I have wanted to learn CW for a couple of years, and started learning the characters using LWCO.net, but although I learned all the characters pretty well, I never made the jump to actually start using CW on air. Last September I attended the G-QRP club buildathon and convention, and met with Enzo and Paul. Their recommendation to me was straight forward - join the CW Academy, and learn your CW craft there. So I enrolled on the winter Fundamental course, led by Buzz Tarlow, AC6AC. Although the course started on the 20th January, the pre-course started in early December. I can’t recommend this course enough - as well as having a comprehensive homework program, Buzz (as lead Advisor) delivers a presentation/discussion twice a week, on a range of relevant topics. I made my first CW QSO a couple of weeks back in the CWT “contest” run by the CWOps organisation, and today I made my first CW activation.
Moel Famau, GW-NW-044 is my local summit, and part of the Clwydian Range of summits (I think 5 SOTA summits in all). I took up my KX3, and a random wire antenna (Sotabeams Bandspringer?). I used this a few days ago when I managed to break my EFHW bullet connector off, and I was pleasantly surprised by its capability. It also has a much smaller footprint than the EFHW, and as today was the first day with blue skies and sunshine, I expected the summit to be quite busy (it’s a walk up summit visited my many people each year).
After setting up, I switched the radio on and set up POLO as a logger. I then saw Juerg was spotted in Wildspitz (HB/ZG-001), so I put out a S2S call. I fumbled my reference a few times, but did get it out in the end. At this point, I hadn’t spotted myself, so it was doubly important to get the reference right! Thanks for your patience @HB9BIN !
I then spotted myself, and got my exchange cheat sheet ready. The first call which came back was Marek @SP9TKW. Marek is a friend and colleague on the CWAcademy course, and he had picked me up on the RBN without realising I was activating. So of course he didn’t follow any “standard” exchange for SOTA, which did cause me some confusion! I then had QSOs with 9 more very patient hunters - many thanks to you all for your tolerance of my sending!
It was an amazing experience, and I am looking forward to getting up another summit soon and doing it all again!
Operating position:
Looking South - down range:
73, Paul, MW7PAJ
