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It’s a new year, we’d like to add a new feature of our monthly Division-wide communication: to spotlight hams who are participating in or promoting the seemingly endless fun and magic of ham radio.? Does this describe you or your group?? If so, please touch base (n5zgt@...) and we’ll feature someone or some group in a future Division-wide email for all to enjoy.

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Kicking off this feature, let's glance at a group in southern New Mexico and other parts of the country, spearheaded by David Hassall WA5DJJ, that’s involved in QRSS.? QRSS is extremely slow speed CW, to the tune of single dots lasting tens of seconds, sent and received with the aid of free software to communicate great distances using very low power.? Why such slow speed?? Think of a dark scene that you’d like to take a photograph of (without a flash).? Setting the camera for a short exposure period would result in a dark or black photo.? However, setting the camera for a long exposure period allows seemingly indiscernible light in the scene to be added, or integrated, and captured to produce a brilliant photo despite the dark scene.? Similarly with QRSS, the lengthy CW dits and dahs allow the receiving station to pull the low power signal out of the noise for a successful contact.

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What does “low power” mean in the realm of QRSS?? David has communicated to New Zealand on 30 meters with less than 250 milliwatts (mW). Pushing the envelope further, he recently communicated from Las Cruces, New Mexico to Pensacola, Florida with a mere 9 microwatts (uW).? That’s how much power it takes to run a digital wristwatch or, put another way, more than 11 MILLION times less power output than a typical 100 watt HF transceiver.

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Over New Year's weekend a group of 15 hams, led by Dave, each put a very low power (QRPp) 30-meter transmitter on the air beginning at 0000UTC December 31, 2011 and kept them operational for 48 hours to see how many signals each could receive.? A participating ham in New Zealand successfully received the following low power stations: KE5OFK*, WB5UEW*, P29ZL*, KC7VHS*, W1AW, ZL1EE, K5DLA*, NM7J*, WE4DX, N5BL*, G0PKT, WB5FKC*, KD5SSJ*, KC5VR*, N5CWW*, K7TP, WA5DJJ* (* indicates associated to the Las Cruces group).

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The typical QRSS transmitter is simply composed of three transistors, a crystal controlled oscillator, buffer, power amplifier and microprocessor programmed with the station’s call sign. They are powered with a 5 or 12 volt source and measure approximately 2 x 2.5 inches. The typical antenna is a resonant dipole.

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If QRSS sounds like a new area of ham radio you’d like to experiment with, please contact Dave Hassall WA5DJJ (dhassall@...) or Cash Olsen KD5SSJ (qrss.kd5ssj@...) for more information.

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