[CW] Learning hints

[Michiel Wories]

Hi I am a fairly new HAM who caught the bug again after a long time (I did 11m DX when I was 15-17 years old on a 3 el beam and 100W tube linear).

I found myself particularly attracted to QRP and CW and set myself the goal to learn CW before getting on the air. Turns out there is a lot of things to learn anyway so I am learning the ropes of setting up antenna's (I build 2 PAC-12's and have a homemade wire setup on my roof) and learning about propagation and bands as I learn CW.

I am using Koch at character speed 20 and word speed 10 in my training sessions.

So far it's been going great and I think I just need to practice more to get to the full set of characters.

I seems to plateau a bit on 25/26 characters into Koch but I think this is due that I got this far on 5 minutes of training per day. I will step up my training sessions.

Any useful tips and hints are appreciated how to get to the full set.

I also am interested in learning how to use a key. I have one straight MFJ practice key but I am not sure that is the way to go. I have an FT-817 that has a training mode AFAIK so I should be able to try different keys. Any tips here?

Thanks,
Michiel
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