Thursday, January 30, 2025

My quest to learn CW (14)

 Slow it goes. But the rate is going faster. To learn ICR I increased the speed to 30wpm after I got this advice from several people. 30wpm is just slightly faster as 28wpm so there is no trouble at all to decode for me. However it is all about the real speed...



I'm trying to do training outside of my comfort zone. So that's plain text training with 30/20wpm. It is a ridiculous fast speed and I got only 70% right on average. But it helps me decoding lower speed after I did this training a few times. The lower speed is 30/14wpm which I use for callsign, word and figure (numbers) training.

The initial plan was to make a CW QSO everyday. But unfortunatly that's impossible for me. It was a good plan but in real life I have not enough time. However I made a few POTA hunting QSOs and a few with the WWA stations. Just exchanging reports that is, and even that I screw up. But it seems that doesn't matter. At least I'm on the air with CW. The goal is to make a decent QSO in the future but that will take a long time I think. I'm trying to decode CW that's on the bands. I found some nice slow CW on 80m on several days. But even that is difficult to follow. Yes I do hear some letters and abbreviations but I can't really figure out what it is all about. I really have respect for those people that make CW QSOs like it is their second language. But hey, learning English was not a matter of days or a year for me. It took at least 10 years of school before I mastered it. My daughter picks up english from the internet, she learns fast, at least understanding and speaking it. But grammar is a whole other story, she really needs to learn that on school. And after that, exercise in real life. Just like learning morsecode...

I also have fun with CW. I try to decode the word from morsle.fun everyday. Here are my stats so far:


The PACC contest is in 2 weeks. Since I partake in the QRP section, which is a mixed section, I really need to train CW for that to gain some extra points. I have no illusion I will ever win this section since the top contesters in this section will use 2 radios at the same time. But at east I'll do my best to get as high place as possible.

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