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GB2CW Morse Corner 14.2.25
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Morse Classes.
These are all going well.
I have started an email to all students weekly, after the class, to report on progress ( or the lack thereof! ) in the hope that it will provide the impetus to keep up with the practice, plus give them some homework for the coming week so we can hit the ground running! This is to try and keep everybody at the same level. It’s always difficult to do that with any class on any subject, so it’s nothing new. However, so far so good.
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There is still time for new beginners to join my class on Friday evenings. No need to worry even if you haven’t started yet. Please call in on GB3NB at 7.30 p.m. and I will be pleased to see you. Providing you do the necessary practice you can soon catch up.
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Martin G7RXR sent information on this web page. It could prove very useful for the raw beginner coping with learning all the characters. Do take a look and make use of it. Thanks Martin. I am repeating this again this week just in case it was missed last week. However I will remove this next week so if you have not checked this link as yet, please make a note of the URL.
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https://morsecode.world/international/trainer/character.html
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Martin had some comments about the site:
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There’s lots of interesting stuff there, I found the Instant Character Recognition page particularly useful. There are several parameters you can adjust. I configured it to send characters one at a time followed by a pause of about a second after which it would speak the character in English. My theory was that if I hadn’t recalled the character myself after a second it would implant the anwer in my memory!
Thanks for all your help and support so far, the journey continues!
73 de Martin G7RXR
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I had a couple of students, Steve M0YRU and Marie M7YRU, his wife. They signed up for a CWOPS Academy course and in fact are carrying on with that, they like it so much. Steve emailed me this week and I have his permission to reproduce it here in the hope it will provide inspiration to those on my beginner’s course.
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Hi Roger!
Hope you are keeping well and that your antennas are still pointing in the right direction!
Marie and I caught the tail end of your CW class last night. We are pleased to confirm that we managed 100% copy! I bet you never thought you would see the day when that happened! It seems so long ago now, when we were struggling to copy anything in your class, I think it must have been about this time last year when we started?
It has been a long journey to get where we are now, and there is still so far to go. Marie and I are currently doing at least six 2 hours classes every week, plus many zoom sessions that we arrange with fellow students. Hearing your students last night reminded us of a time where we never thought we would ever get to improve, but we have! We still have all the usual problems, I cannot write code fast enough (not helped by arthritis) and I seem to have a 4 character buffer when head copying (after 4 characters the first ones start dropping off!). Marie’s memory buffer seems slightly better than mine.
However, I would like to emphasise to your current students that progress is slow. Very slow. So slow that you don’t even notice it yourself until somebody points it out to you. This is not a quick fix endeavour, it takes a lot of time and a lot of practice. I believe that it is a never ending journey (we are always striving to improve), but expect two years to become a competent operator (at least for us old people!). But keep going!! The rewards are very great. We have found CW to be a lot of fun, and I have a motto ‘The speed will come if you’re having fun!’ Get some more classes from somewhere, we have found CWops to be very good and we have also just joined the Long Island CW club to see what they have to offer. The point is, to get as much training and information as you possibly can.
I read a quote from Winston Churchill the other day which I found very appropriate – ‘Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm’
Keep it up! You are doing great!!
Marie and I still struggle with all the usual things, copying, esp head copying, sending good code, but most of all the anxiety of getting on the air! I can practice my call-sign a hundred times perfectly but as soon as I press the break-in button it all goes to pot!! However, we have met some great people who have always offered understanding, patience and encouragement.
Marie managed 33 QSOs in the recent 9A CW contest! I was very proud of her! I have over 100 QSOs now and still counting. But the anxiety remains! We have even worked a number of CWTs but so fast! Takes 10 minutes just to copy the call!
We would like to thank you Roger for starting us off on that first leg of our journey, it has been a pleasure to know you and we wish you well.
73, Steve & Marie
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Both Steve and Marie also enter some of the RSGB CC contests for NARC, Tracey is now doing that again and doing very well. It’s good practice and also good fun! Hopefully some of the Morse Class students will venture into the world of contesting.
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KEY OF THE WEEK
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This week, it features a paddle from Modern Morse. It is an enclosed paddle, used by portable stations a lot because it is very robust. It is made by AE0LX and a descriptive video can be found here:
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https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=modern+morse+key+by+AE1LZ#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:d6b6f9a6,vid:aLsRpUhsxxM,st:0
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Uli Scheunemann has retired but there will be a successor to Uli Scheunemann, DJ6JL:
Martin Pfeiffer, DL1MP has taken over the business and plans to build
both the single (Einhebel) and dual lever (Dirigent) versions.
DL1MP’s newsletter/announcement:
https://www.darc.de/fileadmin/filemounts/distrikte/g/ortsverbaende/09/DL1MP_2.pdf
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Fabian, DJ5CW
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The NARC CW Monday Night Net.
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This now takes place on 3543 at 8 p.m. on Monday evenings. We have a Net controller each week and the idea is to encourage you to conversational Morse. If you can read and send at 23wpm, do come and join us. 23wpm is the speed at present and we may be increasing that as time goes by. The overs are short but protocol is adherred to and just a few comments from each attendee is all that is needed. Give it a try!
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Surely there are a few more quite capable of joining the net to try your hand at conversational Morse. I think there are a number of locals who, although capable, use Morse to crack a pile-up with the use of macros and very rarely use a paddle in long QSOs.
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There is no need to be shy. Learning conversational Morse is a skill in itself. Anybody can work a DX pile-up by using macros or sending their call and 599 TU. Try holding a conversation for about an hour and see how you get on. If you aspire to CWOPS or FOC it’s the only way you will get in to those clubs, by showing and proving your proficiency with a paddle.
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Not only that, but it really is very satisfying to be able to hold a conversation for that long at around 25wpm with minimal mistakes. PLUS of course you can then monitor the CW end of the bands and hear just conversations and not just dits and dahs.
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CW OPS
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Certificates: You can download your certificate for 2024 from https://cwops.telegraphy.de/certificate/
Medallions: If your certificate was a Gold, Silver or Bronze Medal certificate, you are eligible to request a medallion. To defray part of the costs of purchasing and mailing your medallion, there is a $15 USD fee, payable through PayPal. If you qualified and are on the list of medallion winners, either as published in the CWT column in the January 2025 issue of the Solid Copy newsletter or in the file “CWTmedals2024.txt” at https://cwops.groups.io/g/main/files/CWTmedals2024.txt, you can order your medallion from the payment button at the bottom of the CWT web page on the CWops website (direct link: https://cwops.org/cwops-tests/#medpay).
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Note however the payment has to be made before the end of February. After that time the ordering window will close in order to allow Rob K6RB to prepare a bulk order for the medallions from the supplier. Once the medallions are received, they will be mailed out, probably some time in May or June. The costs of mailing are included in the $15 fee.
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The mailing addresses used for sending the medallions will be the addresses on file with the CWops Membership Secretary as of the time of mailing (May-June, 2025). If your mailing address has changed or will have changed from the mailing address you reported at the time you joined CWops, you should make sure that your address on file is up to date; you can contact the Membership Secretary at membership (at) cwops (dot) org to update your mailing address.
If you have a question about your participation score or believe you should have qualified for a different medal level than is shown on the list, you can contact VE3IAY at ve3iay@gmail.com
Lots of new members are joining each week so it is quite a busy hour if you stay for the full period. I just attend for 30 minutes and usually
have around 30 or so QSOs.
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General CW Operating.
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For those of a nervous disposition, try joining FISTS. FISTS caters for the more casual, laid back operator who does not feel comfortable at more than 23 wpm. They also have a LADDERS competition on 40m which is good practice. Actually for what you pay for membership it really is a great deal with a quarterly magazine too called Keynote. It contains lots of interesting articles.
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That’s it, open the cage, play the music.
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If you have any input, please email me.
73 de Roger, G3LDI GB2CW Coordinator. roger@g3ldi.co.uk May the Morse be with you.
Author Roger Cooke