[Elecraft] FD wipe-out-need advice on the Iambic key

[Kevin Rock]

Howdy Bill,
    You are quite welcome to join us each Sunday on the Elecraft CW Net.   
We do have a semi regular check in from VE1 and another from VE3.  That  
more or less brackets you :)  I live out in Oregon but there are a few  
stations further East of me which act as NCS during the nets.  Yes, nets.   
There are two of them.  The first is at 2300z at or near 14050 kHz.  The  
other is a bit later at 0200z on or near 7045 kHz.  If you don't wish to  
check in you can simply listen as the band changes and hear ops from  
across the continent exchange signal and weather reports.  There is a bit  
of other chatter going on too.  That way you'll hear a number of different  
fists from a variety of locations.  Power ranges from 3 watts to 800 watts  
or more.  I stay at 20 wpm on my keyer but slow down to whatever speed  
required by adding spaces.  The main reason for that is I never learned  
how to send much slower than 15 wpm.  Just a quirk I guess but I learned  
CW via the Farnsworth method.  This technique allows one to hear the  
entire character as a chunk but leave a bit of space for the brain to  
catch up.  Just before I got to 15 wpm copy my mentor started taking out  
the inter-letter spacing and tried inter-word spacing.  That lasted a  
short while until one day I found he wasn't adding any extra spacing  
anywhere.  Then the fun began ;)  He kept going slightly faster than I was  
comfortable until I caught up again.  That was very helpful.  But, getting  
on the air and chatting with someone is much better practice than  
listening to W1AW.  I found sending to myself in TEST mode was helpful for  
developing my muscle memory.  It sounds odd but I 'feel' the code coming  
into my ears in my arm.
    Good luck with your endeavor and please join us,
       Kevin.  KD5ONS


On Wed, 28 Jun 2006 12:05:30 -0700, William Moore <whmoore at sympatico.ca>  
wrote:

> So, I have returned to W1AW code practice sessions. I will take the K2  
> out
> of tESt (except on SKN New Years Eve), when I can once again copy up to
> 15-20 wpm and hopefully transmitting with some vestige of skill using  
> Iambic
> keying.
>
> Thank you for any advice.
>
> Bill, VE2WMA
> ttp://www.opera.com/mail/