Not that this post is strictly necessary or on topic but after my first couple of CW activation I wanted to tell you two things…
First of all, thanks to all the CW chasers for their patience with my slow sending and repetitive asking for the call sign again and again. I’m still not at the point where I feel like I know what I’m doing in a CW QSOs. I struggle a lot and only keep going because of how supportive and helpful the chasers are. A lot of you QRS way down to a speed I can (mostly) copy. Thank you for this.
Secondly, I skipped SSB on my last two activations and wanted to say sorry to the SSB-only chasers. It’s not my intention to switch to CW exclusively. However, after managing a CW pile-up I was freezing cold and completely stressed out from operating CW. I will come back to SSB - as the year gets warmer and my CW skills improve simultaneously.
As a chaser this was our second CW QSO today Beni, out of the seven I have had with you.No patience was required on my side! I did not recall anything odd about or unusual about the contact, I didn’t know it was one of your first using CW either - I just logged you and I moved on, like one does.
So after seeing your post I looked at the database to check I was in your log. I noticed then that you made around one QSO per minute, which you can be very proud of!
We didn’t make a QSO but I know the struggle. We are on the same boat. Whenever I do a CW QSO I also feel the need to say thanks for the patience. Learning CW is hard!
Hehe, that’s a good point. I’ll tell this myself the next time I give up after working a CW pileup.
I’m not sure I agree. For me it’s easier to handle a microphone, pen and paper with warm mittens. I’m still not convinced I could to CW at below -20C, SSB works fine, though - for a limited amount of time.
I’ve still got a long way to go but I’m happy I manage finally do CW activations.
I guess it’s mostly how I feel working CW. I’m still not sure I’d catch anything apart from the regular GM BENI RST 599 - like someone telling me their name or that the QSO is actually a S2S (unless they clearly send /P.
Interesting, I never checked this before. That’s a nice metric to measure my potential improvement in the future.
Alberto, we did have a QSO on the 30th December from HB/SZ-30 where I tested my new antenna and the finished QMX kit build.
its me after FM activation od SP/BZ-036 on early January 2017
But now I simply lose my voice when do SSB in low temperature and need 1…2 days to recover it.
That is why I said " SSB is more easy to do when is warm"
Another question is to activate in gloves - no problem to do CW, you just need time for some more training.
Anyway - hope to complete S2S with you on CW one day
My guess is that it was warmer than your activation, around -25C. Down at the bottom of the valley it was -32C but the higher you walked the ‘warmer’ the air got.
… however, as you say, working SSB wasn’t exactly what I would call easy.
I’ll tell this myself the next time I give up after working a CW pileup.
