Bert Craig wrote:
wrote in message
oups.com...


Serious HF dxers aren't serious unless they work both phone and CW,
ya
have to do both or else yer shooting yerself in the foot.

Thanks Brian. I'm havin' gobs of fun and have broken out the K2/100
running
approx. 70 Watts. I'm about a third of the way through toward DXCC

Whoa, boy you're moving fast, good show! How much sleep are you getting
these days?

and need
an Asian contact for WAC.

Condx from here on the east coast to the north Pacific rim have been
somewhere between lousy and hideous for weeks. A JA or a UA0 will pop
into your sights eventually.

I will heed your advice re. using both phone and CW.

If the name of your game is building your mixed-mode total, which is
usually the Holy Grail, you really don't have any choice. It's simple
statistics and the immutable math of the decibles. CW gets you an
automatic 10 dB advantage over ssb but if the rarie only runs ssb well
then the ten dB obviously don't mean squat, etc.

I haven't done any "card counting" for years but I suspect that if I
did I'd find that 25-30% of my total are phone contacts. Despite the
fact that I'm a terrible weak-signal phone op and spend 95% of my time
lurking in the lower 25s.

I do hop on 10 using
phone while commuting to and from work, but in the shack, well... ;-)

Heh. Keeping an eye on 10 from the vehicle is not a bad idea actually.
If ten opens up you know the lower bands are probably cooking.

To be honest, I suppose I just find the CW itself fun. I'm also a big
WW II
buff and was quite honored to work W5E over the weekend, who was
operating
from a Boeing B-17 bomber. The op was using the vintage onboard gear.
It's
humbling to think of the transmissions that have traveled through
that gear.

Hap and his Eighth; "Yankee Doodle went to . . BERLIN?!" Yee-haw! Only
those who were there will ever really know what it was like.

Tnx agn es hpe c u ota. Take care es...

Later. Dit-dit.

--
Vy 73 de Bert
WA2SI
FISTS #9384/CC #1736
QRP ARCI #11782

w3rv