CW QRP on 20 metres: 14060 kHz, Morse with five watts

What you hear

Set the receiver to CW mode on 14060 kHz and the passband narrows to a few hundred hertz. In it, a single musical note switching on and off: short and long, dots and dashes, at anything from a leisurely twelve words a minute to a brisk thirty. A busy afternoon has several notes at once at slightly different pitches, and on the waterfall each is a thin dotted line, the dots and dashes written vertically as the trace scrolls. The pitch itself means nothing; it is just the receiver's offset from the carrier, and the program keeps it at a comfortable few hundred hertz.

The traffic is the oldest conversation in radio. A station sends CQ CQ CQ DE and its callsign, maybe with QRP added to say it is running low power. An answer comes, and the two exchange a signal report, usually 599 or, honestly, something lower, first name, location, a description of the rig and antenna, and 73. Everything is abbreviated: TNX for thanks, HW? for how do you copy, ES for and, a long dash for the end of the message. Around 14060 kHz the stations are often five watts or less, so the notes are faint and swim in and out, and part of the pleasure is pulling a readable signal out of the hiss.

Who transmits and why

QRP is the Q-code for reduce power, and in amateur radio it names a discipline: five watts or less on Morse, ten on voice. The appeal is the ratio. A five-watt transmitter fits in a pocket, runs from a handful of batteries, can be built on a kitchen table, and in good conditions on 20 m works stations on other continents; a contact across the Atlantic with the power of a bicycle lamp is remembered longer than one with a kilowatt. Morse suits it because the ear can copy a keyed note some ten decibels below where it loses a voice, and because the narrow signal concentrates all the power in a few hertz.

14060 kHz is the agreed QRP centre of activity on 20 m, inside the CW part of the band, which runs from 14000 to about 14070 kHz. Low-power operators call CQ here, QRP clubs hold their sprints here, and portable stations on mountain tops and in parks, a large part of modern QRP, announce themselves here or just below.

When and where to listen

Whenever 20 m is open, so from mid-morning to evening and in summer later; the QRP sprints and the portable stations are most frequent on weekend days. A receiver with a low noise floor matters more than elsewhere, because the signals really are weak; rural receivers in Europe and North America do best. The dial is 14060 kHz in CW mode. Beginners find the slower stations easier, and slow operators often add QRS, please send slower, when they call.

In ShackDeck

Station catalogue → Amateur radio → CW QRP 20 m. The program picks a public receiver covering 14060 kHz, tunes it and sets the CW mode with a narrow passband of a few hundred hertz, holding the note at the standard pitch. There is no text decoder for Morse in the program: you read the code by ear, as the operators do, and the waterfall helps by showing the dots and dashes. No receiver, antenna or account of your own is needed.