I'm learning CW

Since I prepared to get licensed as a ham one year ago there was always this CW (morse telegraphy) topic coming back to me. My impression was and still is that CW is where the elite meets. It is one of the oldest modes of operation, so performing CW is also about the preservation of historical knowledge. (I also admire technicians who still know how to maintain, build and troubleshoot steam engines today, for instance.) Building a CW transmitter is way easier than one that modulates voice, because in the first case you just have to switch on and off a constant frequency carrier, while the latter needs higher bandwidth and a tremendous signal processing logic, be it analog or digital—so, CW looks like a good opportunity to get into more advanced home-brew electronics, which is one of the things at the root of ham radio.

Another aspect that resonated well with me was: It is easier to do DX (contacts over large distances) in CW, because the human mind can decode weak CW signals easier than a weak voice in the noise, and the other way round: Using the same antenna and output power, you can reach farthest by operating in CW (ignoring advanced and “highly digital” weak signal modes like the current fad FT8 that have their roots in astro-telemetry). It resonated well with me, because I realized I won’t be one of those hams that have a permanent antenna installation on a lattice tower, I also won’t be one of those hams that operate a 2 kW PA. But CW, I noticed, is one thing I can enable myself and one “expert tag” I could tack onto myself.

Even another aspect is: For doing CW, you have to master something. In contrast, you don’t have to master being a “shopping queen” (buying rigs and antenna towers—but probably you have to master aquiring the money for that, hi) or using your voice or a digital signal as information carrier (ignoring how you learnt to speak or operate a PC). Learning CW requires effort, endurance and conviction over weeks and months, just like learning a musical instrument, a foreign language or any new craft. Your path consists of 1,000 hours of practice, period—there is just no way around that. You cannot just go out and buy yourself CW knowledge! (This is also a motivation for me to ignore phenomena like FT8, where the mastering consists of handling a desktop software that constantly breaks backwards compatibility. In addition, in emergency events I’d be glad to not also having to deploy a PC for off-grid communications.)

So, that topic was always in the back of my mind, deciding I’d give it a shot if I ever got note of a CW course in my surrounding. Since there wasn’t one, I decided to try my first steps on my own using LCWO.net. But even learning the first three or four letters, just using that site without any guidance of an experienced CW operator, turned out to be a bad idea: I was totally overwhelmed by the (imo) high default speed, and gave up soon.

Luckily, last fall I finally heard of a local CW course and immediately registered for it. Meanwhile, I know that choosing the initial listening speed has to be considered carefully, including terms like Farnsworth spacing. Also, typing on a keyboard is heavily distracting the learning process (unless you are really fluent in the ten-finger system), because you’re training a new reflex—and there are numerous other considerations and advices for copying that only an experienced CW operator (or Elmer) can give. This is even more true for learning how to send CW. For instance, the first long learning path is to actually know all characters (letters, digits and some punctuation), recognize them in a sequence of “random character garbage”, write them down while you’re already hearing the next character, and find your way back into the flow if you were stumbling—a huge brain trainer. Adding a new character into your learning pool might be a “one step forward, two steps back” procedure.

I was quite quick in learning all characters (that are relevant for the federal CW exam), what took me from November to February. (I use my daily train commute to listen with headphones and write down onto paper, using this Android app.) This means I’m a few months ahead of my fellows: I already practice listening with 18–20 words per minute (90–100 characters per minute) full-speed, that is, with zero Farnsworth-timing—and not just random garbage, also English words, which appear way faster due to CW’s Huffman coding. According to our time plan we’d reach this level (at 16 wpm!) in June, and—sadly!—only after that we’d get to start learning how to operate straight keys and paddles—a yet different and complementary learning phase. We’ll see if I’m allowed to take a short cut, because I’m greedy. (However, I won’t be able to practice this during my train commutes, unless I want to do so under weird looks.) Although I’m not there yet, I get already recognized by my fellow hams, what I enjoy, because, as stated above, I won’t ever get recognized as “the ham with the fat rig”.

All in all, it seems to take about one year until we’re finally up to getting on the air. So, hopefully I can do so this fall or a bit earlier. A positive thing is that the federal CW exam is indeed a checkpoint in this course. I’d actually only need that if I’d intend to operate CW in some non-CEPT countries. (Since 2004, CW is no longer mandatory for taking the ham radio exam in OE.) But, it shows the corresponding federal ministry that there are still hams eager to take this exam and that this mode of operation is still alive.