My quest to learn CW (12)

 It's the number 12  monthly post. That means I'm seriously learning CW now for a year. And I did make progress. I might not be able to make a decent QSO on air or follow it at all. But I experienced that I can decode most calls in a contest and numbers in morse code. 

Last month I was writing about finishing lesson number 40 at 28/12 wpm. I thought it would take another few days. But till now I'm unable to finish it without errors. My last attempt had only 1 fault, so close to that 100%.

I keep going but the lessons are less important now. I do a lot of plain text training on a speed of 15/15 wpm. It is far above my abilities right now and most of the time I only have 70-80% right. It doesn't matter, some day I'll get it.

I got some info from PE2V Vincent's blog that there are some CW contest going on through the week. It would be nice to partake in them but through the week is a bit difficult right now. So I keep contesting in weekends.

#60m Sierra Leone worked

 

Got a message yesterday that 9L5A was active on 60m. Unfortunatly I was not at home and missed the new one. You can't have everything! But I was lucky today...

Monitored 6m as well. But was not so lucky. Tried for this same station from Sierra Leone. It was very strong but the pile-up was very large and I had no luck in contacting this DXCC. Have seen a few other "new ones" as well which I couldn't contact. TL8ES from Central Africa and TI2AA Costa Rica. Well, tomorrow is another day with new opportunities...

@CQWW DX CW Contest review

 

Not much time for this contest this year. Operated about 6 hours. I concentrated on DX only. Did listen a lot. And didn't use any CW decoder on the computer for the first time in this contest. Only headcopy. Worked fellow blogger VE9KK on 10m. I heard him on 15m but very weak and did try but Mike didn't hear me. Fellow blogger VE3VN has been worked as well on 10 and 20m. I also heard EI2KC on 10m backscatter, he has a blog but doesn't update it much. Worked him a few times in the past but no contact this time.  Strange I worked a lot of interesting DX but the highlight are always the familiar stations. I worked my neighbour station PA4O who was on the Azores as CT8/PA4O for this contest on a few bands. Total number of QSO's was 76, but it doesn't matter to me since I was not working the majority but only the nice DX.