It is easy to find a chart that shows the translation from alphabet to Morse code. And those are easy to use when you want to EnCode or translate words into Morse code. The regular chart is optimized for translation in this direction because it is sorted alphabetically.

But what happens when you want to translate Morse code into alphabet? That is difficult with the usual Morse Code table because it is not sorted by dots and dashes. You have to hunt through the whole alphabet to find the matching Morse code.

Here is a novel approach to DeCoding Morse. Start with your finger at “Start Here”. Then move your finger to track the Morse dots & dashes. You will arrive at the correct letter! Try it!

You may download nice clean PDF all ready to print. The chart without numbers (as shown above) is simpler to look at and easier to use if you don’t need to decode numbers. I hope you find this useful, or at least amusing.

Download Morse DeCode Chart, A-Z (without numbers, as shown above)

Download Morse DeCode Chart complete with A-Z and Numbers (I left off the punctuation & symbols for simplicity).

INTERNATIONAL MORSE CODE

A		N		1
B		O		2
C		P		3
D		Q		4
E		R		5
F		S		6
G		T		7
H		U		8
I		V		9
J		W		0
K		X
L		Y
M		Z

Is over here
http://www.nathanson.org/davesays/2009/06/field-day-2009-ham-radio/

I participated in Field Day 2009 at PV High School with the Palos Verdes ham club. K6PV is the club call sign.

PVARC is  based in southern Calif, a bit south west of Los Angeles. I’m a first year member and this was my first time participating in Field Day. As I understand Field Day, the basic idea is two things;

1) As an outreach to show the public what ham radio can do, and try to get more people informed & involved.

2) A contest to see who can contact more ham operators on the radio in a 24 hour period. Extra points are awarded for using alternate power, solar, & Morse code, among other things.

And I guess 3) is to have a great excuse to set up a remote radio station away from the comfort of your home “radio shack”. That takes some extra gear & proves that you are ready to deploy. Practice is good.

The Field Day event went from 11am Saturday to 11am Sunday. Radios were running all night. When I arrived 5pm Saturday the 3 stations were fully set up with portable antenna towers, generators, tables, shade tents, and of course desktop 2 way radios. The radios used are called “HF” radios, meaning High Frequency. Ironically these days HF is the lower frequencies because since radio was invented there have been a lot of new discoveries, including Very High Frequency (VHF) and Ultra High Frequency (UHF).

It was really interesting seeing Morse code being sent & received. I had never seen that done in person. Dan Colburn W6DC speaks fluent Morse code. He uses 2 paddles to send the code. One paddle makes a short “dit” and the other paddle makes a longer “dah”. I got a chance to do some logging for him while he operated the key. At one point he was tapping out a message, and then he listened & laughed. I heard nothing but beeps, but he heard something funny! I found that amusing. Dan has a real style in the way he sends out those beeps. As he taps the paddles, he throws in a flourish every now & then, sort of like a guitarist does. All part of the language!

The radio I used was a Kenwood TS-440s if I remember correctly. The other popular HF radio used at the other 2 stations at this location is the Yaesu FT-897. The antenna was mounted on a pole on top of the Football stadium press box. So it was probably about 3 stories off the ground. It looked something like a old TV antenna but bigger.  That radio puts out 100 watts which (compared to a light bulb) didn’t sound like a lot, until I realized that with a good antenna, 100 watts can easily reach across the whole USA. From southern California, I was talking to guys & gals in Tennessee, Florida, Georgia, Texas, Nevada, Ohio, and even just the next county over. This was on the 20 meter band which is around 14 Mhz. We were using SSB Side Bands and specifically the USB Upper Side Band. Anyway, it was working really well. I was seriously amazed to find hundreds, even thousands of people on the radio that night. I had no idea! Maybe this is because it’s a VBD (Very Big Day) for hams worldwide, or maybe there is always a lot of traffic on HF. By the end of my shift we had contacted something like 370 different stations by voice in the USA and Canada. The CW Morse code guys were doing pretty well too.

My (limited) ham radio experience has been with 2 meter & 440 bands, and they are often empty when I am listening. So this huge crowd came as a big surprise to me.

You don’t have to be a great conversationalist to be a ham radio operator. Keeping in mind that this was basically my first time operating a HF ham station – The rap goes something like this;

me: CQ, CQ Field Day, this is King 6 Papa Victor, CQ Field day.

them: K6PV, this is W2IQ we are 3 Alpha, Eastern Pennsylvania.

me: Thanks W2IQ, this is K6PV, we are 2 Alpha Los Angeles, two Alpha Lima Alpha X-ray.

them: Thank you and enjoy the contest.

me:  Thanks and 73s to you. This is K6PV.

What it means is; CQ – sort of like saying “Seek you” as in I’m looking for you, please answer. I think that is an abbreviation from Morse code – those guys are the kings of abbrs. Saying “CQ Field day” is inviting everyone to respond to you on this special event. King 6 Papa Victor is saying words to make it easier to understand the call sign in this case, K6PV made easier to understand over a static-y connection by saying King 6 Papa Victor.

Anyway, hopefully someone answers you, and they say your call sign so you know they are talking to you, their call sign followed by their class & section. Our stations is 2ALAX which translates to we have 2 stations transmitting less than 200 watts of output power, and we are in the LAX section. Most states are 1 section so you just use the state abbr, but Calif is several sections. New York is 3 sections. Pennsylvania is 2 sections.

Anyway, you write down these bits of information on your log, or in a computer logging program. That is how the score is recorded. The logging program can also build a map of all the states (sections) you have contacted during this event. That is fun. I was amazed at how the map fills in!

Things to bring to a Field Day: Flashlight, table lamp, jacket, food, water or drinks, paper pad, Band plan guide so you don’t accidentally tune to a wrong freq. Also some sort of handout for the visitors. Even a business card size would be fine. The handout should contain info about your club including: Website URL, Club meeting schedule, Weekly net schedule & freq, and a mention to contact us or check our website about classes to get your ham license.

I took a few photos. If you took photos too, I’m happy to post them here or link to them elsewhere. Let me know by email or in the comments below. Here is a link to the PVARC club photos.

To see the photos as a slide show, click “View with PicLens” (plugin may be required- it is ok to download this) then just use your down arrow to advance to the next photo. The “X” in the top corner will return you to normal computer operation. Or press the esc key a couple of times. Or just click each photo to see it bigger, then click again to return to this page. This is only the 2nd time I have tried this photo thing in WordPress, so I’m just learning it.

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March 19th, 2009 Paul & I helped support the Baker to Vegas marathon with radio communications (official race site). We drove 8 hours from LA through Baker, to Las Vegas to arrive at our station 17 by 6pm. Our duty is scheduled for 11pm to 7am. That’s when the runners are expected to pass our station. Paul & I worked the “Early Warning 1 mile out” station. Our job is to give the station advance notice of which runners are approaching so the next runner on that team can be in position, ready to grab the baton & get running down the road. Neither of us had done anything like this before.

We found our Station 17, actually they call it a “stage” but whatever. And set up camp next to the highway. I had been told that we would need to be right on the edge of the highway so we could see the runners. Our job is to write down the runner’s number on the clipboard with the time they passed by. Then radio that info to the radio operator at the stage, where they announce it over a loudspeaker so the next runner for each team can get ready to grab the baton and go.

At first I was using my handheld ham radio, but due to a slight hill between our One Mile Out stage and the stage, the little radio was not doing as well as you might hope. Sure 5 watts can easily go 1 mile, or even 90 miles, but the earth itself was in the way and the signal was not making it very well. So Paul grabbed his uninstalled mobile radio, a Yaesu 8800r and connected it to power in the TearDrop trailer galley, and to his mobile antenna on the Jeep. It’s funny, Paul & I are both so new at this ham thing, that neither of us have mobile radios actually installed in our vehicles, but we both have gotten as far as mounting an antenna. Anyway, the bigger antenna did the trick, and now we were not in any danger of using up the battery in the little Kenwood TH-F6A.

So eventually 11pm rolled around and so did the runners. There was something like 240 teams of runners with like 20 or more people per team. Plus at least 2 support cars for each. A car will creep along to follow each runner for the entire race. Anyway I was told that this race brings somewhere between 30,000 and 65,000 people to this desert area. That’s including all the support people, runners, ham radio operators, spectators, officials, and all that.

It was easy at first because the early runner were spaced out with 10 or 20 minutes between them. But soon enough the runners were coming in clusters of several and only a minute or 3 between them. That reminds me of the guy who said his new work hours are half as many. Yeah, he gets every other minute off. It was like that! We had to really hustle to log all the runners, and also transmit all the info to the stage operator. Paul stayed right on the edge of the road so he could get a good look at the runner numbers. Due in part to the car headlights, we soon discovered that it is a lot easier to see the number on the back of the runners than their front, and also noticed that each chase car has the number displayed on all 4 sides. Even easier to see.

It did get pretty cold, and we had to stay outdoors to do our jobs. I wore my Mad Bomber hat, which is the warmest hat I have ever owned. Highly recommended! A blanket on the camp chair helped keep it a little bit warmer for those few minutes I got to actually sit down. I taped a battery powered LED gooseneck lamp to a spring clip clipped to my clipboard. That was a good idea & I’d do that again, It is SO much easier when you can see what you are writing!

Some of the chase cars showed a really huge amount of support, with encouraging things being hollered out, and upbeat music blasting. Every runner going by wanted to know how much farther they had to run. All seemed relieved that it was only 1 more mile. We talked to almost every runner & almost every chase car, so figure about 480 quick chats that night!

The Stage 17 ham operator was Frank Shannon KR6AL, who is so professional, pleasant, and good humored that I really enjoyed the assignment. He was great about gently helping me to be a better radio operator in a super nice way. Like just repeating back to me what I said, but saying it correctly. I got the idea right away. Simple stuff, like using 24 hour time, and saying the other guy’s call sign first, then mine. We worked the radio back and forth every few minutes all night. We had fun with it, I would say I had a little story to tell about runner number 387 who passed by the 1 mile out post at 02:35 am. Anyway, it was more fun than it could have been if we were totally serious.

When we turned in our paperwork to  stage 17 HQ a few minutes after 7am, Matthew told me that people were really impressed with the professionalism of our radio communications. At first I thought he was kidding, because I am so new at ham radio, and we were kidding around on the radio a lot. But, no, he was not kidding, it turns out that we were doing such a good job that someone amplified our radio traffic so they could hear it all over stage 17. That was helpful to all involved. And we did get several compliments from people who worked various jobs at the stage. That was great to hear positive feedback about my volunteer work, because otherwise I would not have known. Unfortunately our stage leader was having a tantrum over who knows what, and apparently he did not have anything nice to say to anybody. But I was told by a few people there that I was lucky to be a mile away. Everybody else was very pleasant and nice to work with the entire time.

After our duties were complete about 7:45am, we “camped” at the trail head parking lot across from our post. The lot was empty when we got there, but almost full when we woke up 4 hours later for the long drive home!

Overall working the B2V Baker to Vegas Marathon was fun. Check out the photos.

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