My first CW POTA activations! US-7649, US-10659

Introduction

For years I’ve been fascinated by CW or morse code. For years, it’s also been a struggle for me. I was originally licensed at age 14. Back then, the general class required a 5 WPM code exam. I took that as literal and practiced at 5 WPM to pass the test.

After passing the 5 word per minute code test, I spent some time listening to code on the air, but it sounded like a foreign language. What I didn’t realize was that a character at 5 WPM sounds much different than a character at 25 word per minute. This was my challenge.

Learning the code

So with my 5 WPM code skills, they felt useless to me. I spent years struggling to overcome this and here is what I learned.

Don’t learn the code at 5 Word Per Minute. This has been talked about again and again. Say out loud right now the letter “R”. Now drag that R out. It sounds much different.

The Farnsworth method is what most established CW operators advocate. The challenge for me was re-learning what I’d already learned. I learned that an R sounded a certain way. At speed, it sounds much different. The Farnsworth method sends characters at a high speed, but with much more spacing between the characters. So as speed increases, the characters are the same, we’re just closing the gap between them. It’s much easier to progress your speed forward when the character sounds don’t change. Also of concern, and something I catch myself doing, is counting dits and dahs. The goal must be to learn the sound pattern of the character, and not count dits and dahs. This will slow you down and it’s something I still continue to struggle with.

Take a peak at some of the below resources for CW training. I used many of these resources regularly to finally overcome my coding challenges.

• LCWO or Learn CW Online
• Morse Ninja Also available on YouTube
• Once you’ve learned the characters, I find Morse Walker to be an excellent resource to practice actual “contacts” in a simulated way! Truly awesome program

There are others. Morse Runner comes to mind, but I found it to be a little challenging for a newcomer and still struggle with it.

The bottom line, something I struggle with, is practice regularly. Short interval seem to work better for me, than longer sessions.

US-7649 Cedar Swamp State Wildlife Area

For my first activation, I was looking for somewhere where my antenna would perform well but was quiet, with little traffic. I found Cedar Swamp State Wildlife Area not far from my house.

To be entirely truthful, I don’t remember much of the activation, other than the nerves. My initial plan was to record the entire activation for later playback. I figured this would give me something to review and see the mistakes I made. However, I forgot to turn my recorder on when starting the activation. The only recording I got was quite literally me saying “Nope, forgot to the turn that on”.

I’d say this activation went anything but smoothly. I asked for many repeats and took some time to try and get the call signs right, but at the end of the day, each and every station that I worked was amazingly graceful and patient.

US-10659 Augustine State Beach

My second activation was a bit more interesting. I did manage to hit record this time. I found things to be much easier! Not perfect by any stretch but I did have much more confidence. 20 Meters was my band of choice here. While being close to the water here, I was a bit further away and noticed a bit of a drop in performance.

After a slight issue I found with my key, an odd one that I still can’t explain. I called CQ several times. The first responses I got were a piled up on the same frequency, making it hard to pull anything out at all.

But after just a minute I was able to pull out two letters: “TA” for which I eventually got the call “W9GTA”

The next contact revealed my real issue: Asking for “W?” wasn’t effective because the second call in the pile up was “W4TV”.

All in all this activation felt a lot better. I managed to copy most, if not all, of the call signs correctly with only a few repeats.

Conclusion

Honestly, I’d heard this over and over again from my CW Op Friends. Just go do it. Get on the air, hunt some POTA parks on CW. Once you can copy enough, do an activation.

CW Operators are a friendly bunch. They were willing to slow down and repeat over and over again.

It’s worth it.

Since these two first activation, I’ve taken my CW activations on the road with more POTA parks! More to follow!