I think it started raining about a month ago but the last week has been incredible. Thunderstorms, tornadoes, hail, snow flurries, and more thunderstorms. Ahhh..the joys of living in Tornado Alley in the Springtime. This is not conducive to POTA activations around here, and it may be a week or 10 days before I will be able to venture out into the soggy bottom of Camp Swampy, also known as the Atterbury Fish and Wildlife Area.
So what's a rained out, bored to death, CW operator supposed to do? Well I have been enjoying doing some SWLing, shortwave radio listening. I get a kick out of finding the strange and odd CW signals out there and then trying to figure out what it all means. This week I have been logging in to a Kiwi SDR receiver in Michigan. This one is run by Bruce Johnson KX4AZ out of Athens Georgia. Bruce has SDR receivers in Michigan and Georgia. The particular one I was listening to was KX4AZ/T - the T means Tustin Michigan. which is about 315 miles due north of my location. You can tune in by aiming your web browser here: http://kx4az_t1.proxy.kiwisdr.com:8073/
On the night of April 3rd, I copied a Canadian Coast Guard transmitter located in Fort Caldonia, Nova Scotia. The time was 22:30Z and the mode was CW. It looked like this:
VVVVVVVVVVVV DE VCO/B FN15
So what they were sending were 12 V's (It's a CW way to gather attention) DE (from) VCO/B (a beacon station with a call sign of VCO) and finally FN15 (This is a maidenhead grid square reference, you can look on a maidenhead map and tell the general area of the globe the signal is coming from). My maidenhead grid square at home is EM69.
What was interesting is this was copied on a frequency of 6770.15 Khz. I have done some google checking and VCO hasn't been heard on this frequency before...at least that I can find.
The same night, I also copied a CW signal sending the same three letters over and over. This was on a frequency of 6782 Khz and it looked like this:
ODX ODX ODX ODX ODX ODX
This one is a stumper. I have checked Google, and chatGPT and I am not coming up with anything. Normally beacons will have a /B after the call sign, but this just keeps repeating the same three letters over and over. I logged it at 22:20Z on April 3 2025. If anyone has any idea on this one, please leave a comment. I think it is some kind of channel marker...but not sure.
Another thing I have had fun doing is listening to some pirate radio stations that like to hang out in the 6935-6980 Khz range. Usually these stations only pop up on weekends, or holidays. They use names like Syco Radio, Wolverine Radio, Thunder Chicken Radio, and Appalachia Radio (Great bluegrass and bluegrass gospel) . You can go to
HF Underground forums on the web and read about the reports and their activities. Most of these stations operate in Upper Side Band mode, but you'll also find a few running AM. Just another way to kill time until the ground dries out.
So today I decided to take my Norcal 40A off the shelf and get on the air with it, while it CONTINUES to rain.
I built this little 1 watt or less radio in the fall of 1998, and I used this radio to make my very first ever CW (Morse Code) contact. It was with a station in Mississippi on Spetember 7, 1998, from the picnic table in my backyard. KF4EWO Brian Kusler in De Soto Mississippi. I was so excited I could hardly breathe. By this time I has been a amateur radio operator for just over 10 years, but this was the first time I had a radio that would allow me to operate in the HF bands. Up to then all my other stuff was geared for UHF/VHF radio. What's the difference? I can use UHF/VHF to communicate across town, maybe a few counties. With HF, I could work the world.
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Norcal 40A |
I get the old girl off the shelf probably once a month to make sure it's still working, and every contact with it is exciting to me. So today while messing around, I tuned to 7041 Khz and heard a station calling CQ CQ DE N0SS MOQP - this was N0SS The Mid Missouri Amateur Radio Club. MOQP meant they were looking for contacts to log in the Missouri QSO Party. A QSO Party is normally run over a 12-24 hour period, and the mission is to make as many contacts as you can in the time period. Then you turn in your logs and we see who wins.
This is what the Kiwi SDR screen looks like at Tustin Michigan. That yellow line under the green bracket thingie is me calling CQ from home, and that's my 1 watt signal in Michigan!
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Kiwi SDR - KX4AZ/T in Tustin Michigan |
This next picture is N0SS working KB9BVN in the Missouri QSO Party, he gave me a 599 signal report, which is about as good as it gets. Likewise he was loud and clear here in New Whiteland Indiana. It's amazing that my one watt radio is making it in good shape. The SDR in Michigan is 315 miles, and the N0SS station in Jefferson City MO is 335 miles as the crow flies.
A little bit later I worked station W0I, which is a special event station participating in the Missouri QSO Party. It is being operated by Kevin in Olathe Kansas. He gave me a 599 signal report and I returned the same. We were on a frequency of 7044 Khz. This time we're out 510 miles!
OH BOY...hung out a bit longer...used the Kiwi SDR in Michigan to visually see the CW stations on 40m. Wow what a nice aid to operating...but is it cheating? Only the shadow knows. So I just tuned to 7038 Khz and managed to get a 599 from station W0R in Missouri. He was a solid 599 here as well.
Well that's about it for today, I think I will continue playing on the air with the Norcal 40A and using the Kiwi SDR that KX4AZ/T has up for some extra help. I hope my next post will be a report on my next great outdoors adventure. I'm tired of being cooped up in the shack. Thoughts and prayers going out to all the flooding victims, this has really been a wet few weeks and from the vids I have been seeing, the flooding is terrible in many parts of the central US.
72 es OO
de KB9BVN
Brian