First time CW on G/NP-007 Wild Boar Fell

Activation Reports
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Today was a special day. Maybe as special to me as mountain goat day was for @M0JIA (well done Ian).

I set myself a difficult challenge a year or so back. I wanted to combine my love of hills and radio communication with SOTA being the obvious way to structure the combination. I realised CW would be advantageous for this hobby.

This was more of a challenge for me than the average CW learner. While getting to instant character recognition was straight forward. Just many hours with LCWO. Upgrading to head copy felt impossible. Reading posts that you just have to put the time in, and others found it hard too, meant I kept going even with no glimmer of improvement. To put this into context I can character copy at 15-20 wpm but if I attempt to head copy 5-character callsigns at 2wpm it is almost impossible. I can read copy 4 digit callsigns at 15wpm. This after many months of a little practice each day.

Some might be quick to provide helpful advice and tips but there is another part to this. When I was about 18 I had tests to figure out why I read incredibly slowly. I excelled with school/college in general. Just the reading and zero ability to speel properly. One test I now recall was to have numbers read out in sequence. I read back 3 and 4 digits with ease. More and I always failed. I’d forgotten about it until now.

Only recently with head copy practice did I research this and it is related to poor “verbal memory”. That bit of the brain that processes sound or vision into usable data.

So the challenge was a big one.

Today, with the occasional help of a decoder and the ability to recognise common phrases like TU and 55N, and more importantly the very patient chasers, I was able to log 15 CW QSO.

Thank you to those that repeated callsigns and queued patiently. You made my day. I’ll repay to a future morse learner one day.

For those considering CW, go for it. The reach with 5w and some wire is huge compared to SSB. More importantly the personal reward for getting to 10wpm basic QSO capability is very satisfying.

73

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Congratulations on your first CW activation and thanks for the S2S. I hope I wasn’t too fast for you.

I don’t head copy. I write callsigns down - why would I need to remember it? I don’t write anything else down (except for a summit reference) but if the sender goes off piste I do have to write it down. So don’t worry about it and just enjoy your QSOs.

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Stick with it, de W6LEN JESS

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Richard has beaten me to the keyboard and said exactly what I was going to write. So, to reiterate:

  • Congratulations. Well done
  • 99% of SOTA QSOs are brief and formulaic [IMO head copying is mainly for ragchews]
  • You probably already ‘head copy’ abbreviations like GM, GA, RST, 73, TU
  • You don’t need to head copy what you -need- to write down for a SOTA log, i.e. his/her callsign
  • [2026 SOTA Challenge only] write down his/her 6-digit locator
  • You can look up the summit reference (of a S2S) if you need to [not a SOTA crime]
  • I stopped recording every signal report in my log years ago when I realised I never looked at my old logs
  • Enjoy
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Amen and congratulations!

CW is quickly catching up to SSB in my logbook. It will overtake it soon enough.

As my chart clearly demonstrates:

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:star_struck: :raised_fist:

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Many congratulations on a successful first cw activation! It can take a lot of bravery to go for it for the first time!

May it be the first of many cw activations for you!

73, Matthew M0JSB