My quest to learn CW (29)

 

Ik keep on going with training on LCWO. Plain text training with 25/22 wpm is still hard but goes better, have done 305 attempts now. Word training (abbreviations used in CW QSOs) at 30/30 wpm almost every time 100% correct.

Hardest is still the lessons 5 mixed characters in rows for 1 minute at 25/20 wpm. I did well till this week.

Due to a short vacation I had a different laptop with different earbuds and had no other choice but be in a noisy room with other people talking and watching TV. Very distracting and a challenge. You need to be able to decode CW in QRM situations as well...

I made some QSOs this month but have a different strategy. I'm still not able to decode a CW QSO faster as 10-12 wpm,. But most operators are calling and make contacts on a much higher speed. I don't want to wait for an operator that keys on a suitable speed for me and hate to ask everyone to QRS for me. I want to make QSOs on CW as well but not being familiar enough with the "lingo" it is almost impossible if I want to do it only with hearing and decoding it in my head. I just miss too much of the code and panic. So I have CW skimmer to back me up. It helps a lot. I try to decode most of it with my ears and head but if I loose it I can read it at the skimmer screen. Keying of course always by hand. This way I don't miss it when someone is asking me something and I can answer like it should be. It also builds confidence this way. I'm shure at a certain point in the future I can do it all with my head. But for normal QSOs I will do it like this for now. By the way CW skimmer is not always reliable, especially not when a straightkey  is used. Luckily straightkey keying is most times below 20 wpm so I can still decode by myself at least most of it.

Talking about straightkeys, I bought a box full of those keys from the estate of PA3BCB Gerard (SK) a while ago. It also includes a homemade single lever key a keyer and some militairy keys. The keyer has been used at the CWops CWA course. I want to check and clean the keys one by one. Of course the results are published on this blog once and a while.

#60m Guinea worked

 

This was a tough one. I got a lot of atmospheric and other interference on 60m during the longer daylight days we have now. The QSO almost happened yesterday evening but I didn't get a RR73 and was not in the log. Luckily it happened today. Receiving FT8 with such low signals is only possible with JTDX, I don't think WSJT-X is able to do that. I had SWL mode on with 3 decoding cycles. This helps a lot during such bad conditions.

Morse included on the Dutch amateurradio license?

    I got the message that fellow CWops CW intermediate course participant PA8E Jim has passed his CW exam last weekend. You can read his adventure here: https://pa8e.nl/morse-certificate/

   I never fully understood how to get "CW included" on your license here in my country. Since you can't do any CW exams here in my country. I knew there was a way going to Belgium for the exam. When passed the exam ask for a "CW included" on your license showing your CW certificate to the Dutch authorities. But how? My assumption was always that you needed at least do the CW exam for 12 wpm. But it seems that it is not needed. If you passed the exam with 5 wpm it is enough. However 5 wpm is not really 5 wpm but 5/12 wpm, so it is a little faster. Not expected but I learned that besides the 26 letters/10 numbers you need to know the questionmark, the slash and 6 prosigns. The prosigns are BT, AR, AS, BT, HH (error correction) and SK.I've listened a example soundfile and dicovered that they used a lot of QSO elements in the text. Like QRG, TEMP, CQ, PSE, 73 etc. This makes it easier of course, though you don't know when those words will appear... You also need to write while decoding, I've tried this and found it difficult. I'm used to typing in LCWO and writing while decoding needs another mind setting. Something I should train more often.

With this info in my mind and now written here in my blog I might do the exam some year in the future. The CW exam in Belgium is only held once a year.