[Elecraft] QRQ CW

[Kevin Stover]

Excellent post.

I learned more than ten years ago from a group of guys in the Black 
Hills that slowing down to about 22-25 wpm when running gets more 
answers than "showing off" and cranking the keyer up to 35+.
These guys can all do 50+ head copy but slow it down intentionally to 
attract more contacts.
It works. For about 6 years in a row they were one of the top ten 1A 
stations during field day.
Maybe if the big contest guns did the same we wouldn't have the visceral 
anti-contest attitudes displayed, and get more people involved.

On 4/29/2014 9:09 PM, Fred Jensen wrote:
> 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


-- 
R. Kevin Stover
AC0H
ARRL
FISTS #11993
SKCC #215
NAQCC #3441