How to make emoijis in VarAC

 I was in a QSO with Robert K9ROB from Fairbanks Alaska today...

As you can see it was quite interesting. I saw Robert spotted me a couple of times before but I never actually saw his signal at my QTH till today. His callsign is also not usual for an Alaskan station. But these days callsigns in the US are not area restricted anymore.

Anyway, Robert asked me how I did get the emoji pictures into my "info" and "welcome" text.

An example, this is what you see when connecting me:

 

Hello ✌, welcome @ my 🏡 station

Which actually means "Hello, peace to you, welcome at my home station. There are also other emojis like the one for antenna and radio. If I send my info you see something like this:

📻 IC-7300

📡 Square multiband halo @16mH

To get this working into VarAC you need to modify the VarAC.ini file which can be found in the VarAC directory on your computer drive. You open this file with notepad and then save it as an UTF-16 LE file. See the example here:

Your file is now ready to fit in emojis.

You can both edit the ini file as the normal "canned messages" in VarAC.

How to get those emojis?

That's easy. Press the "windows button on your keyboard + . (point)". You will get something like this:

This one is in my native language dutch, you get one in your own language. The nice thing is that you type for example radio in your text and you will get the "radio" emoji 📻. You click with the mouse or give enter on it and it will appear instead of the text. This way you can make what you want....

Examples: 

Radio 📻

Antenna 📡

Peace ✌

Kiss 💋

Sun ☀

Goodbye 🖐

OK 👌 (or perfect)

It to your imagination how and what to use for VarAC.... have fun!

Begali Simplex Basic

    A while ago I wrote in this blog that I would be interested in a Begali Simplex Basic CW paddle when the time comes to practise sending morse. Not shure that time has come..... But recently fellow blogger Tom M7MCQ wrote in a blogpost about the Begali traveler light that he had the Begali Simplex Basic for sale. I imidiatly wrote in the comment that I was interested and just to be shure I wrote him an e-mail as well. Tom wrote about this particular paddle before in his excellent blog. And also VE9KK Mike has purchased one and wrote about his findings.

So, Tom and I agreed I could buy the paddle from him. This post is about how we got it from England delivered to my home in the Netherlands.

I've bought gear from UK in the past. That was before the UK left the european union. It was easy, no taxes, no custom costs. But we live in another time now. Getting something shipped from the UK is expensive even for something simple like a morse paddle/key. First of all I tried to let a delivery service like UPS or DHL pick up the package from Tom so I would cover the costs of shipping. That's already something that's difficult. I couldn't get the price below approx. €30. So I wrote Tom that together with taxes and custom costs it would be too expensive. I asked him to see if he could give me a price he wanted for the paddle including shipping. Then things went another way.....Tom wrote he already shipped the paddle to me with UPS. I even got a message from UPS there was a package on its way to me. I was a little overwhelmed since it was unexpected. I didn't even know what the total costs would be and what Tom wanted to have for the Begali. Tom told me to just try it and then make him an offer, how about that?  The title of this post could also have been "trust" because that is the right word for this. The package was received a few days later of course after I payed additional customs and tax costs. I immidiatly connected the key to my IC-7300 and started to play morse. Well.....that's another story. Sending CW is not as easy as I thought ;-). Anyway, Tom and I agreed about the price which was a bargain really. I never transferred money to a foreign bank account, but these days with the help of internet and handy bank apps it was almost a piece of cake to do it. Everything went well in the end. The Begali Simplex Basic featured in Tom's blogpost is now at PE4BAS station in the Netherlands. Tnx for the opportunity Tom!

Another step closer to the CW world...

200 DXCC on 60m

 I checked clublog today and discovered I reached 200 DXCC worked on 60m...

Remember the first day we were allowed on 60m here in the Netherlands? That was on December 3rd 2015. Read my blogpost here: https://pe4bas.blogspot.com/2015/12/first-day-5-mhz-in-netherlands.html. First QSOs were made with JT65A, can you imagine that was the most populair digimode at that time.

The most unusual contact made on 60m was with PH9HB/AM. A contact that was legal in 2015 but with the new regulations became illigal and so will never happen again. Read here: https://pe4bas.blogspot.com/2015/12/airplane-on-60m.html

It is incredibe I've contacted 200 DXCC on 60m in about 8 years. If you find that a lot, well I'm not even close to others that reached over 250 DXCC on 60m. I wonder how? Because 60m is not legal in a lot of DXCC. Even I can not guarantee I made 100% legal QSOs with all 200 DXCC...

Above the map with my contacts, all 2500+. Used modes CW, SSB, JT65, JT9, FT8, FT4.