About CW speed and more ...

Hi Allen.
If you are the activator, you are the ¨owner¨ of the rhythm and cadence of the operation. No one can force you to change.
But if you are a chaser you have to listen to what type of operation the activator does.
Now something about your procedure. If you feel secure with that, it is ok.
Here some tips:
Instead NAME you can use OP (operator)
You don´t need to send HR, but if you like it… DO IT!
Some confusing points:
The BTU means BK? there is a big difference between -… - …- and -… -.-
Good luck and enjoy CW
73 de JP3PPL

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BTV ?
Are you sending faster than you can comfortably key here? Perhaps you should QRS a bit? :wink:

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Ha! Amusing reply!

Excellent discussion. This is very helpful to this new chaser and soon-to-be-activator-I-hope.

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New guy question: How does one ask for QRP?

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When running a pileup on SSB, after my 73 I will say “This is N1RBD activating WWW/XX-YYY. QRP, Mobile, and portable only. QRZ”

I supposed for CW you could do something like “de N1RBD QRP STNS KN” although I’m not sure how many SOTA chasers would know the meaning of KN.

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Oooo! Ooooo! We’ve been here before:

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I was taught “The circuit is only as fast as the slowest operator”.

Lanny W5BOS

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I do it this way: /qrp? like I ask for /p? or fragments of a callsign abc?

73 Armin

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Nop. I tried many times to edit the extra ¨dot¨ and when I saved the edition nothing changed.

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Multiple dots are treated as an ellipsis by the software. You need to mark the text as formatted so the software doesn’t format it. Use the back tick or back apostrophe around the text

Back tick or back apostrophe = `

Surrounding dots and dashes for U gives ..-

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Well I didn´t know this. So, It wasn´t a mistake of my QRQ.

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As someone with limited CW skills and a small number of activations, I have been pleasantly surprised by the patience of the chasers. It is always exciting for me to hear a call from outside the US though it often confuses me for a moment (I am getting better). Poor Guru had to repeat several times for me as I tried to process a call that started dit dit-dah!

So thanks to all the chasers all putting up with me; from my perspective things are not bad at all.

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Neither did I till I did some digging. A lot of the automatic features are really cool and useful, just sometimes they can get it the way of what you are trying to achieve.

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Don’t you just love self-incorrecting software!

I once worked with a fella named Skelly whose name was almost invariably rendered as Smelly in any electronic communication :rofl:

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Others may find otherwise, but in a pile-up, I can usually recognize the call sign which is sent a little slower than the rest. If you’re a little slower and a little lower pitch, you stand out to my ear.

I practice at 20 WPM and activate at 15; when someone replies at 5 WPM faster than me, I can still make out his call sign. If I hear someone transmitting at 30+ WPM, I might assume I’m sharing a frequency with another conversation and go looking for a free frequency. Or, if I’m feeling cranky, I’ll ignore the noise until it goes away.

I used to be working toward higher speeds, but since SOTA activations are the only operating I do, I eventually figured out that I’d always be a 15-20 WPM operator.

I used to thing that “real operators” could pick out all of the call signs in a pile up. Now, I just wait for the chasers to sort it out. Eventually, someone will send when others don’t.

I intend to end my sessions by calling CQ a few times at about 10 WPM, to be beginner-friendly, but I often forget.

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I think he meant “BTU”, (Back To U). I don’t know where that one
came from? Never heard of it until recent years. First time I saw it
was on PSK31. A lot of lids on that mode! I’ve been a CW op for over 60 years.
JOhn, K6YK

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That was also my guess, but I’ve never heard such. Only BK (back) and TU (Thank yoU)

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I notice a lot of you are saying that BTU should not be used or have not come across it being used. I find this strange as when being taught cw at school in 1962 BTU was used as saying “Back to you”.

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Indeed, I was taught BTU and I still use it in conversational CW QSOs just before passing the transmission back, as in …so BTU G9XYZ de G4OIG AR K

I must say, I don’t really see that it has much use for the average SOTA CW QSO, as indeed neither has “di dah di dah di dah”. :grinning:

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Thank gawd someone remembers it. Good on ya Gerald

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