cw

As we all have felt, it’s quite normal to feel self-induced pressure at not maintaining perfection and, God forbid, be tempted to drop out and do it another time. A better way of looking at it is “if you stick around, will you be further along in your CW journey (and knowledge of Scottish inventions)?” […]

Sessions 4 and 5 repeat the prior sessions, but bump up the Farnsworth speed to 5 then 6. It doesn’t look like a lot until you’re trying to listen! As I mentioned, it’s very common to feel an adrenaline bump when it’s your turn to send.  If you mess up, or are feeling flustered, take

The basic class — which I really wish existed when I took CW Academy – serves as a bridge between beginner and intermediate.  Its focus is on Instant Character Recognition (ICR), the ability to hear letters (initially) and words (later) as one unit without any additional steps. The bulk of the official syllabus — which

For our last, unstructured session, we’ll do some more sending and copying using these lists of fruits and vegetables, and animals.  As with the exercise we did with the state abbreviations, send a word to the next person, they’ll send the word back, “R” if correct.  (If they don’t copy, “?” to resend)  They’ll send

This is the ad hoc, unscripted part of the course. Welcome, Session 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 Bonus homework:If you can, listen to the K1USN SST on Sunday either on air or via Web SDR, see what you can pick off. If you want to

For the bonus homework: Compose an amateur radio-related haiku, a three-line poem where the lines are 5, 7, and 5 syllables, respectively.  Some examples from a prior class are below.  As you practice at home, think of where it would be appropriate to add additional spacing to compensate for the lack of context clues: No

For the bonus homework:The session includes abbreviations and pro signs.  I’ve attached two PDF files.  qcodes.pdf has a nice half-page of common abbreviations and some Q codes used in nets, fsd218.pdf, from ARRL has pro signs on the fourth page.   Welcome, Session 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15,

1) Prepare to send QSO information about the weather, rig (if you don’t have one, what you would buy with unfettered use of the CW Academy AmEx card), and the year you became a ham.   Examples: WX IS HVY RAIN AND WIND TEMP IS 50RIG IS KX3HAM SINCE 2015 “ES” is often used as an