So Close, But So Far: Hunting The Continuous Radio Wave

Sitting here listening to the city sounds on my handheld scanner, I’m just grateful there are *some* circulating radio waves I’m able to capture…because my attempt tonight to become a CW partner was an exercise in futility.

A radio club buddy of mine reached out about scheduling a regular slow speed morse code rag chew. Loving the idea, I replaced the 40M off center fed dipole that lives on the fence in my alley, having taken it down to use on Winter Field Day. While no ideal antenna by any imaginative stretch, it tunes up well on many bands, and has gotten me a reasonable number of contacts. I easily found random cw on 80M while scrolling through the band in anticipation. I used my new switch to share my antenna between an SDR receiver and the transceiver, thinking that maybe I could see RF on the waterfall even if I couldn’t hear it.

For good measure, and to flex my “portable even when at home” muscle (yes, there is such a thing), I also strung up a temporary 10M double bazooka antenna. I did it pure urban ham style (yes there is such a thing as this too) by tying paracord attached to the insulator of one of its legs to my privacy fence, and the other to a desk in my second-floor ham shack (i.e., tiny spare bedroom full of radio @#$%). And then in a somewhat aesthetically displeasing fashion, I fed the coax and rope through a hole in a board inserted in the window.

Ultimately none of this mattered, because despite an hour of texting our way through different bands, frequencies, and modes, we simply could not hear one another. We tried continuous wave on 6M, 10M, 160M, 80M, 40M, 20M, 17M, and single side band on 80M and 10M. The twenty or so miles that separated our QTHs proved insurmountable radiofrequency-wise. We may look toward sunshine to help out, or find a way to get on the repeaters, but for now our mutual quest to help eachother improve CW has moved toward a dead end.