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.