SOTA CW for beginners

[M0LEP]

Another way to prepare yourself for activating is simply chasing SOTA, or listening to other activators.

I find chasing stresses my Morse ability quite a lot more (sometimes to breaking point) than activating does, but listening to activations is quite instructive, if only because you find out just how different various activators’ styles are.

[ct1dbs]

Hi Konrad

Today I listen to Michael, G0POT and others slowing down their speed to cope with HB9UAG/p who asked QRS in his spot.
The example of Raffaele, HB9UAG, should be an inspiration for those who are afraid of going on the air without mastering CW like a pro. (@HB9UAG).

Go ahead and like Tom, M1EYP stated:

What is the best practice and training method when aspiring towards CW SOTA activations?

The answer is - CW SOTA activations!

73 ES GL de Pedro, CT1DBS

[SQ6GIT]

OK. It happened. PA/PA-006 today. It was not easy - my brain melted and I could copy only some callsigns - of course I messed up with the plan and by mistake started at 7 MHz, and received a pretty pileup. But the chasers were great indeed - slowed down (however it is not the speed but my head buffer to train, so repetitions help much better) and repeated patiently. I recorded for my own learning, so listening to this revealed I inevitably made some mistakes, but the chasers were very kind (and forgiving, I hope… )

I would like to apologize some chasers I did not copy, esp. Phil G4OBK and Jan OK2PDT who patiently tried to contact me, but since I was pretty petrified with this first activation, my brain stopped cooperation with me… I was listening to the recording and I cannot really explain how I missed copying you - partly no experience with the etiquette, partly stress factor.

So apologies to those whom I missed, I will do a second attempt today in the morning on SP/PO-004, maybe the missed chasers witll forgive me and try again.

Wholeheartedly, thank you all and hugs!

Toddler CW op = SQ6GIT

[G4OBK]

Good job Konrad - no bother me not getting a chaser QSO and if I am in later this morning you will recognise my callsign I am sure. I hope it was nice on PA-006 - in the national park. I am going to activate there myself on September 2nd or 3rd when I am in Arnhem with my XYL on holiday.

Keep up the good work - it will become easier once you recall the procedure as you operate, you will retain memory of callsigns also - your own in the head “Super Check Partial” brain file will kick in and the stress over the next few activations will simply dissipate…

73 Phil G4OBK

PS It is a long way from PA/PA-006 to SP/PO-004!

[SQ6GIT]

Phil, thanks for your understanding. Well, I still feel embarrassed, though…

For PA/PA-006 - it is a nice place to go, although I couldn’t find how to get to the very spot (the summit seems to be surrounded by a fence), so I just jumped on a bench within the AZ. Also, it was perhaps a stress factor not only from first CW activation but also because I was supposed to drive back ~900km after it and it was already afternoon 1430 local time. So I estimated it will be risky to stretch my driving in one day to get back home, thus stopped in a hotel and I noticed I am less than 1 hour away from SP/PO-004. Is this just my sickness to check SOTA summits nearby whenever I check in a location?

Thanks and hopefully I will redeem today or some days later.

[M1EYP]

Well done Konrad. By using real SOTA activations as your CW training method, your rate of improvement will be very fast. Now that you have done the first one, you have done the hardest part. Enjoy - you will have a lot of fun.

[M1BUU]

Congratulations Konrad!

Hopefully as well as being a little bit scary, your first CW activation was also a little bit exciting! Strangely enough, I was listening to a recording of one of my (historic) SOTA activations yesterday, I was working Phil G4OBK and I just couldn’t send his call! Phil was great and took control of the QSO, guiding me through.

I found that it’s definitely hard work at first doing SOTA with CW, but also it’s very exciting. There will come a point when the CW is no longer hard work and then activations are just enormous fun - it’s definitely worth all of the effort.

Keep up the good work!

73, Colin

[SQ6GIT]

Thank you all! After those two short activations I must say - pushing me forward to give it a try was the best piece of advice I could get.

I also listen to the recordings and hear obvious mistakes either in copying or in sending, I hope they will go away with time.

Thank you all again.

[G4OBK]

You did great today Konrad - the only way is up. Great fun eh?

73 Phil G4OBK

[SQ6GIT]

eh?

Phil, so far this is fun, but blended with a bit of sweat and embarrassment when listening to the recordings afterwards…

But seriously - it is fun indeed. I shared with a few friends today - why haven’t I started cw learning 20 years ago?

[AC7P]

Konrad

I worked you today as W5/SQ6GIT on W5T/NT-039. Your CW sending and receiving operations were great. You are a fast learner.

73, Don AC7P

[SQ6GIT]

Don, it has been pleasure to have a little swarm of chasers as a warm welcome by US hams in Texas. I much appreciated and enjoyed it.

I perhaps missed some, as I did not have any internet reception on the summit, and I relied on RBN and my APRS2SOTA. I started at one frequency, but another station started to call their CQ shortly after me and I had to move to another place. I hope it did not mess up much though.

For the sending, I was struggling, as this time I was holding the Mini Paddle in my left hand, which still sometimes did not provide enough support to transmit clearly - sometimes extra sounds would sneak in or miss here and there. But the chasers were very patient and understanding for what I thank you wholeheartedly!

I am not so happy to leave US now with just 3 activations with limited hiking, but still happy I could make them at all. The weather was mostly generous to me as well, which is not always the case statistically…

Anyway, thanks and 73 - it has been a pleasure to meet you all in the air!

But to stay within the root of the topic - I am glad to have received so much support, understanding and patience from SOTA community. Going on the air regardless early stage of my learning was the best advice I could get. Thank you all who encouraged me to do it, and I recommend it to anyone who still hesitates. First sweat and mistakes are inevitable, and the sooner they happen, the sooner you go to your next stages.

That is the piece of advice I can give now with even limited “experience” in morse code sending/receiving…

[K7EEX]

Sorry for the necro-bump on this thread but I thought it was extremely helpful. It didn’t take long for me to notice that a huge amount of SOTA activity is happening at 5w in dits and dahs. It was the incentive I needed to take the plunge. I’m not the sharpest guy so learning a new language was a daunting prospect.

I’ve been primarily using lcwo.net. I set the speeds at 18 wpm characters and 7 wpm effective. On lesson number one I came super close to just giving up on the whole thing. It was unbelievably hard and frustrating. But listening to the advice given here, I’ve been putting in 15 minute sessions a couple of times a day. I’m up to 11 characters now and was fist-pumping joyous when I tapped out my callsign for the first time on the Morse CT app.

The one thing that I’ll add is that when 20m SSB starts going dead in the evening, I’ve been tuning in on the CW frequencies and just listening. I’m starting to pick off bigger and bigger sections of the QSOs I’m listening to.

I might just be able to do this.

[K6HPX]

Just go for it!
Post an alert, and put PSE QRS 10 WPM in the comments. Most chasers will send at 15 if you ask for 10, and many will send 18-20, but will put in a lot of extra space.
Simplify by doing short exchanges; their call, RST, and BK.

Good luck! Ken, K6HPX

[EA2IF]

Sure you’ll make it. Just keep spending some good few minutes a day on it and within a month, you’ll be ready to start making QSOs on CW.
Learning Morse code is not even a different language, it’s just a different way of representing letters and numbers. Similar to what blind people’s Braille system is.
In the early years of the primary school, we learn the graphical representation and the sound of the letters forming the words in our languages.
When our eyes see a straight line in vertical position, we’ve learnt that is the letter I and it corresponds to a vowel sound.
In Braille, the I is a group of dots placed in a certain layout, protruding out of the surface on which a blind reader passes his/her fingertips and it corresponds to the same vowel sound.
In Morse code, the I is a couple of short dits and this corresponds to the same vowel sound.
At the end of a QSO in Morse code you’ll often hear 73 TU, which is 73 for Regards and TU for Thank you.
73 means regards for all the ham community, no matter the language we speak.
TU means Thank You and for me it’s the way the English people say Gracias.
So, it’s not a new language, it’s just a code.

73 and GL (good luck) with your morse code.,
HPE TO CU SN (Hope to copy you soon)

Guru

[M1EYP]

Excellent stuff Mark. Listening to real live CW everyday on the HF bands helped me a huge amount to make progress when I was at the same stage as you are now.

Keep doing this - it is very effective.

[W0CP]

SOTA chasers are very accommodating. My suggestion is to send at 10wpm. That signals to them that you are learning cw and they will slow down for you. If you are up iabove 15 wpm, you’ll likely be over your head half the time and that’s no fun with all the other stuff you have to deal with on an activation. Ramp it down… 73.

[GM4TOE]

we learn the graphical representation and the sound of the letters forming the words in our languages.

I agree but I have a problem, which others may have, when trying to “head read” - I know the letters, numbers and prosigns by sound and work quite happily up to about 20wpm (with character speed much higher) but for the life of me I cannot make out words other than the commonest: CQ, DE, 73, etc. If somebody were to spell out my name or my callsign in letters (Bee, Ay, Ar,Ar,Why) it would not be resolved as my name - sort of dyslexia I guess - so it is with CW letters.

My solution is to learn the key words by sound so I can progress - I have an MP3 recording of key words which I just drum into my brain until I recognise the audio pattern as a word (CQ or TEST have a particular rhythmic property). Now all I have to do is try and head read callsigns.

[EA2IF]

Hi Barry,
If you can work happily at 20wpm that’s already a very good level and all you need to do is to keep making CW QSOs and also some contests to help automatize the copy of the common words and expressions, as well as to improve your hability to copy the full callsign in one go.
By practising, practising, repeating and repeating, you’ll finally learn the typical words in a standard QSOs without needing to copy and decode each and all of the letters and all the typical variations in the standard QSO exchanges.
For contesting and also for a good and rapid clearing of a pile-up in a SOTA activation, it’s very important to be able to copy the full callsign in one go.
Sometimes the morse sending is faster than the handwriting and it’s impossible, at least for me, writing down a callsing on a paper at the same speed it’s been sent. In this cases, what I often do is storing it in my short term memory, then sending it to the correspondant along with his signal report and then write it down on the paper while he is transmitting his QSL GM GURU TKS FER RPRT UR 579 or whatever… Chasers often transmit back again their callsign, which should help you to confirm what you had in your short term memory and then write it down on your paper log without any errors.
Othe thing I sometimes do is store in my shrot time memory just the prefix (mentally associated to the country) along with the number and write down on the paper log just the suffix.
Later, while the chaser is responding with his signalk report, you’ll have the time to write down his preffix and number.

To illustrate this, let me give you this example:
I get called by HB9XYZ, I’ve copied the full callsign as it was sent to me but it was too fast for me to write it down before he finished sending and I want to get back to him before he sent his callsign again, which will slow down the activation pace. What I’ll do is I’ll store in my memory that it’s a standard Swiss callsign (HB9) and I’ll write on the log just …XYZ towards the right hand side of the callsign box in my log because I know I’ll later write the preffix, while he will be sending me his signal report.
I hope this will be of help to you and possibly others.
Should you have any other question, don’t hesitate to ask and I’ll be pleased to share my tricks and experience with you all.
Good luck with your CW practise.
73,

Guru

[K9BBQ]

Hi Konrad
Remember some chasers are just learning CW as well.
Many have helped me make the chaser contact.
12-15 words per min for as a chaser works for me.
N2GBR has good advice.- worked him many times on SSB.
Practice and patience. Have fun.

Many activations are only CW and I miss out on contacts so for me learning CW became important.
Hope to work you someday.
Good Luck - Safe travels.