Worldwide travel without leaving home is a hallmark of our hobby and the March issue of CQ takes us to far-off places and offers tips radios, accessories and operating techniques to help us make contact wherever the bands will take us. We start with the story of the K7K DXpedition to Kiska Island in the Aleutians of Alaska, which is closer to Japan than the mainland of the U.S. And then we take you all over the world with the results of the 2022 CQ World Wide RTTY DX Contest, which featured the return of worldwide DX on the 10-meter band as Solar Cycle 25 gets propagation pumping!
Keeping it closer to home, WB9YBM wraps up his three-part series on getting the most from your scanner or scanning ham rig with tips on taking it with you on portable operations. And speaking of portable operations, K3SKS follows up his January 2022 article on “One Ham’s Journey in Portable Operation” with this month’s alliterative “Persistent Practice Produces Positive POTA Progress” (POTA is short for Parks On the Air).
This issue’s “CQ Classic” takes us back exactly 50 years to the March 1972 issue and our reprint of “SY1MA: Mt. Athos DXpedition,” offering a glimpse at what has and hasn’t changed about DXpeditioning over the course of a half-century. One thing that hasn’t changed is the need for an effective antenna, and we’ve got two this month: K4HRK’s “A Collapsible Tri-Bend Antenna for 6 Meters, 2 Meters and 70 Centimeters with a 10-Meter Option,” as well as the third and final installment of N2EWS’s “The Continuing Anticlimactic Adventures of the Perverted V.” And on the subject of antennas, “Gordo’s Short Circuits” editor WB6NOA reviews two antenna tuners, the Comet/NCG CAT-300 and the LDG Z-100A. Something else that hasn’t changed in the past 50 years is the importance of Morse code for getting our messages through, and W0FN shows those of us who have struggled with copying CW how to increase our enjoyment of the mode by “Learning Morse Code Instant Character Recognition” or ICR. On a related topic, Kit-Building Editor K0NEB constructs the Ham Radio Solutions CW Hotline, a code practice oscillator with options for using either a built-in hand key or a set of paddles.
