CW Academy - Lesson 3

Thank you all for following this journey to what hopefully ends up with me being a no code ham. The views on the posts about this quest are amazingly high and I appreciate the following. If only it was a paying gig, hi hi.

I looked back over the posts about the first two lessons and realized I did not cover one thing. I told you where you could go practice the lessons but I did not tell you how to set Morse Trainer up. This is information I wanted once I signed up for the course. Within Morse Trainer you can set your tone, wpm (character speed), and wpm. This is also known as the Farnsworth method. It allows you to learn the characters at the quicker speed but slows the word spacing down to make it easier. Once you have the characters down you can increase the wpm. The goal is at a full 20 wpm. We are currently running 20 wpm character speed at a 10 wpm pace. Down the road we have been told we will increase the wpm to 20. So, you have the information that will allow you to go practice on your own.

Lesson 3 adds the letters R H D and L and the numbers 2 and 5. So one week in we are working with eleven of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet and four of the ten numbers.After a pretty dismal performance last week I am happy to say I got some redemption last night.

It was a poor showing at first as there were only two students that showed up at 1930, me and one of the Tarheel guys. The other NC operator was absent due to some work travel. The other two students ended up showing up late, one of which was the N. Indiana no show from last week who was sick, and the other, our Canadian who was delayed by a Boy Scout meeting. I have been surprised at the number of amateurs that are involved with Boy Scouts.

The lesson started out with the instructor sending us words and we had to copy. The same format was used. Raise your hand when you have it and the last one pretty much gets called on. I did pretty well in this drill and we moved on to 3 word phrases. In the middle of this is when the other two students arrived on the call. There were one or two phrases that I struggled with during this time and of course I got the question, "How did you do Steve?" and I responded with a very confident, "As far as you know I did great!". That broke up the seriousness a little. About this time Dennis, the instructor, showed off the QSL card that he received that day from a CWop in Bahrain. One of the students paddled out the call sign and that led to a short stint of the instructor holding up DX QSL cards from his ragchews and contests and we would send the call sign.

Finally we moved on to our final task of the evening which involved us sending our call sign followed by a 3 word phrase. Sometimes the phrases make sense and sometimes they don't. When it was my turn I paddled out (one of these days I will try straight key and I will be able to say tapped or punched out) the following:

.-- ----. -... .-. ..  .-. . -..  -.. .. .-. -  .-. --- .- -..

You got it! W9BRI red dirt road

During this time I was happy that others commented on the mechanical noises during sending on one of the KX3's. I mentioned this in my last post and it also caused others in the room problems in copying his transmission. He is going to try something different next class to see if he can separate the paddles and the computer somewhat to pull the sound away from his speakers.

It still takes most of us 2 to 3 times to catch some of the phrases but we seem to be getting better. The important thing is that it is alot of fun and becoming a CWop will be a great accomplishment and an honor to follow in the footsteps of so many greats. I hope to get as good one day as W9ILF (Ivin) and KB9BVN (Brian), a couple of my elmers. Don't forget to check out their blogs listed over to the right and make sure to check out the Adventures with CW blog (W9ODX) as well.

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CW Academy - Lesson 2

Last night, Thursday September 14th, was lesson 2 of my Level 1 CW Academy class. Not sure what happened to our Northern Indiana student but he did not make it in last night. I put in the time since Monday on the Morse Trainer app and I was feeling good about how I would perform during lesson 2. That feeling was pretty short lived.

Everything started off bad when I arrived home only minutes prior to the start of class and I had to rush around getting things set up. When I fired up the computer to get Skype rolling Windows decided it needed to do some reconfiguration after an update which cost me a couple of precious minutes. That set me off right off that bat. The instructor thankfully called me a third time on Skype and I was able to participate. My frustration became apparent as soon as he started to send words and I started struggling right off the bat.

I have come to the realization that I have to be in a quiet environment to copy effectively right now. I hope that will change down the road but right now it is what it is. I started the class with the shack window open and even with headphones on I heard the kids playing outside and my dogs barking downstairs. My concentration blown I excused myself to shut the window so I could try to resurrect what was left of the session. I did do a little better going forward once I got some of the noise out of the way but I still had some issues.

One student is sending on a KX3 with the optional paddles. His computer microphone picks up every clack of his paddles and kills the rhythm for me. Another has a tone that it seems struggles to get out. I am not sure if I will do better in the upcoming classes by not being late to start with and lowering my frustration level but I sure hope so.

Anyway, some of you are stopping by because you are interested in taking the course and you are curious how it works. Notice I put all my personal stuff at the top so you would have to read through it to get to the part you wanted. I kid. I kid.

So, here it goes. Lesson 2 added letters and numbers to the original letters of T E A and N and, as an added bonus, we started numbers. The new letters were O I and S and the numbers 1 and 4. This session started out by the instructor sending us words and the four of us raising our hand when we had it. We moved on from that to copying three word phrases sent by the instructor and then he had each of us send a three word phrase and our fellow students had to copy. Beyond the problems I already stated that I had we all had some issues with copying due to improper spacing.

At the end of Lesson 1 we were told to practice sending our call signs. We were asked to send them tonight and our fellow students had to copy. This went fairly well except for some of the students who had not learned some of the letters that were in some of the calls. Again, sending suffered some due to our spacing. The instructor suggested we start practicing using the word Asian to work on our spacing because it is easy to run together and the word be unintelligible.

We returned to sending three word phrases and copying until time for the lesson to end. We will be back for Lesson 3 on Monday. Stay tuned!

73

Learning Morse Code

.-- . .-.. -.-. --- -- .  -.. .  .-- ----. -... .-. ..

A few weeks ago I decided to restart an adventure I began once before. I decided I wanted to learn Morse code. Like many others before I went into it motivated and got so frustrated that I gave up after a month or so. I have new motivation now and have found that I am doing better this time even though I am learning different letters than I did last time.

After reading the websites of a couple of well known "fists" it is quite obvious where my failure came from the first time around. I was spending too much time trying to count and not listening. By the time you try to count the dits and dahs the next letter is gone and you will never keep up. I still find myself doing this occasionally but now that I recognize it I can re focus and get back on task.

I have been using the code course by K7QO playing it on my cell phone while working, driving, and just sitting around. I realize that Chuck Adams (K7QO) says to get in a quiet room but I stay pretty busy and find time whenever I can to listen and learn. You can find the code course here.

My latest inspiration came from two fellow hams who decided to do a QRP WAS on 40m using only 2 watts max. Brian, KB9BVN, is running his newly acquired Heathkit HW-8 on a dipole in his attic. Ivin, W9ILF, is running a Small Wonder Labs SW+40 and an unkown antenna. Check out their blogs and enjoy the challenge. Brian can be found by clicking here and Ivin here.

What Do I Want from Amateur Radio?

I want what this ham has. A smile on my face. I have truly found that so far in my adventure. I find enjoyment from listening in on a ragchew while I am doing work for my second job as Riding Academy Manager at Southside Harley Davidson in Indianapolis. I like to join in on those occasionally and I frequent the OMISS net to get a few contacts here and there. I get a thrill while chasing contacts on JT65, especially when it is a new state or country.

And, I want a challenge. I find challenge in learning a new mode or method of operation. I am trying to learn the nuances and protocols of PSK31. I plan to work heavily on QRP adventures over the summer. My daughter plays fastpitch softball all over the US and this summer I will set up the Buddipole in the outfield and run the FT857D and see how many contacts I can make. We have a tournament the weekend of ARRL Field Day so I plan to work from there.

I am also in the process of learning morse code. I believe that knowing this may pay off in the long run. As frustrating as it is, I find great enjoyment in it and believe it will just add to the fun factor I take away from ham radio. The coming posts will probably deal alot with my learning adventure. It is going to be a fun ride.

So, what do you want from amateur radio? Take the time to throw it in the comments and let me know. A little food for thought for next time...how can you give back?