{"id":153,"date":"2017-01-01T18:39:23","date_gmt":"2017-01-02T02:39:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ag6qr.net\/?p=153"},"modified":"2017-03-13T23:08:22","modified_gmt":"2017-03-14T06:08:22","slug":"straight-key-night-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ag6qr.net\/index.php\/2017\/01\/01\/straight-key-night-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"Straight Key Night, 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every year, on New Year’s Eve, Ham radio enthusiasts have a tradition of making a special effort to contact one another using Morse Code and an old-fashioned telegraph key. The event is called Straight Key Night<\/a>. I’m a little new to Morse Code, and this was only my second year of participation.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

As I did last year, I set up a portable station on my sister’s backyard deck in Moraga, CA. At around 9:00pm local time, around the time the ball was dropping at Times Square, I stole away from New Year’s Eve festivities for a few minutes to “play radio”. I listened for a while, heard many stations on 40 meters, found an open frequency, and sent out a “CQ”. On my second call, Ray, W6GLF, came back to me with a strong signal from Kirkland, WA. Thanks, Ray. We had a nice chat, and then I went back indoors to warm up and report on my success. The indoor party was fun, and it turns out that I didn’t brave the cold again to make another contact.<\/p>\n

So I only had one contact for this year’s SKN. But I participated, and enjoyed the magic of communicating with another human over a long distance by simply tapping on a telegraph key. Also, I didn’t neglect my friends and relatives who were in the same house as me. So while it wasn’t much of an accomplishment from an Amateur Radio perspective, on balance, it was a fun part of closing out the year.<\/p>\n

I recently found out that the SKCC<\/a> sponsors their own monthly informal Straight Key Night, on the first day of each month. I’m not one for New Year’s Resolutions, but I intend to participate in at least a few of these events over the upcoming year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every year, on New Year’s Eve, Ham radio enthusiasts have a tradition of making a special effort to contact one another using Morse Code and an old-fashioned telegraph key. The event is called Straight Key Night. I’m a little new to Morse Code, and this was only my second year of participation. As I did Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":154,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ham-radio","category-morse-code"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ag6qr.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ag6qr.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ag6qr.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ag6qr.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ag6qr.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/ag6qr.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":344,"href":"https:\/\/ag6qr.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153\/revisions\/344"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ag6qr.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ag6qr.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ag6qr.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ag6qr.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}