I’m pleased to say that I passed my intermediate exam on the 21st of August so I’ve got a new callsign 2E0JDJ. I’m excited to move on to studying for the full exam and get back to studying Morse code, I took a bit of a break from that as the exam was nearing and unfortunately it feels like I’m back to square one.
Thanks to everyone at Warrington ARC for your assistance, particularly difficult at the moment with no face to face meetings!
The last couple of weeks I’ve been fairly consistent at practicing each weekday and I’ve moved back to using the Chuck Adams K7QO course.
I had a bit of an issue when I came across two tracks which were identical which didn’t match the answers. When I emailed Chuck K7QO he pointed me to his website and the official ISO.
The new version I have got (v3) is a little different, it has 514 tracks as opposed to the 131 on the original I had, it also treats learning numbers a little differently. In the original for each number it would teach you the number (i.e. a track with just that number) and then mix it in with characters whereas in the new one teaches each number then gives you track with a combination of numbers, they aren’t mixed in with letters until you have completed learning the numbers.
I successfully read a CQ message, DE, and callsign after a significant amount of listening, but fair to say a long way to go at full speed over the radio!
I am noticing that some characters are becoming automatic when I copy, however others require more thinking and that slows me down. Just more practice needed, but with 514 tracks on the course and all the apps and resources available I’ll have no shortage of practice!
Ok so the second week was less successful than the first. I got distracted by the suggestion that online invigilated Intermediate exams might be available soon and also just had a generally busier week and struggled to find that 15/20 mins without distractions before I got too tired. I have however continued on, using the Ham Morse app on my iPhone to start learning the numbers at 20wpm with word spacing at 15wpm.
I started the alphabet last week using the Chuck Adams course which gives you the letters at 17wpm at 5wpm word spacing. I’ve found it quite effective but before continuing on to words I felt like I wanted more practice of the letters at the 5wpm word spacing as I was getting a bit flustered so I’ve been using the Ham Morse app for that extra practice.
I’m going to try to keep plugging away at it, I figure even a little bit regularly all adds up!
A week ago I decided to start learning morse code. Currently under lockdown I can’t take the intermediate course to get 40W privileges so I’m stuck with 10W with my fan dipole, this is reasonable on digital modes, but with propagation as it is I’m really struggling on SSB and I’m hoping that CW will help me get some non digital contacts. Additionally I find CW really intriguing!
I’ve now been learning morse code for a week and have ‘learned’ the whole alphabet, but not special characters or numbers yet. I am using the Chuck Adams K7QO Code Course which I can thoroughly recommend, see Learning Morse Code for more information on this and various methods of learning morse code.
One of the main things I’ve noticed over the last week is that it’s important if I miss a character to just move on and put a dot in place, if I worry about a character for too long I just get stuck miss the next one and get flustered.
I’m fairly impressed with the Chuck Adams K7QO Code Course and I do seem to be making fairly rapid progress. I’m not sure if I’d be making more progress with the ‘pure’ Koch method, but I think that the most important thing at the moment is to stick to what I’m doing and if I can get through the course I think I’ll definitely have reached a decent level of proficiency.
At times I’ve struggled with some of the characters that have been added and as you get further through the alphabet obviously it takes longer to learn the new characters as they are a smaller proportion of the character set you are copying. To deal with this I’ve used a character randomiser and put (for example) 40 of each letter I need to practice in, I then added a space between each and put it into the great text to morse converter at lcwo.net with the settings and speed I wanted and voila an mp3 of the characters I needed to practice. An easier alternative which I discovered today is the “Ham Morse” app, it just isn’t quite as flexible as the text to more converter.
All in all I’m pretty happy with my progress and am hoping that in not too long I’ll be able to start practicing sending morse and then make some contacts and really make the most of my 10W!
