SKN for Sunday December 31, 2023 (January 1, 2024 UTC) is history. QSOs were accomplished on 20M, 40M and 80M using an IC-7610, an HW-16, and a 75A4/2NT RX/TX combo, respectively. About 25 people joined us over the course of the evening and enjoyed good company, pizza, yummy contributed desserts and Morse Code Bingo in addition to OTA activities. A number of interesting keys were presented and exercised using code practice oscillators.
Now we look forward to the next SKN:
Tuesday December 31, 2024 4pm - 9pm (January 1, 2025 0000z - 0500z)
On-air SKN operation begins at 4pm
Pizza delivered at 5:30pm (bring a dessert if you'd like to contribute something to eat)
Morse Code Bingo 7:00pm (or so)
QLF demonstration (try your own left foot on "The Big Key")
Bring your interesting straight key, bug or code practice oscillator to show (practice oscillators provided)
On New Year's Eve, some may like to celebrate at parties and sing Auld Lang Syne. But Club members who enjoy tapping out Morse Code signals on an old fashioned straight key (and everyone who likes to watch) will enjoy visiting the Clubhouse Museum for the annual ARRL Straight Key Night.
The W7OS Antique Radio Museum comes alive for Straight Key Night. It's sort of a contest, but no one keeps score. It starts officially at 0000 hours UTC on the first day of the new year. Just have a nice chat with a station on the CW portion of the band, then give it another try. Slow speed and a rusty style are perfectly OK for SKN.
In the museum, antique transmitters and receivers from the 1960's and 1950's (and earlier) are dusted off and brought back to life. Older hams try to remember how to tune the transmitter and zero-beat to make sure transmitter and receiver are on the same frequency. On this day, radio frequencies are expressed in "kilocycles" and "megacycles". The museum room upstairs in the Clubhouse grows warm with the glow of old vacuum tubes.
Downstairs, members and their guests enjoy slices of gourmet pizza for supper and linger around a table overflowing with homemade cookies and other dessert treats. Folks are encouraged to bring along a favorite straight key, bug, or code practice oscillator for Morse code demonstrations in the classroom. And for the past several years, Morse Code Bingo has been a popular activity, yielding fabulous coffee gift card prizes and kilobytes of fame for the winners. Typically things get going mid-afternoon. The old timers tell us they need to get to bed early, so we usually shut off the power and turn the lights off around 9:00 PM.
You will find pictures of some of our past SKN events in the Photo Gallery.