Gilmore Radio Club – the first CW Corner News, by David M0WDD
Welcome to the first CW Corner News in the Gilmore Radio Club. This is a new a new club of course, and a new CW Corner News. So what will you find in this first CW Corner News? Here’s the agenda.
- About the Gilmore Radio Club CW Corner
- A little about me
- The GRC CW Support
- The Gilmore Radio Club CW Quiz
- In Next CW Corner News
- And Finally – Would you like to help in the CW net team?
About the Gilmore Radio Club CW Corner
The GRC emphasis is on friendly support, helping each other with CW, and learning as much as we would like to about CW. With your help, the club can expand its CW activities and encourage members and non-members to take up CW, or improve their use of CW, make new CW friends and generally enjoy using CW.
Central to this will be support, signposting, and practical activities to help each other build on our CW skills. I’ll tell you more about this shortly. So if CW interests you, or you want to build on your CW skills further, then we encourage you to take part in some of the club’s planned CW activities. We want you to enjoy and have fun with using CW.
The club’s aim is for you to gain or improve your CW skills so you can have basic on air CW QSOs, and then progress to having more conversational QSOs. We are not aiming to make you code breakers, but instead we are aiming to help you enjoy CW at a level that suits you. But first things first – a little about me.
A little about me
Well I’m David M0WDD and I’m a bit of a CW addict. I’ve been licensed for about 8 years and active in CW for about 3 years. Before CW I liked SSB, and still do, but CW has always fascinated me. As well as this, about 5 years ago, after a family bereavement, I needed something to focus my mind on. I do others things as well, but this was partly why I started learning CW, and have never regretted this. It was the challenge of learning something completely different, like a new language, and proving to myself that I could do it. Well I am still working on that last part. It has become my favourite mode.
I am not a seasoned CW user or expert, just someone who is enthusiastic about learning CW. My only CW keying has been with a paddle and not with a straight key. My CW learning started at 12 wpm and is now up to about 20 wpm. By the way if I were to start learning CW again I would start at a faster character speed to begin with, with lots of spacing between characters and words to start. Then as you get the hang of listening to the sound patterns for each character, you cut down the spacing. This has become the accepted practice in many CW clubs and training programmes, and has worked well for me and for many others.
However everyone learns differently. The trick is to find what works best for you I think. If you ask 10 CW hams about the most effect way to learn CW, you will probably get 10 different answers! All have merit. If you are learning CW, my suggestion is to listen to the opinions, then try different methods and exercises for yourself, and then see what works best for you.
The GRC CW Support
In Gilmore Radio Club we aim to support you in using CW in a number of ways. You can ask us questions directly about learning CW; we can signpost you to free online CW training resources and courses; we can give you practical advice and tips; and we can offer you practical on air activities.
This is what we have setup for you do far.
1) Email a question. We have setup a new email address GilmoreradioclubCW@gmail.com for you to ask CW learning related questions. Please remember I am not a CW expert, but I have experienced different CW learning methods, and am pleased to share this with you.
2) Regular on air CW net. We are setting up a regular on air CW net for GRC for members and non-members – all are welcome to join in GRC activities, and we encourage non-members join the club. We will send details of our planned test CW nets to all members through the Google Group email system.
We also plan to include some CW training within our CW net, covering letters, numbers, and short words, and later progress to short conversational style CW.
3) Request a live CW QSO. You can request a live CW schedule (SKED) with me or one of the CW net team. Just email a request to GilmoreradioclubCW@gmail.com or through the GRC Google Group emails.
If you want to get on the air with CW or build your confidence doing this, a live sked can be a very effective way, even if you just send your callsign or have a very short CW exchange.
It does not matter if you make mistakes – everyone does. Don’t get me wrong – it’s important to send CW as accurately as you can, but it’s as important to learn how to correct a mistake, send the wrong item again, and move on. We all learn to do this. A live SKED can do wonders in boosting your confidence in using CW. Next in the CW Corner News is the quiz time.
The Gilmore Radio Club CW Quiz
In each newsletter we will have a short quiz about CW. Today there are 3 questions and the answers are hidden somewhere else in this newsletter. You need to find them! The answers will also be in the next Newsletter.
Question 1) Name three common types of morse code keys.
Question 2) What three letters did the Titanic send in morse code, in the first distress call?
Question 3) In what year was the first successful transatlantic morse code sent?
In Next CW Corner Newsletter
In the next issue we will include these topics:
– What do you need to get started in morse code? We’ll look at basic equipment.
– What are the main online training website to learn Morse Code. We’ll summarise several for you.
And Finally – Would you like to help in the CW net team?
Would you like to join with me David M0WDD, and Keith M0JYP in developing this exciting CW net, and help build it within the club and also make it available to more amateurs in the North West? Please email if interested. 73.
David M0WDD