[Elecraft] CW Mistakes

[Darwin, Keith]

-----Original Message-----

I think the biggest mistake is to worry about making mistakes.  Just get
out there and do it!  

Get on between 14.050 and 14.058 (or 7.050 - 7.058) and call CQ or
answer a call.  There are many slow-speed ops out there who are happy to
talk to you and who will probably be making some mistakes themselves.
---------------------------

Yep, I'm one of them.  I've been QRT for a few months.  Got the K3 and
got back on the air.  For my first QSO I answered on the bug.  Boy, did
I mess it up.  My brain got all twisted around.  I got the dots & dashes
reversed and was thinking it would auto complete dashes.  I quickly
switched to the straight key for that QSO (paddles weren't hooked up).

And I've been doing morse off and on for 30+ years. LOL!

So, the biggest mistake is not getting on the air.

I'm going to say the 2nd biggest mistake would be poor spacing.  I hear
some OPs who don't leave enough space between words or letters.
Insufficient spacing between words is not that big of a deal, but not
enough spacing between letters leads to random dot-dash patterns.


- Keith N1AS -
- K3 711.500 -