NZ Net News 193, 12 Sep 2026

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Featured key

Photos: IK4DCT

By Davide IK4DCT

This is a telegraph key for Morse code training, part of the STIRE (Studio Tecnico Impianti Radio Elettrici) Polyoscillophone System, from the 1940s and 1950s. The STIRE headquarters were in a barracks on Via Orfeo in Bologna.

This device was used in radiotelegraphy schools (military, such as the Corps of Engineers and the Armed Forces, or civilian/postal) to teach how to transmit and receive Morse code signals.

The Polyoscillophone System featured a centralised circuit connecting multiple student stations to a main instruction console (hence the prefix “poly-“).

On the left side of the key is a switch to select the operating mode:

Group transmission: To send the signal to the entire classroom.
Receive: To listen to messages transmitted by the instructor or other stations.
Transmit to self: To practise individually by listening to your own signal generated by an oscillator without disturbing others.

Bottom view of the STIRE key

Quick notes

Frequency change in two weeks. All NZ Net stations are reminded that we will be shifting to our summer frequency of 7030 kHz (or the first clear frequency higher) on Sunday 27 September, coinciding with the change to NZ Daylight Saving Time. So now’s a good time to make sure your 40-metre aerial is in good order – as well as your QRM filters. 🙂

Illustration: Do you remember your first attempts at soldering? Mine were dreadful. In fact, I think I had the same soldering “gun” as Alfred is wielding. The biggest improvement to my technique came when I bought a Hakko soldering station. Sometimes the right equipment can make a big difference.

Photo flashback

Two photos of Mae Burke seated at her very impressive amateur radio station

Mae W3CUL in the 1950s

Mae Burke W3CUL (1911-1997) of Morton, Pennsylvania was an accomplished amateur radio traffic handler, and in 1956 won the Edison Radio Amateur Award for Public Service.

Licensed in 1932, Mae’s real name was Mary, but she always went by Mae on the air, as it took only half the time to send.

Mae would typically spend 8 hours a day handling, on average, about 3000 messages a month. Occasionally she would handle as many as 10,000 messages in a month – generally on behalf of US military personnel and their families. Her total message count from 1949-1956 was well over 300,000, according to news reports at the time of her Edison award.

Mae’s Vibroplex Original bug could be heard on six traffic nets every day. She limited her speed to about 30wpm “to maintain accuracy.”

Her station, which she shared with husband Al W3VR, even had a petrol generator for emergency backup.

Net numbers

NR34 R ZL1NZ 51/48 AUCKLAND 0900Z 1SEP26
= 
NZ NET
= 
AUG QNI E51KEE 1 KD6XU/MM 1 VK3DRQ 30 VK4PN 13 
ZL1AJY 4 ZL1ANY 29 ZL1AYN 1 ZL1BDS 30 ZL1NZ 31 
ZL1PX 28 ZL2GD 13 ZL2KE 2 ZL2LN 21 ZL2TE 9 
ZL3RIK 3 ZL3TK 27 ZL4FZ 15 ZL4GW 7 ZL4KX 7 
ZL4LDY 3 ZL4RY 10 TOTAL 285 QTC 87
=
ZL1NZ

Secret messages from a 40-metre pirate

By Neil ZL1NZ

About a week ago, I came across an illegal station operating on 7015.0 kHz, sending coded messages.

I have logged it every evening since then, from about 0900 to 1100 UTC. It may be on the air much longer, but there’s a limit to my patience listening to secret codes!

The signal is quite readable most nights, but it is even stronger on Japanese and Korean SDRs. I have not checked other locations yet.

I have so far identified three types of transmission from this pirate:

1. The loop

This is the signal being transmitted most of the time:

AA8V AA8V AA8V DE H1RA HIRA V (sent at about 24 wpm)

This resembles an amateur radio transmission. AA8V is a US radio amateur but his callsign has been hijacked without his knowledge for these transmissions. H1RA is completely bogus, as the H1 series has not been allocated by the ITU to any country.

The loop may be a tuning signal, to enable the intended recipients (such as spies) to find the station that will send them secret information. It may also be intended to “claim” the frequency and drive away any legitimate radio amateurs who want to use it. (I heard this happen to a Japanese operator who got clobbered as he tried to call CQ and quickly gave up when “H1RA” started sending traffic.)

Although the loop transmission sounds machine-generated, it isn’t perfect. Did you catch the error?

The inter-word spacing is too long. You can hear this between each of the AA8Vs. So this doesn’t seem to be computer-generated. Plus, the spacing between DE and H1RA is much longer, but not twice as long as the other inter-word spaces, so I don’t think it was due to a keyboard operator hitting the space bar twice. My theory is that the loop was originally sent, not quite perfectly, on an electronic keyer which was then recorded to generate the loop.

2. The messages

The messages, which can each last several minutes, comprise 4-character alphanumeric groups. They don’t necessarily follow the Loop; sometimes they just start “out of the blue”. Sometimes they are preceded by what I would call a traffic list, which is a series of “NR xxx CK xxx”. Then each message is sent, as in this example:

MSG NR T27 CK 499 24 T9T7 173T = (followed by 4-character groups)

The messages and the traffic lists appear to be machine-generated, and with much better spacing than in the Loop.

Occasionally there is a “I I” between groups. I imagine this indicates the start of a repeat, but I have not spent any time trying to confirm this.

The messages end abruptly following the completion of a 4-character group. After the final message the station may go silent for a period.

3. Hand-keyed

I don’t know what to make of this transmission which is heard occasionally. It is obviously hand-keyed and includes errors. It has lots of numbers with / separators, and is the only type of transmission to end with <AR>.

Other comments

This is just a quick look at the 7015.0 kHz signals, with lots of opportunity for further research. If you have any information to add, please get in touch.

It is possible that more than one station is involved.

I think it is likely that these transmissions are being sent “blind” – just like the Cold War numbers stations – as I have not heard any station respond.

“Really doing it” – Part 2

Here is the second part of ZL4RY’s story of discovering amateur radio and getting on the air a mere 100 days later. (You can read Part 1 here.)

By Ryan ZL4RY

In between CW drills, I discovered the ZL1.NZ website and started listening to the NZ Net on KiwiSDR most nights. I read The CW Way of Life by Chris Rutkowski, and every issue of New Zealand and Australian Amateur Radio magazine.

The one thing I was never short on was motivation.

Even practising online on VBand led to my first experience of something I would soon discover is one of the best parts of Amateur Radio: the people.

I happened to meet Don Short (ZL1DRS) who was incredibly encouraging. He eventually and very generously mailed me a 3D-printed set of paddles all the way from the North Island to the South Island – no charge. I promised him I would pay it forward one day.

By the middle of June 2026 (Day 48 according to my CW practice log) I decided it was time to fully commit. I ordered a Xiegu G90 from Radioddity.

This was, admittedly, a somewhat impulsive financial decision. My son – our third child – was due to be born any day, and I had the very strong suspicion that if I waited until after he arrived, I wasn’t going to feel like I had $850 lying around to spend on a radio for a very, very long time.

So I bought the radio, kept practising CW and started studying for my licence exam. Baby Hugo arrived quite late on July 7th.

I reached out to Ben Black (ZL4AT) who enthusiastically agreed to administer the exam along with Alec Lilley (ZL1HAZ). As it turned out, I was their very first exam. I passed.

After the exam, Ben showed me the setup at his QTH, and knowing I could only work 80m for the next three months, he handed me an 80-metre dipole that somebody else had previously passed along to him.

I connected the antenna to a length of coax (which also happened to be my very first successful soldering project) and suddenly there I was: a Xiegu G90, a hand-me-down dipole, a $20 second-hand straight key and a callsign of my own: ZL4RY.

As soon as I had my licence, I got on the air and started calling CQ – on SSB – and had a wonderful first contact/ragchew with Charles (ZL1CNB).

With one in the books, I immediately turned to the bottom end of the band, and started calling CQ on CW.

Nobody answered.

But within just minutes, the band around me suddenly lit up like a Christmas tree. Signals appeared everywhere on the waterfall. I had absolutely no idea what was happening.

I asked ChatGPT what was going on. It turns out I had managed to get on the air right in the middle of the Tuesday-night Winter Sprint Contest. So I jumped in, and just like that, my very first CW contact was in the log: ZL2GD.

After the contest finished, I started calling CQ again – because I knew I wanted to ragchew, to test the months of preparation.

And this time, somebody answered: ZL1NZ.

I knew I recognised the callsign, but in the moment I couldn’t place it. I was far too busy trying to survive my first actual QSO. Pencil-copy the code. Remember the format. Think of what I wanted to say. Translate that into Morse. Spelling words in my head. Don’t forget the RST. Don’t embarrass yourself.

I muddled my way through the contact. Only afterward did it click: I had been chatting with Neil, whose website I had spent so much time reading, and the same callsign I’d heard running the NZ Net while I sat on the sidelines listening through an SDR.

Without ever knowing it, he’d already taught me a great deal about this hobby and had been one of the people who inspired me to get into it in the first place. I thought that was about the coolest thing in the world.

As I write this on 23 August, I haven’t even been a licensed ham for a full week. But it’s already been everything I hoped it would be.

I’ve had great 80-metre ragchews on both CW and SSB. I’ve received emails full of encouragement and advice. I’m learning about nets and operating etiquette, and I’m trying to remember to send signal reports on my $20 key while furiously pencil-copying the dits and dahs that my hand-me-down dipole is faithfully pulling out of the noise.

I’m still about as green as a HAM can possibly be. So forgive me if I forget the signal report. Please be patient when there’s an awkward pause while I try to spell the next word in my head. And if my fist occasionally sounds like someone falling down a flight of stairs, I’m working on it.

Because the remarkable thing is this: 100 days ago, I heard a CW signal coming out of a computer speaker and had absolutely no idea what it meant. It was just a mysterious collection of dits and dahs coming from some unknown person, somewhere in the world. I only knew one thing: I needed to know what they were saying.

Now I sit at my desk with a straight key beneath my fingers, an 80-metre dipole above my head, and a callsign of my own.

I’m still slow. I still miss things – but the signals don’t sound like mysterious noise anymore. They sound like people. And now I can answer them.

So if you’re scanning 80 metres one evening and hear a lonely ZL4RY calling CQ, please come back to me.

I’m only 100 days into this, and I can’t wait to find out what the next 100 days sound like.

UPDATE: It took Ryan about 10 days to make his first 50 contacts, all of them on 80 metres and a good chunk of those on CW. A VY FB performance.

Cheating scandal rocks WRTC 2026

You’ve probably read about the cheating that occurred during July’s World Radio Team Championship. Four teams, including the original winners, were disqualified and new results were announced.

For those who may not know about this, the WRTC is the so-called “Olympics of Amateur Radio” in which 50 teams of two operators compete using similar setups, and all operating within a small region to ensure a level playing field. It’s held every four years, most recently in England. The event coincides with the annual IARU HF contest, so that’s how the 50 teams make their contacts.

Following this year’s event, the logs from all the stations were published and contesters began examining them for clues to improving their own performance. But what they found were indications of fraud by some teams, and by some unknown outside operator(s).

Most of the cheating apparently involved working rare callsigns (including pirate operator and non-existant stations) for multiplier value. CW seems to have been the favoured mode for cheating, presumably because there are no voices or accents to raise suspicions.

There is a very good description of what happened – and the clever detective work by amateurs that exposed it – on this blog post by Kevin W1DED.

The WRTC team responded to the feedback and investigated. Its report is succinct and damning. And the repercussions were swift, with the disqualification of the four teams and the bombshell announcement that similar cheating – by some of the same people – had now been spotted in logs from the previous WRTC, suggesting that event also needed to be rescored.

The following panel discussion includes several operators who participated in WRTC 2026 (not the cheaters!). I think you may find it quite interesting – even if you’re not a keen contester.

Net tip: QSD

We continue our look at Q signals with QSD.

This is a signal that requires a certain level of diplomacy, I think.

As a question, QSD? means either: “Are my signals mutilated?” or “Is my keying defective?”

As a reply, or a statement, QSD means either: “Your signals ARE mutilated” or “Your keying IS defective.”

So, it’s all bad news! I have sent QSD a few times over the years but, as far as I can recall, it was always with the first meaning, i.e. to report that there might be a problem with the other operator’s equipment. Presumably, every good operator would want to know if their signals were mutilated, right?

Sending it with the second meaning has been tempting a few times – but I don’t think I ever got up the courage to do it! And I’m sure I deserved to hear it from other ops some times, but they were too kind perhaps.

How about you? Have you ever sent or received QSD?

If you think someone might be offended by hearing QSD, just imagine how they would feel if radio amateurs had adopted the Z Code and started using ZBM!

» Download the Essential Q Signals

The A-Z of Q Signals

A well-run CW net is a lovely thing to experience. Communication between stations is quick and concise, and the net business is conducted with minimal time wasted.

As CW operators, we have many techniques to communicate quickly and efficiently. And if we know and use these techniques, we can often match or exceed the speed and accuracy of voice communication.

One of our most important tools is the set of Q Signals (or Q Codes), and in this series we look at the “essential” ones, in alphabetical order.

Morse challenge

Send your answer via radiogram (or email if no propagation) to ZL1NZ.

The answers to our previous Morse Challenge: Tinakori was an anglicised blend of kahore (none) and tina (dinner). The hill is now called Te Ahumairangi. Correct answers were received from VK3DRQ, VK6RR, ZL1ANY, ZL1AYN and ZL3TK.

Advertising archive

Practical Wireless, Apr 1998 (spotted by John ZL4RO)

NZ Net tally board

Suggestions?

If you have suggestions on how to make the NZ Net better, or things you’d like to see covered in these newsletters, please contact ZL1NZ. Articles and photos will be gratefully received!

Thanks for reading, and I hope to hear you soon on the NZ Net!

—

Neil Sanderson ZL1NZ, Net Manager
New Zealand Net (NZ NET)