My quest to learn CW (32)

 

I concentrate on text training mostly. Trying to recognize words, but it still is difficult. However the accuracy is still going up. My goal was 90% but I forgot that that it will take more time when the number of attempts is increasing. Of course I don't score 100% all the attempts. So, this month there was no full percent increase. I'm thinking of changing my goal now and increase speed when I reach the 88%. At that point I will delete all my attempts and start all over again.

Above the in the graphic you can see my efforts doing random letters & numbers training with 28/20 wpm. It is still increasing and there are days that I only have 5 errors. Some days are better as others.

Most important is that I make a lot of CW contacts these days. And it slowly gets better. Sometimes a QSO goes like a breeze. And sometimes I don't know what to key and it ends in a disaster. It doesn't matter since I still have fun. And I see this as a real challenge which I really like. I never met an operator that gets mad because I make too many mistakes. Actually most ops are really patient, friendly and encouraging. That's the fun of CW.

Almost world wide propagation on 6m

 

I wished for a few new on band ones. But it didn't happen. You can't have it all! The DX was almost world wide.

NTCQP July

 

    The Netherlands Telegraphy Club QSO party was on yesterday evening. 1 hour of CW fun. Completely different from the mainstream big contests since you need at least to give report, name and ntc number (or NM if no member). The fun is that there are 2 categories. Automatic (paddle with keyer or computer) and Mechanical (bugs, straightkey, cootie). Till now I'm doing automatic but I want to try mechanical one of the next QPs as well. I was only active on 40m this time and almost only running and listening. Actually I didn't hear much S&P so only running was an option. I used N1MM as logger and some of the names were already in it, but worked also some that were not in the system yet. I had some trouble decoding SM7GVF and did correct it in the log later. Same for OK1LZ for the name. I saw PE2V spotted in hamspots so I quickly found Vincent en made the QSO. Rene PA3GPX was worked in the last minute of the contest.

I'm getting better in this. It's not a top score. Every new start is difficult. But I have fun. My keying though needs a bit more practice, it is really a mess sometimes. It's like I haven't got the (fast) motor skills for paddle use. So I also practice with a straight key and this goes a lot better in my opinion. I might do the mechanical keying category next time.