[Lowfer] CW

Wed, 2 Apr 2003 22:03:31 -0600

Hi Bill,

You're getting there. It is hard as heck to learn something new after the
college years. You are on the right track and will have it mastered very
soon. 5wpm is really slow. You'll laugh at it later this year. It is so
worth it to have your amateur ticket as you have the freedom to roam around
on so many different bands and do what you want. After a winter of CW on
136, you most likely will be flying along at 15 to 20 or more WPM with the
locals around you. Your speed really goes up fast once you get on the air
and have/want to understand what the other person is telling you in CW. It
makes you train your mind to hear words instead of the individual letters.

I am down pretty slow now since I have been away from the VHF CW tropo
stuff, but I was about 31wpm back in my hay day of working 144 and 50mc. I
can and will get it back over 20wpm when I don't have a choice but to chat
in CW on 136.

Keep at it. Don't get frustrated too much. You will have off days, good
days, and days you want to say the hell with it. You can and will do it.
Besides, you have to have a QSO with that far away looper in Minnesota some
day on LF. It will happen and it will be a blast for sure, nah, cool as hell
to hear your pounding away on the paddles.

73's,

Mike>WE0H
http://www.we0h.us/lf

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
On Behalf Of Bill Ashlock
Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2003 8:15 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [Lowfer] CW

Mike R:

>We'll burn up the band or trees on CW when we finally get it.

Could, in fact, be as bad as the way we burn up this reflector!

Bill

PS: I've been spending some time on learning the code over the last two
weeks. 15 WPM dot and dash times, even at a 5 WPM rate, are not easy for me.
At least I can now write the full alphabet on paper and recognize  the
characters when sent to me - if a have about 2 seconds to think about each
one of them. The trick of course is not to have to think about the dots and
dashes but just the sound patterns - and I can recognize only about half of
the alphabet this way.