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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QRP Dummy Load

There are quite a few choices one can make for a QRP dummy load kit. There are offerings from QRP Labs, QRP Guys, Oak Hills Research, etc. Sure you can buy a low power dummy load ready to go for $30 or so but there were two factors that fueled my decision. One, I really like putting things together. I find it relaxing to sit at my bench listening to the radio and soldering things up. I never did this type of stuff in the past so it is pretty exciting for me when you are done and the moment of truth comes and you power it up or run the test and things are as they should be. The second factor that made me decide to purchase a kit was the cost. $30 plus shipping or $14 to my door. Well, that is not a decision that takes long for me. You see, I am a self proclaimed cheapskate. Well, I guess not so self proclaimed as my wife and kids would probably tell you the same thing about me.

So, I looked all over the internet and settled on a 10 watt dummy load kit from Oak Hills Research (OHR). This particular dummy load is actually a joint venture between OHR and the Colorado QRP Club (CQC). It consists of two 5w 100ᘯ metal oxide resistors, an SO-239 connector, and two adapters. You get both a UHF to UHF adapter and a UHF to BNC adapter. This is the perfect size to throw in a backpack or go kit for when you find that perfect operating position. The best part? It takes longer for the soldering iron to heat up than it does to make it. After I got my soldering done I performed the obligatory check and it read a perfectly acceptable 50.1Ω.

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There were many other kits available that I really liked the look of but some, with a piece of PCB attached, seemed a little less "combat ready" than this all metal offering. The other thing I found is that the customer service is second to none from OHR. Marshall, N1FN, was excellent at communicating with me throughout the order and shipping process and we had a nice conversation about some of the other products that are offered. Check out what they have to offer by going to Milestone Technologies, which seems to be the mothership for OHR, Morse Express, and Ameco. Make sure you tell Marshall that Steve McQueen, W9BRI, sent you. After all, who could forget a name like that?

Until next time.....
73