[CW] Learning hints

[Art]

I was a retread in the 1970's (first licensed in 1960).  I made an oath 
that, this time, I would learn code right.
Of course we had to for the license,

But, to get faster, I did the following
I copied and recorded the  the W1AW code practice sessions and put them 
it on audio tape and played it on the way to work
Much easier now that you can download in mp3 format the code practice.

On the air I worked as many Russian hams as possible,  In the days of 
the iron curtain there were many Russian hams on CW and, at night, on 
the polar route (due north or so from here) on 20 cw it was easy to hear 
and work them
They were all fast and good (really very good CW operators considering 
they were sending and receiving in American English morse code and 
alphabet whereas their main alphabet was the Cyrillic (SP) one.

Anyway that and a lot of QSO with requests to the other ham to slow 
down, got me up and past the 20 WPM for my Extra.

I now work, almost, exclusive CW DXCC and enjoy it a lot
Keep it going, work at it and you will really enjoy the hobby.
Art K5FNQ


Michiel Wories wrote:
> 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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