New Zealand Net News Nr 13, 21 September 2019

This is a fortnightly newsletter about the New Zealand Net.
If you would like to subscribe, please contact ZL1NZ.

Highlights

Things have been a bit quiet on the NZ Net lately, but there are some encouraging signs, such as:

• Will ZL1RED is now using a vertical antenna, and took me by surprise with his much stronger signal last evening (569 in Auckland) so it will be great to have Will checking in whenever he can. If you hear him on the net, please give him a signal report. It will be helpful to know how the antenna is working to different parts of the country.
• Mariana Islands and Nauru have been very active the past few days on 80 and 40 metres CW. C21WW in Nauru was 599 on 40m last evening. 80m is a bit harder, due to the noise, of course.

Free code practice from Russia

While turning around 40m last evening, I heard a strong station handling traffic on 7062.0 kHz. It was Russian military station RJF95. If you want to practise copying number groups, these are your guys!

They were 579 here. I made a short recording and you can hear them finish the call to RCY7 with “QSA? QTC K” which will be very familiar to amateur CW ops. I do not recommend calling them with your QTC, however.

ARRL Code Proficiency Certificates are back!

The ARRL has reinvigorated the W1AW Code Proficiency programme, and every CW op is eligible to apply for a certificate.

You might remember these certificates from years ago, with their sticker endorsements for each 5 wpm increase in speed.

The award is available to anyone who copies one solid minute of code during a W1AW Qualifying Run (these are not the regular code practice sessions). Some US west coast stations also transmit the qualifying runs.

If you can’t hear the station during a Qualifying Run, then I assume it would be acceptable to copy via an SDR receiver.

Details can be found at http://www.arrl.org/code-proficiency-certificate.

Keys

Staying with the ARRL, did you know they sponsor a key design competition? You can see the latest winners at http://www.arrl.org/news/view/qst-congratulates-its-key-competition-winners.

Is anyone on the net using an unusual or home-made key?

Net tip: the “AB” and “AA” fills

In the last newsletter, I talked about how to ask for a “fill” using BN, meaning “please re-send all the words between …”

BN obviously only works if you have successfully copied the parts before and after the missing bit.

There may be cases, however, where you missed the entire start or end of a message. In these cases, you can use AA (All After) or AB (All Before) to request a fill.

To illustrate, here’s a message that was sent on the net recently:

NR56 R ZL1NZ 22/20 AUCKLAND 0900Z 18SEP19
=
ZL2GD
=
SINCE YOU ARE HEARING MORE STATIONS THAN I COMMA COULD
YOU BE REGULAR NET CONTROL ON MONDAYS OR WEDNESDAYS QUERY
=
ZL1NZ

If Grant had not copied the first part of the message, he could send something like

AB 0900Z

I would reply with

NR56 R ZL1NZ 22/20 AUCKLAND 0900Z

As usual, the “fill” includes the original word (“0900Z”) that was contained in the request.

Suggestions?

If you have suggestions on how to make the NZ Net better, or things you’d like to see covered in these updates, please contact ZL1NZ. You might even like to write something for the newsletter.

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

—

Neil Sanderson ZL1NZ, Net Manager
New Zealand Net (NZ NET)
3535.0 kHz at 9pm NZT Mon-Fri