[CW] Re Why I like CW

[David Toepfer]

No, not a bore.  Another interesting story.  This hobby is full of them.  The
trick sometimes is to get people to share them.

dt
.

--- "F6EEQ, Gerard" <F6EEQ@kyxar.fr> wrote:
> This is to answer to W4FOA message dated Sep 30. Sorry, I recieve only the
> digest to avoid mail congestion, and I don't know how to answer directly !
> 
> I really loved your way to learn CW. It reminds me when I was a kid (about
> 14).
> 
> My parents had an old lamp BCL, and one day, I begun to listen extensively
> from bottom to top of SW band.
> 
> I found some weird sayings around 40 m, with a lot of abreviation like
> "Maroc", or "Sierra"... I very quickly understood these were ham radio
> operators, and I begun to put on a french map a little flag at each place I
> heard someone. This was AM time, so they were not difficult to understand.
> Eventually, I learned to meet a ham living in my town (F5TA in Amboise, near
> Tours in the very famous Loire Valle with all the old castles), and he
> introduced me to ham world. He had a 10 tons lamp receiver (AME 7G if some of
> you know the thing), and an home made AM transmitter whom an other ham had
> lent to him. I soon learned about grid, and plate dip...
> At that time I was only interested in phone.
> 
> Later on when I was student, I was member of F6KFN (University ham club in
> Lyon), and I passed my test, having learned CW the old way with nice count of
> dots and dashes !!
> I also found a trick to listen to SSB and CW on a BCL : I had bought a
> Heathkit grid-dip oscillator, and used it as a BFO on the 455 kHz MF of the
> reciever. Not very easey to set-up, but nevertheless working !!
> 
> The rest of the story is a classical one. I got married, got a job, and
> enough money to buy a HW101 TRx.
> 
> One of my most interesting experience was my stay in the USA in 1977 and
> 1978.
> I was sent over there for busines and lived in the marvellous city of San
> Diego. I do not recall all the names of the hams I met there (some come to my
> memory : W6INI, W6PDA), but they were many. I was member of North Shores
> Amateurs RC (meetings if I remember correctly on Balboa Avenue ??), and I
> participated at Field Days and other nice events. I must say that ham life in
> the US was (and I suppose it is always) more exciting than in France, because
> ham radio is part of services rended to the community, in France is more some
> "tolerated" weird hobby with no actual capability to get involved in service,
> due to a very tight regulation, and the lack of goodwill of the authorities!!
> 
> This is during my stay that I learned to enjoy CW with my F6EEQ/W6 call. Some
> work collegue at General Atomics (do not remember the name) lent me a bug,
> and this was really a revelation.
> 
> Now I am 53, live in south east of France (about 100 km south of Lyon). My
> equipment is a TS870 and an old TS430. I still use on VHF CW the FT221 I
> bought at this Ham store on Clairmont Boulevard, but the HW101 has been
> traded against a handy talky (now I regret this !!).
> Antennas are a tribander at 12 m and a dipole with ladder line for low bands.
>  Trafic is 99.9% CW, but I am not really a fast one (25 for casual QSO 30 to
> 35 for contests or DX).
> 
> OK I hope I did not bore you too much with my story, and if some of you are
> from SD area and know whom and what I was talking about, please say hello.
> 
> Best 73 to all and hp cu soon agn
> 
> Gerard, F6EEQ
> 
> 
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