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What to listen to · Amateur radio
CW on 40 metres: 7030 kHz, the QRP frequency after dark
7030 kHz is the low-power Morse meeting point on 40 m: a few neighbours by day, the whole of Europe in the evening, and faint keyed notes from across the ocean around midnight.
What you hear
The keyed notes of Morse code, described in the main article, on a band that changes with the hour. 7030 kHz is the agreed QRP centre on 40 m, so many of the signals are weak on purpose: five watts from a kitchen-table transmitter or a portable station in a field. By day you hear stations a few hundred kilometres away; after sunset the European evening fills the CW segment, 7000 to 7040 kHz, with notes at every pitch, and late at night the weakest of them come from North America.
Who transmits and why
Low-power operators, Morse enthusiasts and contesters. 40 m is the band where most of Europe's evening CW activity lives, from slow-speed newcomers to the fast operators who work a contact in thirty seconds. On contest weekends the segment is solid from end to end.
When and where to listen
From late afternoon through the night, best in winter when the band is quiet and long; in summer static takes the weakest notes. Receivers in central and northern Europe hear the most. The dial is 7030 kHz in CW mode, the passband a few hundred hertz.
In ShackDeck
Station catalogue → Amateur radio → CW 40 m. The program picks a public receiver covering 7030 kHz, sets the CW mode with its narrow passband and keeps the note at the standard pitch; Morse is read by ear, the program has no text decoder for it. No receiver, antenna or account of your own is needed.