A couple of months ago Joe, KD9CJX, asked me what’s the best way to learn CW. Like me, he’s been off and on the CW horse a few years now, but lacking the commitment to get code comprehension to a point where he feels confident to make a contact. I told him Long Island CW Club is the best way to go. Their online Zoom classes are supportive and like Planet Fitness, they are a no judgement zone.
This week’s video is the result of his work, you can watch it here:
He started taking classes in late January and soon told me we need to do this together to keep ourselves accountable. I already had a life membership to the club, but again commitment was holding me back. So I joined in and we took the Monday evening BC1 classes together. He’s a couple weeks ahead of me and my recent bout with the Flu put me a couple weeks behind. I felt like I was slipping, but let me tell you, last weekend’s Parks on the Air activation reenergized me to continue on.
The important thing to remember is that Joe’s POTA was the result of only 9 weeks of study, which is amazing. The way LICW works, their BC1 class is a rotating six week program where you learn the 18 most used characters in CW. You can start at any time and move through the course. When you hit about 80% recognition, they recommend moving to BC2 where you will learn the rest. Beyond that there are classes to improve comprehension, speed, and sending. But as Joe mentioned in the video, the cool thing about POTA is that the QSOs are very formulaic. If you can send your callsign, you can activate a park.
The basic exchange for Parks on the Air is callsign, signal report, and state. You don’t have to send park numbers, you don’t have to worry about park to park contacts, you don’t need anything else. People will slow down for you. People will repeat anything you missed. As Joe said in the video, after about the first couple nervous contacts, he became more comfortable at copying and our repeats became less common. It took him 45 minutes to get 11 in the log, but those were probably the funnest 45 minutes we’ve spent in a long time.
If you still have trepidation, why not start as a POTA hunter. You can use the POTA.app spotting page to find CW operators. The spot tells you everything you need to know. Tune in on them and start copying QSOs. If you feel comfortable, throw in your callsign. When they come back to you, give them a 5NN and your State. You just made a CW contact. If you find yourself getting stuck, use a CW decoder, there is nothing wrong with that.
So where am I in this process? Joe started a couple weeks ahead of me, and I am still plugging forward. My goal is to be on the air no later than the end of April. I bought one of those little (tr)uSDX transceivers last summer and I really want to put it on the air. I know I could do it with phone, but I think CW would be more appropriate. So if you see me popping up in Long Island’s BC1 and BC2 classes over the next few week’s, you now know what I am up to.
Finishing up
I thought that spring would be here, but as I write this, a late winter storm is bearing down on North Central Wisconsin. These March storms deliver a lot of heavy snow, but fortunately they also melt fast. I’ve got a few product reviews that I am working on and I would prefer bare ground instead of a winter wonderland to record them in.
The results for the Minnesota QSO Party were released last week and I’m excited to announce that Dave KZ9V and I won a plaque for a second year in a row. In previous years we’ve run in the rover category, but this time parked in a single location operated at a multi-operator multi transmitter (watch the video of this year’s event here). Being multi-op was a game changer for us as we didn’t have to concern ourselves with transitioning between mobile and stationary operation, and both of us could operate simultaneously. Band conditions made operation a little tough for part of the day, but we did end the contest with 152 CW, 798 SSB, and 95 multipliers for 180,500 points. We are already looking forward to next year’s contest.
I hope to get you in the log soon
MichaelKB9VBR
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