Plenty of CW Signals on 40 m Band!

Usually I hear very few CW signals, if at all, on the band these days. Occasionally someone will check into Belgaum Net or Charminar Net on CW. Today morning, when I tried to check in to Belgaum Net, I found that the 40 m band was full of CW signals, right from the lower end to almost 7070 kHz! Someone was working right on the Belgaum Net frequency, obviously it was a DX station. CW signals can be recognized on the waterfall display by their very narrow bandwidth unlike the SSB signals. Checked the WA7BNM online contest calendar and I think it would have been the ARRL International DX CW Contest scheduled for this weekend. If only I had a Morse key, I could have tried my luck, though most of my CW listening skills have been eroded due to lack of use for three and a half decades!

What I found interesting from the information on the ARRL website was that DX stations may only contact W or VE stations. The aim was to encourage W and VE stations to expand knowledge of DX propagation on the HF and MF bands, improve operating skills and improve station capability. The local time was just after 7 am meaning that it was the ideal time for Grey Line Propagation to the United States from my region. Let me hope that I will be able to get a good Morse key and practise well before the next year’s contest.

Not to win the contest, but to refresh the fond memories of CW operation with my homebrew vacuum tube radio in the bygone years and to work some W and VE stations again. In my return to Amateur Radio after a long hiatus, I have found that working W and VE is not that easy on SSB with a simple dipole antenna and a 100 W PEP radio. So far I have been able to hear and work just one W station on SSB. Of course, I have never worked SSB in the past as my homebrew radio was only CW and AM.