Subscribe Past Issues Translate View this email CQQRS in your browser RagChew Edition 52/2025 hie a — Thanks from the team at RagChew Central to every one of our 230+ contributed to our newsletter this year! Fantastic! e New Team e Reports from Tuesday’s e The Members Net Smiling Assassin e Gazumped by a 77 Year Old e Nigel Causes e Escapee from the Boat Anchor e What Would e Post Morsum e Searching e Hacking e Rekindling e More ¢ Old membership who More Trouble You Rather Net Do Grandad? Report RagChew at a Xmas Newsletters Tree on the Dit-Dit Controversy Morse Man e Teamwork e Morse Training e SKCC K3Y Straight e SOTA Challenge e Maidenhead e Why e Do | Net Key Month Locator Do It? Remote Stations in Germany e IC-7300 MK2 e 2026 Annual e Changes 2026 and PARG to ACMA Drake 2-C Raffle Assist for Accessing Your License Information e QRP Labs Transceiver e My View of the Settle to Carlisle Challenge e CQQRS VK-Hub - a New AllStar and Echolink Node v RSS The e Barrett 4050 Prosign of the Week There’s No Such Thing | Hear Tell.... Di-dah-di-dah-dit About the CQ QRS Group The mind was strong, but apparently the body wasn’t. Slow CW Practice QSO Tuesday’s CQQRS Net was relatively quiet - | thought we’d have lots of our team on air, but as it turned out, that was no to be. there was at least 30 of our team members As far as | know on air, and 39 different stations were heard.... probably around half of the normal turn-up. Blame the silly season with people away, visitors, social activities etc | reckon. Oh well - those of us who did manage to get on had a nice time though - conditions seemed ok - nothing special, but nothing untoward either. So thank you if you did manage to get on air or have a listen, and especially thanks to those who submitted a report - much As reported last week, for our net and the RagChew particular, Lance VK7TO and Nigel G4RWI appreciated all. newsletter in have been tag-teaming to work on the problem of searching for materials in previous RagChew newsletters. Over the year I’d had a number of requests to help find articles that people have read - which was very gratifying for me - and hopefully for the many many of our team who have taken time to write for both our reading pleasure and for encouragement. The indexing work is only partially complete, but we now have the ability to search the last 120 or so RagChews via the search function on our website. There’s much Nigel has described more to be done, but we’re now up and running. how to do the search in this week’s RagChew below. And thanks to Mal VK8MT, this week we now also have our own AllStar/ Echolink node for voice chats; network for our Wednesday the node connects to the WA AllStar morning Post Morsum conducted by Richard VK6HRC; so there’s now another Echolink gateway for that voice get- together, but the rest of the time it’s there for us to use and enjoy. See further down the newsletter for more. So - please enjoy the read to follow - the reports for Tuesday are excellent (thabk you everyone who contributed), and the articles are great - agaion, thank you to everyone who took the time to entertain us. | hope we'll hear you on next Tuesday for the last get-together of 2025 - I'll bring the wine! New Team Members Welcome this week to Tim VK5AV from Mount Gambier. to have another team member It'll be interesting half way between Adelaide and Melbourne. Reports After next Tuesdav’s Groun. nlease send me a list of who vou worked and / =o — - Sw eee eee ZT _— cer eee eee eee ee ore eS eee or who you heard using our web form here: bit.ly/COQRSNET To make your report more interesting, please consider sending a photo to be attached. If you have a photo that you'd be happy to include, please email it to: cqqrsnet@gmail.com To make it even easier for Patrick and Mark, see if you can compress or reduce the size of the image (preferably to less than 100KB file size). No problems if your computer or phone can’t do that - just send it through anyway please. So, please help attract new and old team Submitting your report each week. members to have a go by Submissions close 1300 (Eastern Australian Summer time) on Thursdays. Website lf you'd like to find out a bit about our net, or would to others about our Tuesday get-togethers, like to pass information here’s the link to our website. bit. ly/CQQRSWebsite So here we go - please enjoy the newsletter. Dit-dit, mb Mark Bosma VK2KI / VK6QI Beautiful South Bowning cgarsnet@gmail.com NSW non impediti ratione cogitationis Reports & Comments Here’s this week’s Last Tuesday’s Group Here’s the 39 stations heard by 30 members ean Member DL3YZ G7BED VK/G4RWI VKIPIF cQ reports. aso 1 Worked20m | VK3DRQ | aso 2 aso 3 VK2IOW VK2KEV of our team on Tuesday: aso 4 aso 5 VK2NPH VKICT Heard on air Worked 40m VK5CZ VK5AO VK2KI Woarked \V/KJ\A/ID VKIKI VK5PH 40m Qso 6 Qso7 Qso 8 Heard on air Worked 20m Heard 20m Worked 40m Heard 40m Worked 80m Heard on air Worked 40m Heard on air Heard on air Heard on air Worked 40m Heard 40m Heard on air Heard on air Heard on air Heard on air Heard on air Worked 40m Heard on air Heard on air Heard on air Heard on air Heard 40m Worked 40m Worked 40m Heard 40m Worked 80m Heard 40m Heard 80m Heard 40m Tried 40m Worked 40m Heard on air Worked 40m Heard 40m Heard 40m Heard 40m The spreadsheets above show the known stations on last Tuesday’s Group; the comments in the team members’ reports (submitted via our webform bit.ly/COORSNET ) follow: Comments: This week’s outstanding comments from our webform compiled for us by Patrick VK2IOW; reports have been thanks to all contributors and especially to Patrick. From Mike DL3YZ at Stuttgart [20m] To = =a NOAA reported a minor geomagnetic storm, so the band was more noisy than usual. Maybe the DX signals from and to VK were a little weaker than we were used to during the last weeks, but all contacts went well after all. Thanks for calling and Merry Christmas to all, Mike. From Nic VK7WW at Legana TAS [40m] Avery short visit to 40m, some QRN; but so pleased to get a | chance to listen. Seasons Greetings to all! From Donald VK6JDM at 20km west of Esperance WA [40m] Anne and | spent most of the day milling timber out of two trees we felled that had sacrificed themselves in a lightning strike that otherwise may well have hit the nearby tower. | must start disconnecting antennas from radios in summer! We had also been to the Smiling Assassin's Pilates class at 6 am. Now the Smiling Assassin is the new class leader hand-picked by Madame Lash who started the classes. When Johanna came along we hoped she would be gentler than Lash. Be careful what you hope for. The consequence of Pilates and milling heavy timber was a very tired old bloke sitting listening to you all and being a bit too tired to put my two left fists to work on the key. Now among the throng of signals was one of those hyphenated ones - it was VK6/ WB2GDZ. | had read his self-introduction in the last Rag Chew, so | sent him an email at his QRZ listed address. It is great seeing the group go even more international. From Wayne VK6NW at Bridgetown [40m] Lovely to catch Jeff from Seminole, FL, up early so he could catch a few QRS contacts From Daniel VK6WE at Cottesloe [40m] Hoping to make several contacts to spread Christmas cheer | tuned in to a very silent 40 metre band; not a dot on the waterfall. After calling CQ several times a weak signal responded but | could not copy the call and | didn’t hear it again. On the brink of giving up Ron sent out a call which | answered and we established contact but his signal was mediocre and affected by QSB. | managed a brief greeting while | could still copy. With no more signals appearing | ended the session. From Wal VK2WP at Bathurst NSW [40m] Pa Bathurst — 4 a Ra northern storm produced a lot of static but signals were Ba) ee = generally strong. Merry Christmas to all. From Jeffrey Pohl VK6/WB2GDZ at Seminole, Florida, USA and VK6CRO remote [40m] After | was done with my QSO with Wayne VK6NW using the VK6CRO remote (run 25 watts, with 50 watts or more RFI causes disconnect). | switched to the N4GYN high power remotehams remote in Georgia USA after hearing myself on a KiwiSDR in the Perth area. After a few CQs | noticed that my signal disappeared on the KiwiSDR. | then looked back at the N4GYN remote and notice that another ham had logged in, changed the frequency and started operating. After having a chuckle, | sent the | ee ;Kee message "the remote is yours" and logged out. He was 77 and we all get a bit forgetful at that age! By the way, VKGNW was using a Barret 4050 radio which | then looked up and thought was very cool, especially the digital voice mode demonstated in this video. https://www.royalcominc.com/barrett-hf From lan VK7TA at Latrobe [40m] It's probably safe to say that the Hawaiian station wasn't : participating in our net (or so he thought!) From Ron VK4EV at Everton Park Brisbane [40m] Band conditions were good. From Nigel VK/G4RWI at Oxley, Nr Brisbane [40m] E Week 2 at my temporary Brisbane QTH. Conditions seemed down on last week, but | seemed to have a good path to Sth Australia. Nice to work lan VK5CZ again. Almost 12 months to the day when | previously worked ee. } him from Devon, UK on 20m with exactly the Patented frying pan paddle stabiliser same setup. My VK/G4RWI callsign as always, provided entertainment for everybody. Finished off with a nice long leisurely chat with Mark, VK2KI. From Roy VK6RR at Geraldton [40m] Very noisy all VK6 stations that | heard were QSB and max strength 4. From your editor Mark VK2KI at Beautiful South Bowning NSW Sa ll [15m] “ Unfortunately, nothing at all heard from Edi DO2EMR on the } Snowline KiwiSDR this week; thanks for trying Edi. Did anyone else hear anything? [20m] When | moved to 20m, | heard Mike DL3YZ chatting to Patrick VK2IOW; | managed to hook Mike afterwards. | sent RSN 311and received RSN 222 - so conditions weren't ideal - but we both got the important stuff exchanged. Improved to Q4 toward the end of the QSO. | slipped down to where Chris G7BED was chatting to Patrick. When they signed, Patrick was called by an Italian operator - and he gave the "UP2 UP2" a try to leave Chris to his frequency. Unfortunately that got lost in translation, so Chris slipped up 2 instead; we had as good a chat as we could with the Q4 and Q2 reports. Chris reckoned Patrick had a with Patrick's Yagi; blinder of a signal - which may have had something to do my bit of wire wasn't anywhere near as good of course. [40m] Nice to hook up early in the net with Mr Head-Copy John VK2RU, who was down in Canberra visiting family; I'm hoping to be able to catch up with John on his way South if the planets align.... | still owe him a sounder to match his classic training key. | returned after dinner and was pleased to find several QSOs going on. There was a big signal from Georg VK2DLF calling CQ from St Marys, and it was good to chat to him again after nine months. When we signed, Maity VK5A0O called in - also with a really big signal. When we signed, | amused myself listening to Maity and Nigel VK4/G4RWI; callsign really trips-up even the most experienced operators! Nigel's Anyway, Nigel and | then had a chat... and | also had trouble sending it - the old callsign method (CALLSIGN/PREFIX) seemed so much easier! However, that's progress. [80m] | slipped down to 80m fairly late (1 blame Nigel) and hooked up with Peter VK6IS interestingly, Peter reported my signal as Q2, yet he was Q4 to me; more often the one-way propagation favours East-to-West. Also from your editor Mark VK6QI at Beautiful South Bowning via the Southern Electronics Group's VK6SEG KiwiSDR at Hoddys Well near Northam WA. [15m] Nothing heard from Edi this week via the VA6SEG KiwiSDR near Northam WA. [40m] 40m started opening East-to-West around 0900z as the sun was setting on the ionosphere between. Georg VK2DLF from Sydney was coming through nicely as was Maity in Adelaide and Nigel in Brisbane; capital cities this week - except where was everyone from Melbourne, Hobart and Darwin; busy putting the glass of milk and a carrot under the Xmas tree | expect. From Andy VK5LA at Winkie [40m] I'm back Baby! - After a bit of a hiatus on the QRS net | was finally able to come up last night. Condx seemed very good and | took the old Johnson Viking novice rig for a spin with its 30 watts and a straight key. QSOs with 3XU, 5AO and 4EV - heard many more stations. | will try to be on more next year, but Tuesdays are busy here with work, cooking dinner for the family and now running the 80m SSB Boatanchor net since the 9th of September. Seasons Greetings to all! [Great to hear you on again mate. Hoping you'll send us some info on the BoatAnchor net for the newsletter regularly Andy.] From Phil VK6GX at Gidgegannup [40m] Only time for one QSO before the grandkids arrived, then chaos and only time for periodic listening. Seasons greetings to all and best wishes for 2026. 73, Phil VK6GX. From Sava VK4PN at Mount Ommaney Brisbane [40m] Well missed the net completely this time. Grand children minding duties 14:00 to 22:00HRS. By the time | got home the party was over, regardless | had a listen on 80m, maybe some VKG6 boys are still around but nothing herd. Moved up to FT8 slot and it was buzzing, couple of strong VK6 stations and a heap of Asian DX with few US as well. So conditions must have been OK. Hope for better luck next Tuesday but at this time of the year grandparents are in demand. From John VK2RU at Canberra [40m] Ree Hair MYAMec taninht nn ANm \Wa’ra in Canharra far a faw dave whl www LVI TIVgiie WEE TTA ds WW Pe TP NCR Rr PA I OA Iv uwunyv and | had a bit of noise that made copying difficult at times, but | got a lot of it. It’s the first time I’ve used the vertical in a big town and | expected it to be a bit noisy but it went ok. This is the setup today — squid pole with 20m and 40m wires on the right, and Codan # 9350 autotune antenna on the left. When we’re | moving, | lower the 9350 down to a bracket on the side of the alum box. And here is the new van shack layout which is much better than before. Now that the radios and cables are all above the table, it has given us much more room to live. It’s cosy, but it works. POST MORSUM 24th December From Richard VK6HRC. : SIX On the Soutn West repeater and AllStar / Ecnolink nub this morning. VK6KD David VK6FN Max VK6QI = Mark VK6NW i Wayne ie VK6HRC re CQ CQ CQ . this is Santa calling CQ and standing by. _ 4 HeVK6MRB Mulligan swl and others. David focused on 40 mandstruggied 9 Nes a he eRe | L 5p eres = with some of the faster code being sent so is going to spend more time with the practise Apps when he has time. Max spent the day on the mower getting the property in order for the festive season, started suffering from an energy crisis later hence no show last night. Mark called in from the mobile shack via Echolink linked to the new CQQRS AllStar node put together by Mal VK8MT, worked well. Nothing heard from Edi on 15 m, worked Mike DI3YZ and Chris G7BED on 20 m. Worked four on 40 m and one on 80 m. Wayne worked three on 40 m and kept calling but no more contacts in the log even though he was hearing strong signals from the East! | worked two on 40 m and then into listening mode as conditions were marginal, heard some weak signals on 80 m not strong enough to get call signs unfortunately. Seasons greetings and a belated Happy Christmas wishing you all a Happy and healthy New Year. Thank you 73 Richard From Shack This Week’s My To Crazy Yours Topic of Interest Searching RagChew Newsletters A ‘Quick’ Job for Lance and Nigel After a number of questions about making the RagChew newsletters searchable, Work in progress Lance VK7TO and Nigel G4RWI stepped up! still, but we now have a method to search for that material you seem to remember reading about somewhere in the dark distant past. Lance was winding down getting ready to head off on holiday... but still put up his hand to get our MailChimp newsletters (the last 120 or so newsletters) automatically archived onto our CQQRS hour he had it up and running! website. Within an The project was then handed to Nigel G4RWI (who built the brilliant bespoke system that converts your weekly reports on Google Forms into a Word text file, the Excel spreadsheet and a couple of other goodies that we use to compile the newsletter each week). Nigel dived in to create a basic search function - which is up and running already! All this in about two weeks - how good is that? Thank you team! So over to Nigel for how to do a search... We are now trialling a couple of ways of search the Ragchew archive. This is very much “work in progress” but if you would like to play along and give it a try, here’s how.... To get to the CQQRS website, use this address in your browser of choice, bit.ly/CQQRSWebsite. The capitals are important. You might see a continue to the website. bit.ly page first but All being well, you should end of here! ——j Tucked away in the top right hand corner is a magnifying glass, this is where you enter a search. Click on it, and it will bring up the search bar: € Q Search this site We are using the google search engine, but the results are limited to what it finds on this site, and any files that linked to it (the RagChew archive). So for example lets search on “Tasmania”. This what | got back. === So it has found one reference to Tasmania, on the website. Hmmm.... But what about the RagChew newssletter archive? QQ Tasmanial Ey ooo (es seaelie Neer cwra Meaning: Stand can use this one on Tuesday! a OZ OU by [Suggestion - put it on a sticky note near your Key as a reminder for Tuesday. Tellus how you went! ] i Hear You never know Tell... who’s listening! VKSMT Keep an ear out for Mal VK8MT who will be visiting the South-West of WA and operating his other callsign, VK6MT. Mal hopes to possibly get down as far as Bremer Bay - boy that’s a long way from Darwin - but after his recent First CW QSO award, has found room QMX, SOTABeams compact in his luggage for his IC-705, heavy-duty 7 m mast, coupler... and unlike our visiting G - a paddle! [lf you have some intel about other team members... or even yourself... that’s worth sharing, please let me know cqqrsnet@gmail.com / Di-dah-di-dah-dit Here we So back to the CQQRS Next Tuesday’s Slow CW QSO go. practice net. Net Our CQQRS Group will be on as always on Tuesday from around 0600z until about 1200z; see https://bit.ly/COORSWebsite and navigate to the Net Details page for details. ‘Rik AH Pe Coordinated Universal Time 2 a a ee EE a 0600z to 1200z (NOLE - 2UM VADEMIMeNLS WII Western Australia SLIT al a OINTErenL UME Australia Time IT required) UTC +8 Hours 1400 to 2000 Central Australian Time UTG + 10.5 Hours 1630 to 2230 Eastern Australian Time UTG +11 Hours 1700 to 2300 Queensland Time UTC + 10 Hours 1600 to 2200 Nz Time UTC + 13 Hours 1900 to 0100 New Zealand (jams Time Frequency 0600z to 0900z 20m 14039-14051 kHz Note - 20m times and frequencies will be allocated by Mike DL3YZ prior to the net. 0600z to 1200z 40m FO2ZO0KHz - 7O40KHzZ _ 3535kHz - 3560kHz 160m 1855kHz (-SkHz for QRM) 7To00 7o20 | 40 m/s ) | | ORO )_ | ] | 3500 | | | ] CO ORS Net | | 3535 80 m = 1800 ole 7O40 | ORO | | CO ORS Net 1655. | Thanks to Lance VKTTO for the COQRS @ 3560 le | | | = 1875 | band-plan = 2200z - 2300z (Tuesday UTC) RRL) WA FM AllStar Network ee (Use AllStar to connect to Node 42482 or use Echolink to connect to VK2KI-L) Doesn't matter whether you’re brand new and want to try just exchanging callsigns and RST reports, or you’re ready for a good old rag chew. We'll have fun. There's usually people around until after 1200z - so keep calling in the segment of the band designated someone. in the table below until you catch | should be on as usual from home in NSW or via the Remote at Bedfordale WA, and I'll also be watching the proceedings using the VK6QS and Tecsun SDRs in WA and NSW Reports respectively. Hope to hear you there. & Photos Please let us know via our Reports form bit.ly/COORSNET who you work or hear on Tuesday’s Group. The report form closes at lunchtime (Eastern Australian time) on Thursday. And how about helping to make the reports even more interesting by sending a photo? If you have a photo that you’d be happy to include, please email it to: cqarsnet@gmail.com To make it even easier for our Reports editor Patrick VK2IOW, see if you can reduce the size of the image (to less than 100KB file size by preference). No problems if your computer or phone can’t do that - just send it through anyway please. And of course, I’m always on the lookout for more photos for the newsletter, so if you have something that might be of interest aside from the reports, please send it through as well - | always enjoy the photos that our readers send - and I’m sure our readers do too. cggrsnet@gmail.com Email them to please (reduced size if possible - but whatever you send will be great). Oh and by the way, | recommend website open that you don’t keep the Reports Form between submission of reports from one week to the next. you’re unlucky, there’s an undocumented If feature in the software that could cause your current week’s report to be combined with your previous report - it’s happened to your editor several times - much to the chagrin of our Reports editor Post :) Morsum Richard VK6HRC will run our phone Post Morsum on the South West AllStar net (via repeaters and hotspots all over WA) from 0600 WA time, then from 0700 WA time on 80m (3605 LSB). See https://bit.ly/COORSWebsite and navigate to the Net Details page for details of how you can connect via Echolink or even possibly via your local FM repeater. Articles The newsletter is interesting to readers because of the material contributed by so many people - be it the reports each week or the various articles. Could you write a short article or articles for RagChew? Writing not your strong point? much You bet! Don’t worry, I'm very happy to help as or as little as needed. Here’s a thought - although our readers will much perhaps have a go at using a Large Language tool such as ChatGPT, prefer your own writing, Model Artificial Intelligence Microsoft Copilot or Google Gemini to check your writing or even to actually draft the whole article in a relaxed easy-to-read manner! You can find out more about how to do that on the Newsletter page on our website bit.lv/COORSWebsite. suitable prompt (the command Our website also includes a you feed to the Al to make it do what you want). Please remember though - you must fact-check anything that an Al tool drafts for you because Als ‘hallucinate’ - ie if an Al can’t find what you’re looking for, it will make up an answer and present it as a fact! This is one of the dangers of using Als - it’s quite probable that the tool will create a very readable and convincing draft that is 100% wrong! submitter are responsible for fact-checking. You as the But it’s a learning experience - please let us know how you went if you had a go with this new generation of tool. And by the way - | am very concerned about our future in a world of Al - but I’m pleased to see that school and university curriculums now focus on understanding the risks - for instance, kids are now learning critical thinking something that used to be taught mostly at post-graduate level. When the typewriter was invented, handwriting; when the word people predicted the downfall of processor was invented, the art of writing was thought to be on the way out - ditto for the spreadsheet and arithmetic, AM, SSB and FT-8 for amateur radio etc. We can ignore Al and hope that it just goes away... or we can learn to handle it through experimentation and use. For more guidance on writing for the RagChew newsletter (including help with using an Al), head to our website bit.ly/COORSWebsite then click the menu on the top right and then click RagChew Newsletter. Material A reminder; if you send me any information by email, our report form or WhatsApp - unless you specifically state that material is not to be published, I'll assume that you're happy to see your thoughts in the RagChew newsletter. Teamwork Thank you so much to our team of 15 contributors: VK/G4RWI, VVKIAD, VK1DA, K2DLF, VK2IOW, DL3YZ, VK2WP, MOKBJ, MONNK, VK2YW, VK3KEV, VK4EV, VK4JE, VK6JDM, VK6KHZ, VK6ENW, VK6RR, VKOWE, VK7TA, VK7TO, VK7WW, VK8MT, editorial team, VK2IOW WB2GDZ Nigel G4RWI and YBINWP. (head of software development), (reports coordinator), John VK2RU (Post Morsition) and Lance VK7TO now, holiday-taker). mb Mark Bosma VK2KI / VK6QI Beautiful South Bowning cgagrsnet@gmail.com NSW non impediti ratione cogitationis Richard VK6HRC calls-in to the NCRG at Whiteman Park on his annual trek —-> (researcher), Patrick Richard VK6HRC (technical editor, software wrangler and Great work all! €U CW on Tuesday, And a special thank you to our About the CQ Here’s where For the current schedule and QRS Net you'll find the details. more information about the CQORS net, please go the the Net Details page on our website: https://bit.ly/CQQRSWebsite The opinions expressed in the RagChew newsletter are those of the individual contributors. The opinions do not necessarily reflect that of the editor or of the CQ QRS Group members. Any material and images received from members by the editor or published on the CQQRS WhatsApp groups may be published in this newsletter unless specifically requested otherwise. The RagChew newsletter is considered to be exempt from the Australian Government’s ban on social media for under 16 year olds because it is a service that has the primary purpose of enabling users to share information about products or services, engage in professional networking or professional development services or of supporting the education of users per the Australian Government eSafety Commissioner FAQ webpage “Which platforms have been excluded from the age restrictions” dated 10Dec25. The values, doctrine and guidelines for the Group and for the newsletter are published on the Principles page of the group’s website hitps://bit.ly/COQORSWebsite } = Copyright (C) 2025 f ae CQ QRS. All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: Want to change how you receive these emails? 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