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Both Emma and Tony visited Paul M1AFQ on Thursday and had a session with some receiving practice on a personal level. I hope this helped you both. A personal meeting and discussion is always so much better. Problems can be sorted very quickly and any anomalies can be addressed too. Emma has visited Paul and found it useful, as has Tony. Tony is having an age-related problem which is all too common in us oldies.! Learning something new at an older age is always fraught with problems. However, I am hoping he persists with it.
To help with learning into older age try adhering to the following helpful tips:
1 Try practice sessions of 15 minutes at a time, concentrating on a weak point.
2 Morse Machine: A component of LCWO that helps you learn character by character.
3 LCWO.net (Learn CW Online): This is highly recommended and free. It uses the Koch method to introduce characters gradually and allows you to use your browser.
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As I said, concentration will be plain language for a while now. Please try to copy in lower case as it is much easier than printing capitals. This will become evident as we increase speed.
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Two things for you to check out. The first is CW PLAYER by F6DQM. There are some useful utilities which could help.
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. The second is RUFZxp. This is a great program for practising call signs. If you copy a call sign correctly, it increases the speed to give you some brain strain. When you eventually make a mistake it will slow down again. You get two shots at a call, using F6 for a repeat 2nd try. That’s all you get however.
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To prove my point about starting when you are young, here is a video for you to watch. It is incredible how this lad’s brain decodes call signs from the blur of CW at over 200 wpm. I am leaving this in again this week because it hasn’t been viewed by some as yet. I suspect this one is a ‘ I will do that later’ syndrome. This never happens of course!
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Latest from Jim G3YLA on his class.
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The Friday evening class is doing well which shows the benefit of having two intermediate sessions during the week, one with Phil, G4LPP and the other with Jim, G3YLA. The net result is that speeds between 14 and 20wpm are being tackled regularly. Now, in the old days that would have meant that further practice would be done on the bands having real QSOs. Don’t feel you need to be perfect before having a try; we all have keying errors, but the more you do, the fewer there will be.
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It would be a good idea if you all took a listen to Jim’s class to see exactly what is expected of you when you migrate to that class. It won’t be this semester, but perhaps later in the year. It really is up to the individual and how much practice you all do.
Here is the schedule:
One last comment: I did receive a nice email from a 15 year oldYL from London, having read my PW articles. She was just about to abandon Morse because she had considered it “Old technology” and not worth bothering with. I told her to just consider it a language, which of course it is and nothing to do with technology. I asked her if she was learning a foreign language, which of course she was. QED. My case was won and she is now learning Morse to use on the air.
DON’T FORGET THAT IF YOU DON’T DO MORSE YOU LOSE ACCESS TO 40% OF THE AMATEUR BANDS.
Here is the information on the Monday NARC CW net. We would like to see more people join who need the netting and net practice. It is very good local practice and we don’t bite!
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73 de Roger, G3LDI roger@g3ldi.co.uk May the Morse be with you.
Author Roger Cooke