25 part transmitter for the QRP Minimal Art Session

My Minimal-Art-Session rig shown here was made for class B of the QRP-MAS competition which is in May every year. In class B the transmitter should have a maximum of 50 components, and the fewer the number of components, the more points one will get per contact. With such simple rigs, only CW is viable.

This rig was made by combining ideas from several designs that I had seen and it was finished the same day as the competition. I ended up with 22 components in the transmitter except for the output filter. The rules say that no matter what, the output filter counts as three components. I guess this is in order that no one is tempted to simplify the filter too much and start emitting harmonics. 

Adaptation of some Morse programs to Norwegian

Nice drawing of Bencher keyer by Dutch radio amateur
Dick Kraayveld, PA3ALM
(http://www.morsecode.nl/pa3alm.html)

Norwegian has three special characters that need to be learnt as well: æ, ø, å.  Therefore I adapted some Morse programs to Norwegian in 2001 when I learnt Morse myself. The programs are found below: 

• Training program using the Koch method. Excellent for learning the symbols for the first time. Unfortunately this program gives too long spaces between dashes and dots as the speed approaches 12 words per minute.
• Simple text to Morse program
• Norwegian files for "The Mill". This is one of the best Morse practice programs, it has everything except that unfortunately it does not have a simple window based user interface. Do the following:
• First download and install The Mill made by Jim Farrior, W4FOK
• Then there are two alternatives:
1. Either replace the two files #26.rwd and #26.rwd which are in the archive MillNorsk.zip. They will add 100/400 Norwegian common words to the English ones in the menu for code practice of the common words.
2. Or add the two files 100norsk.txt and 400norsk.txt to the Mill00a folder with the other program files. To use the Norwegian files select from the Random Word Sender Menu 9 -List of other available files, and type in the file names (suggested by Jim Farrior).
• Either alternative makes it possible to practice the Norwegian/Danish characters æ (.-.-, = Swedish/German ä), ø (---., = Swedish/German ö) and å (.--.-).

I can unfortunately no longer maintain these programs. A good alternative now is Just Learn Morse Code by LB3KB. It also supports international (non-English) letters.