[Elecraft] QRQ CW

[Fred Jensen]

INT QRQ [also QRQ?]: "Shall I send faster?"
QRQ nn: "Send faster, nn WPM"

We hams nounify and verbify International Q-Signals all the time, and 
QRQ in casual conversation means someone who sends and receives Morse at 
rates generally higher than the normal proletariat on the CW bands and 
in contests ... which tend to be higher than normal conversation, not a 
whole lot to say and often it's predictable. :-)

The alleged Morse receiving record is held by Ted McElroy from sometime 
in the first half of the 20th century ... around 75 WPM on text taken 
from the newspaper.  I do hear about those over 100 [units not always 
specified], I really don't know how to interpret that.

I first met Joe, now N8EA, at Keesler AFB in Biloxi MS when we were both 
very much younger, I was 22 and he might have still been in his very 
late teens, or maybe 20.  Joe could head copy 50+ WPM.  I think he still 
can.  I'd say he could paddle it too except I could *not* copy 50 WPM so 
how would I know when he did send?

QRQ [as a noun meaning "very fast CW"] is a personal thing.  It depends 
on your Morse experience, how old you are, and other factors.  Receiving 
QRQ limit for me is around 40 WPM, but I doubt I'd try and engage D4C in 
a debate at 40 wpm however.  My limit with a paddle has declined to 
around 25, maybe 28 on a good day, it's been inversely proportional to 
the number of accumulated birthdays.  For a CW newbie, 20 WPM character 
speed and 12 WPM net speed could be QRQ ... a struggle.

My K3 has a QRQ mode [unused by me] that improves the keying and QSK at 
very high speeds, most of which I think come from keyboards these days. 
  I hope we don't get back into the nonsense of Extra, Extra Lite, and 
No Code Extras.  You take the test on the day you take the test.  It is 
what it is right then.  You pass, you get your license and it's as good 
as mine from 1956 ... period.  We're all in this together.

In the Summits On The Air crowd, a number of formerly SSB/FM-only ops 
are actively learning CW.  I know there are others.  Every legal mode is 
OK, and we're pretty good at sharing our spectrum allocations. Others on 
the planet could actually learn from us.

73,

Fred K6DGW
- Northern California Contest Club
- CU in the 2014 Cal QSO Party 4-5 Oct 2014
- www.cqp.org

On 4/29/2014 2:22 PM, mcduffie at ag0n.net wrote:
>
>> For 2013 CQ WW contest N6TV did an analysis.
>> The answer was 30+ WPM average.
>> The top speeds were in excess of 50 WPM!
>
> So are you saying 30wpm is now called QRQ?  When did it creep that low?  I
> suppose it is a victim of the lack of CW requirement or something like that.