer the question raised in your subject line.

Effective bandwidth is an actual on-the-air measurement of the width of the
signal at some designated level, most commonly -60dB referenced to the peak.
To understand what is being measured, you need to recognize that Morse is
sent as an amplitude modulated carrier (AM) and that it contains sidebands.
Like any AM signal, those sidebands extend nominally plus/minus the carrier
at the frequency of the modulation, or BW=2M. Modulation of this signal
contains two components.

The first component is the baud rate of the actual on/off keying (see
"necessary bandwidth" above). Were it only for this component, measured CW
signals would be very narrow, 100Hz, and dependent totally on keying speed.

The second modulation component is related to the rise time of the radiated
signal. Fast rise times (where the RF envelope resembles a square wave)
generate signals rich in harmonics and as these harmonics mix with the
primary signal and each other in the transmitter stages, they produce sum
and difference signals which become part of the sidebands of the radiated
signal. The sharper the rise time and the more non-linear the transmitter
stages, the more energy there is in the harmonics, and thus the bandwidth is
wider (as measured at -60dB skirt points). Controlling this component of
bandwidth can take the form of regulating the rise time (shaping in the
keying circuit) and ovoiding overdriving of transmitter circuits.

The third kind of bandwidth is "apparent bandwidth". This bandwidth is
determined by the effective bandwidth (see above) AND the performance of the
receiver environment. If a receiver were "perfect", then effective and
apparent bandwidth would be equal (the receiver would perfectly reproduce
the desired signal in the form it arrived at its antenna and would reject
the effects of all non-target signals present.)

But receivers aren't perfect (well, maybe my Sherwood equipped R4C is
close). Extremely loud signals (your neighbor 3 doors away) will sound
("apparent") several hundred kHz wide, because your receivers AGC will pump,
RF and IF stages will be overloaded, and the faster he sends the worse it
will be. I'm giving the obvious extreme example, but just to make the
point. Many times just some reasonable adjustments of your receiver such as
turning off noise blankers, reducing the preamp level, or turning your
antenna will reduce the apparent bandwidth down in line with the actual
bandwidth of the transmitted signal.

73, de Hans, K0HB