GA to all. My first post. And due to the subject could not resist to write. My first CW qso was with my homebrew, 807 AM/CW transmitter , a borrowed swedish type key (I want to get one now, a very fine tool), 45 watts. and I recall it was with my CW elmer, then LU6DBJ, now after his moving to Cordoba province, LU8HF. The date September 14, 1987. Excitement, nervous, adrenalin, that was great, and I didn't stopped since then, either with my Marconi 971 or Bencher key (with homebrew accu-keyer). I also own a Czech army key, but perhaps I will soon purchase a swedish type from Alberto Frattini, I1QOD. I'm happy for you and remark the very nice attitude from VK land ham, to be patient and slow down as needed. HPE CU soon. 73 de LU5WE - Willy. Puerto Madryn - Patagonia Argentina.
I happened to stumble across this thread and was happy to read it. I was licensed as a Novice in 1986. This was back when one VE could license a Novice and my "Elmer" more or less "gave" me to code test to get me on the air but it didn't work out right away. I ended up moving to Technician in 1988 and wound up in the FM repeater world for years. I did try to study but I had no "code buddy" for help, was in a basement apartment with no real way to get on HF, and relied on cassette tapes for study and those were easily memorized. 5 WPM is really too slow for beginners and allows one to easily learn bad habits which are difficult to remedy, one of which is "dit and dah counting." Examiners from back in the code days used to tell me about guys who would literally write down dots and dashes on the exam paper since 5 WPM is slow enough to allow that and they would literally translate it manually to letters after copying the entire test code -- "dot dash, uh, that's A" and go from there and there is no time limit so they'd pass on that. That's not learning code for any practical use, really. Fast forward from 1986 to 2014 or so. I was always nagged by the fact that I was licensed a quarter century ago and had never worked a CW contact. My biggest impediments to success was the really bad and very difficult to reverse habit of "dit and dah counting" that I had developed and I would get nervous and uptight and literally freeze up if I couldn't translate a character and wind up missing the next twenty characters and be totally lost at that point. I knew that I needed a disciplined approach, some good coaching, and commitment on my part if I was to succeed. CWOPS with their CW academy and the first level course was my success! I was making CW contacts in the seventh week of the course. I had my ups, downs, frustrations and whatnot to be sure. I had to practice for 90 minutes a day, usually three sessions of 30 minutes each, seven days a week. This was to overcome the "dit and dah counting" bad habit and learning to relax. Quite often, it's possible to figure out a word or sentence even if letters are missing because there are something like 150 common words in English and CW QSOs follow a "boiler plate" type format, so I learned to let that unknown character go and just catch what I could, as if I had a ping-pong paddle and balls were coming at me from all directions -- I whacked what I could and didn't worry about what I missed and soon realized that I was hitting more than I missed, and good CW operators won't get mad if you ask for a repeat. Some tips that I learned: Treat CW as learning another language of exclusively sound and discard any visual representations of the code -- I practiced by learning to recognize common words without pencil and paper, the old "copy in your head." English also has a small group of common letter groups that repeat, like "CH" and "SH" and "BL" and "ING," found in many common words and after a while you hear those as a group and things start to "click." Don't stay at one speed too long -- challenge yourself when your confidence grows. If you can copy 10 wpm with reasonable accuracy, increase it and don't worry about what you miss!! Relax and let the code talk to you and listen to the sounds!! Before long, 10 WPM will seen awfully slow! I once walked by the CW tent at field day and easily picked out "CQ FD" at 25 WPM -- if I could pick out "CQ FD" at that speed then I reasoned that with enough practice I could learn to pick out anything else at that speed! If you find yourself hearing a character and not immediately recognizing it then you don't know it. If you have to mentally translate in your mind, however quickly, something like "that was di-dah-dah-dah" uh, that's "J" then you're "dit and dah counting." You'll loose the rest of the word and probably one or two more in the time your mind spends counting and translating, probably get frustrated and loose confidence and be prone to giving up, let along never gaining speed. If you copy "d-t-oit" when a QTH is coming at you, you can reasonably deduce that it's probably "Detroit" and most guys send QTH twice anyway. Learning to simply recognize whole words and groups of words and such is one of the core teaching methods of CWOPS and I think a very important concept. I had to purposely set character speed to 20WPM and overall speed to 10WPM in Farnsworth trainers as a minimum to overcome the "dit and dah counting" and I recommend this as a minimum for novices. One thing that I recommend to new CW operators, and something that I recommended to CWOPS, is learning to send well as part of training. Sending improves receifing, but how does one "know their fist" if they don't have on-air helper or other feedback? I recommend looking up a computer program called "PCW Fist checker" which, using a computer with sound card and your rig's sidetone generator, will read your fist and show what you sent on the screen. For example, the word "The" is all 'dits' but for the "T" which is a single 'dah.' PCW showed me that I was prone to sending "Tis" or "T5" because I would stumble on the four 'dits' which is "H" or not leave the proper spacing between "H" and "E" and run them together to make "5." I practiced my callsign, name, QTH, difficult words, etc., and the reward for that was good copy for the other guy and my first CW contact lasted over an hour and I had to stop it only because I felt like my hand was going to fall off and I was getting QRM/QRN on 40 meters. Hope this helps. I had developed so many bad habits along with my tendency to have lack of confidence and inability to relax but I was able to become a CW op. I learned much about learning along the way as well. Have fun, relax, practice and get on the air. I love working new CW operators, hope to see you on the air soon! CUL 73 N3GBJ
Have you tried PCW FistCheck on Windows 10? When I update from Windows 7 to 10 PCW FistCheck stop outputting any audio. Still decoded OK. Any advice? Paul KW1L
I, like MANY OTHERS OUT HERE, have SAVED A LOT OF TREES by finally getting to the point of "COPYING EVERYTHING IN OUR HEADS"!!! I too had earlier on had COUNTED "DITS & DAHS", BIG, BIG MISTAKE GUYS!!! Once you've gotten over that "BAD HABIT" you'll be IN-LIKE FLYNN!!! I PROMISE!!!
First QSO's are very difficult. I went through my first log book (1963) and it was two pages and a month before I made my first "un prepared" contact. I had a few locals in the log where I had contacted them by phone to "see if I was getting out", but the first response to a CQ took a month. Back then we had to log every transmission so unreturned calls and CQs had to be logged. It was somewhat easier in those days, we had the Novice segments so we could expect to find someone with similar difficulties to us. But we had to use crystal control, which meant everyone was on a different frequency.
************************************************************************************************************************** Yah true!!! BUT IN A NUMBER OF CASES OF NOVICES ALSO HAVING "VFOs" that DID HAPPEN AND THEY CHEATED "BIG-TIME"!!! I might add back then the (FCC) did INSTILL UPON US "1yr. non-renewables" to DO AS THEY SAID, BUT LOOK @ "THE HOBBY NOW!!!". The notion of "LAW-& ORDER" HAS BEEN FLUSHED DOWN THE TOILET!!!
I am in level one now. It is a struggle for me mentally because I am highly educated (dual Masters degree) and I measure success in percentages but I have to say that CW Ops is a fine program.
I am one of the guys that will go at any speed and spacing that is required...if that means 5 wpm with really extra spacing I can do that.. I top out about 25 wpm after about 40 years of doing cw only for the most part.. I recall when folks would send way to fast and I swore that I would not be one of those guys... if you need help please look for me on 7.057 after about 10 pm mountain time..
DEAR FELLOW HAMS, PLEASE RELAX, & LEARN THE MORSE CODE AT YOUR OWN PACE ! TAKE A MINUTE TO LOOK AT THE BRIGHT SIDE OF USING MORSE CODE ! 1. REMEMBER, THERE IS NO "SPEED-LIMIT" ON MORSE CODE ! 2. WITH ONLY 26 LETTERS, & 10 NUMBERS, & SOME PUNCTUATION, A TOTAL OF 50 CHARACTERS, (EACH WITH A DIFFERENT UNIQUE SOUND), TO LEARN ! 3. MORSE CODE IS UNIVERSAL, WORLD-WIDE ! (WE ENGLISH SPEAKING HAMS, DO NOT NEED TO LEARN A NEW LANGUAGE !) THINK FOR A MINUTE, HOW DIFFUCULT IT MUST BE FOR A FOREIGN HAM TO LEARN, TRANSLATE, & UNDERSTAND, MORSE CODE SENT IN ENGLISH ! MY HUMBLE THANKS TO THE MANY FOREIGN DX-HAMS, WHO WORK US FOR OUR DX-QSO'S. THEY ARE SOME OF THE BEST CW-OP'S IN THE WORLD ! 4. AFTER YOU MASTER THE 50 DIFFERENT UNIQUE SOUNDS, & CAN SEND & RECIEVE THEM, AT YOUR SPEED, THEN GET ON YOUR HF-BANDS & USE THEM ! THERE IS NO MORE MORSE CODE TESTING IN U.S.A. FOR HAMS ! ALL CLASSES OF HAMS IN THE U.S.A. ARE ALLOWED ON MANY HF-BANDS WITH CW ! THERE ARE LOTS OF CLEAR & OPEN CW FREQUENCY'S ON OUR HF-BANDS. NOT SO WITH SSB VOICE ON HF. TECH'S ONLY HAVE 10-METER VOICE ON HF. THERE ARE PLENTY OF USED HF-RIGS, AT REASONABLE COST FOR NEW HAMS. ALL YOU REALLY NEED IS A HF-RIG, A HAND KEY, & AN ANTENNA FOR THE BANDS YOU WANT TO WORK. OLD SCHOOL HERE, BUT THIS IS THE WAY I LEARNED MORSE CODE AS A NOVICE. I HAD TO BORROW A RECIEVER, TO COPY CODE. BOUGHT A GOOD QUALITY HAND KEY & LEARNED BOTH SENDING & RECIEVE. TAPE RECORDING MY SENDING, HELPED ME UNDERSTAND WHERE I NEEDED IMPROVMENT, SENDING CHARACTERS, SPACING LETTERS & WORDS, & ACCURACY. NOTHING AT ALL WRONG WITH SENDING AT 5 WPM ! THE OTHER HAM WILL SLOW DOWN TO YOUR SPEED. IF NOT JUST SEND "BK QRS BK" (SEND SLOWER PLEASE !) I WAS ALWAYS A BAD SPELLER, SO I ALWAYS SEND SMALL, EASY WORDS ! WRITE DOWN YOUR QSO ROUTINE, & REFER TO IT, AS YOU SEND. YOUR CALL, (SEND IT CORRECTLY, & MAKE SURE THE OTHER HAM COPIES IT CORRECTLY !) SEND IT MANY TIMES, UNTIL HE DOES COPY IT O.K. ! OUR CALL SIGNS ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THE QSO. SEND YOURS & MAKE SURE HE COPIES IT CORRECTLY. COPY HIS CALL CORRECTLY ALSO. IF YOU MISS IT, ASK FOR A REPEAT: "BK CALL ? BK" ("BK" MEANS QUICK BREAK, "?" QUESTION IS YOUR CALL?, "BK" BACK TO YOU). QUICK & EASY & CLEAR ! ALL THAT IS NEEDED FOR AN HONEST CW QSO, IS BOTH HAMS RECIEVE EACH OTHER'S CALL, & EACH OTHER'S RST REPORT. THAT'S IT ! MARK IT UP AS A GOOD QSO CONTACT ! THE REST OF THE INFO LIKE, NAME, QTH, RIG, & WX IS PART OF THE RAG CHEW. GET THE CALL & RST REPORT FIRST, THEN RAG CHEW IF BAND IS O.K. ! MOST HAMS SEND A CW QSO IN AN ORDER OF: CALL, RST, NAME, QTH, RIG, WX. HAVE YOUR INFO WRITTEN OUT, FOR YOU, & REFER TO IT IF YOU GET LOST. EVER SINCE I STARTED CW, I HAVE PRINTED OUT MY RECIEVE COPY, AS IT IS BEING SENT. LOGS ARE NOT REQUIRED BY F.C.C. ANYMORE, BUT I STILL KEEP A DAILY LOG SHEET OF: DATE, "GMT" TIME, FREQ. MODE, CALL, RST, NAME, QTH, RIG, WX, ECT. OF EACH CONTACT. WHEN YOUR RESPONDING TO QSL'S, YOU CAN GO RIGHT BACK TO THAT QSO, FIND IT, & RESPOND BACK EASILY ! YOU MIGHT THINK OF USING A NICE SET OF HEADPHONES ! IF YOU HAVE TROUBLE HEARING ALL THE FAST "DITS", & "DAHS" OVER THE SPEAKER. TURN UP THE VOLUME ON HEADSET, SO YOU CAN COPY EACH "DIT" & "DAH" OF EACH CHARACTOR ! YOUR XYL, & KIDS WILL THANK YOU ALSO, FOR KEEPING THE HOUSE QUIET ! YOU CAN ALSO KEEP YOUR HEAD ON THE QSO, & NOT BE DISTURBED, ANY HOUR OF THE DAY ! AGAIN, RELAX & LEARN THE MORSE CODE CHARACTERS CORRECTLY, & AT YOUR SPEED ! COPY CORRECTLY, & ACCURATELY, & SEND CORRECTLY, & ACCURATELY ! IT'S JUST TWO HAMS MAKING A CONTACT QSO, & ALL YOU NEED IS CORRECT CALL SIGNS, & CORRECT RST REPORTS ! RELAX & HAVE CW FUN MAKING QSO'S ! DURING A CW CONTEST, TRY LISTENING TO SOME CONTACTS CALLING CQ. AFTER YOU HAVE HIS CALL CORRECTLY, SEND YOUR CALL IN ANSWER. IF HE COMES BACK TO YOU, SIMPLY SEND HIS RST REPORT, & YOUR CALL. THATS IT ! HE IS TRYING TO MAKE AS MANY CONTACTS AS HE CAN, SO SPEED IS HIS GAME. MAKE SURE HE COPIES YOUR CALL O.K. IF NOT REPEAT ! YOU WILL BE ABLE TO MAKE A LOT OF QSO'S FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD IN A CW CONTEST, & VERY QUICKLY ! TAKE IT EASY, & HAVE SOME HAM RADIO FUN ! 73 DE,KD0QV--JIM ==================================================================================================================================================
Hang in there and get on the air! That is the best practice there is. I got back on about 10 years ago and started all over again. 7.050 tp 7.060 is a good place to find slower ops these days. Most will work anyone from 8 to 20 wpm. I have heard quiet a few new hams trying CW and they are going great. Also some older hams trying to relearn like I did. Allen KA5TJS SKCC 5172T NAQCC 4512
I remember some 35 years ago, one of my 2nd or 3rd contacts, I was so bad I received the letters LID from an operator in Arizona (I was in Oregon). It really did hurt my feelings but I got over it. Today I am strictly CW and will never look back. I even ran a west coast slow speed net for several years and enjoyed it very much. Keep on pounding the brass. 73 Rich K8UV
Yeah definitely scary to make that first call! I admit the first time someone answered my CQ I panicked and did not come back to him. I've gotten better but I am still apprehensive at times. Maybe it's just me but I feel I need my mind to be sharp when I am trying to do CW. If it's late or I am tired I just can't do it well. It's still my favorite mode even though I don't do it as often as I need to. One of my early QSOs, maybe my second... I got an answer, and started to try to give a signal report. I was very slow and using a QRP radio. The contact just went away and started answering other calls. I felt like I just got snubbed for being slow and emailed the person to explain that I was new and apologize for sending such crappy code that he just walked away. He was extremely polite and explained that he could just BARELY copy me through the QRN, and I was fading in and out and then just went away completely. He invited me to try again when conditions were better. That was when I realized I was being paranoid and that most of the CW ops are extremely friendly towards anyone who wants to try to learn CW. Not all of course (narcissists are out there), but most.
