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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USS Indianapolis

Perhaps my most rewarding experience in amateur radio so far occurred the first weekend in June of this year. The annual Museum Ships on the Air event took place June 3rd and 4th and a few friends and I decided to accept an invitation to operate from the mock station located inside the Indiana War Memorial.

As some of you may know, the USS Indianapolis was hit by a Japanese torpedo at 0014 on 30 July 1945. At 0026 the ship was fully submerged and on the way to the bottom of the Phillipine sea. The ship's crew, 1,196 men either went down with the ship or were left floating in shark infested water. It is estimated that 900+ were floating in the water, hoping for rescue. Because this was a top secret mission with no escort the ship was not missed and the men were not discovered for four days, and then by accident. When discovered, the survivors of the shark infested water numbered 316. This top secret mission, which cost an extraordinary amount in human life, let alone the cost of the ship, was to deliver key components of the atomic bomb that would be dropped on Hiroshima one week later. The USS Indianapolis accomplished her mission.

So, it was with great honor to operate as WW2IND for the Ships on the Air event. I spent about 3 hours on the air running SSB making 71 contacts from all over the US. My vantage point was behind this fine rig, the Icom IC-756 Pro III and we pushed the 40m signal out through a dipole mounted at 110 feet. Power was supplied with an Ameritron AL-80B pushing 450 watts.

The other amateurs that operated split the time on CW working 20m. Both of these guys are extremely proficient CW operators and you may remember them from my post about the very low power WAS contest they decided to have. You can get an update on their progress by clicking on their blogs to the right. On the left is Brian, KB9BVN, and on the right at the controls is Ivin, W9ILF. Both of these guys are great elmers and really love for people to learn morse code.

I decided to write this post for two reasons. One, the USS Indianapolis wreckage was discovered this week after 72 years. And, two, to bring this yearly event to your attention and encourage you to get involved next year and volunteer to operate. I want to leave you with a couple of pictures inside the mock radio room. I decided to watch the movie, "USS Indianapolis" last night and I was shocked to see that it looked so close to the actual. If you get a chance, check the movie out and definitely watch for the next Museum Ships on the Air event.

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.