Straight key first?

[Chester Alderman]

Good for you Will!! I have been doing CW for 59 years and having tried RTTY
and all of the digital modes, I still think CW is a truly FUN part of the
hobby which so far, digital cannot replace.

73,
Tom - W4BQF


-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email]
[mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of William Ravenel
Sent: Thursday, June 30, 2011 7:37 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [Elecraft] Iambic Keying (WAS: Straight key first?)

I passed 13 wpm to pass General in the early 80s and never made a single CW
QSO - didn't even use a key to practice. But when I passed the no-code Extra
in 2007 I decided to work CW until I could copy at least 20 wpm. Bought a
paddle and decided to learn to use it with my left hand so my dominant right
hand could take notes. I also decided to set the paddle up with dits on the
left since this appeared to be the way the majority of paddle users did it.
This way I could pass my paddle to most right handers and there would be no
need to reverse the "sense" of the paddle. Similarly, I could move most
other's paddle to the left side of the radio and jump right in. I've reached
20 wpm now and wish I'd discovered the joy of CW sooner.

Will, AI4VE
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[John Ragle]

Will...

     Yours is an amazing and wonderful story! CW learning is not only
the learning of a new skill, but also the ability to use an amazing
weak-signal technique!

     I was 13 years old when I took my "Class B" in 1946 -- and I was
very scared about the 13 wpm code test. I took the "Class A" a year
later, then in about 1970 I took took the Extra Class exam */with its
code test/*. By then, I was fairly experienced with CW, and sailed
through both the code and the theory part. I was pretty surprised when
the FCC dropped all code requirements (still think it was a bad idea!),
but since the then ham community seemed to be in favor,I let my
objections be held as private misgivings.

     Over the (65) years since my first license, I have continued to use
CW when the going was marginal or tough. Last night I worked Illinois on
6 meters using CW, and I am sure the QSO would never have happened on
SSB -- signals were just too weak.

     I use the full list of digital modes now, CW, PSK, all the way
through to Olivia and WSJT. When conditions are good to outstanding, I
use SSB as well, but I don't usually waste spectrum and power that way.
I don't like to run high power just to waste it on 1 or 2 kHz of
spectrum space...the digital modes are very amenable to the use of the
fine narrow-band filters on my K3 and I find particularly PSK31 to be a
very relaxing rag-chewing mode, with its buffering (with FLDIGI).
There's time for coffee, and the note-taking is already on the screen...

     Good luck and have fun with CW!

John Ragle -- W1ZI

=====

On 6/30/2011 7:37 AM, William Ravenel wrote:
> I passed 13 wpm to pass General in the early 80s and never made a single CW QSO - didn't even use a key to practice. But when I passed the no-code Extra in 2007 I decided to work CW until I could copy at least 20 wpm. Bought a paddle and decided to learn to use it with my left hand so my dominant right hand could take notes. I also decided to set the paddle up with dits on the left since this appeared to be the way the majority of paddle users did it. This way I could pass my paddle to most right handers and there would be no need to reverse the "sense" of the paddle. Similarly, I could move most other's paddle to the left side of the radio and jump right in. I've reached 20 wpm now and wish I'd discovered the joy of CW sooner.
>
> Will, AI4VE
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[Rick McClelland, AA5S]

Hi, Phil;

Good story.  Since you were an examiner, I thought I'd pass this along.  I
took my 2nd Class Telegraph examination in Oklahoma City in 1978.  My mother
had to drive me from Enid, OK because I didn't have a driver's license.
There were probably 70 people standing in the hallway waiting for their ham
tests when the examiner came out and shouted "Is the candidated for the 2nd
Class Radiotelegraph examination here?"  The crowd fell silent and I had to
walk past all of them to go into the examination room alone with the
examiner.  He fired up the CW test then left the room.  The test finished, I
put my pencil down and waited.  No examiner.  I didn't know what to do.  I
waited a short time, maybe three minutes, then I heard a knock on the door.
I got up and answered it.  The examiner had locked himself out of the
examination room.  I made a comment that something like this could be
considered funny.  Mr. Stoneface said, "No, <pause> it couldn't."   He took
the exam with him when I finished it and promptly lost it.  I wrote several
letters asking the FCC to find the results of my examination but none of
these produced any results.  I finally sent in a renewal or request for
another examination where there was a field asking what other licenses I
held.  I wrote, "I have no idea, the examiner lost my test."  About a month
later (for a total of about 11 months), I got the results of my test, I had
passed.

Rick, AA5S


On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 10:57 PM, Phil Kane <[hidden email]> wrote:

> On 6/29/2011 8:48 PM, WILLIS COOKE wrote:
>
> > For that matter, it would be pretty hard to head copy and then
> > write a full minute with no errors to pass the FCC code test.
> > Head copy is pretty much a ham radio thing.
>
>  Starting in the late 1960s I was one of the FCC code examiners in San
>  Francisco.  One day  an "old timer" coast station operator came
>  up for the Radiotelegraph First Class code test - 25 wpm -
>  where a "mill" could be used.  He said that he wanted "the
>  First" before he retired.  He set it up, and just before I
>  started the tape he asked whether it was OK to smoke during the
>  test. In those days, no problem.  He put on the "cans" and said
>  "start the tape".  He reached into his pocket, took out a
>  cigarette.  Then he reached into another pocket, and pulled out
>  a book of matches, lit the cigarette, put the extinguished
>  match in an ashtray, dropped the matchbook on the floor, bent
>  down to pick it up, put it back in his pocket, sat back for a
>  few seconds, and then started typing like a madman about
>  halfway into the 5 minute tape - perfect copy. When the tape
>  was finished, he turned to me and said "didn't think I could do
>  it, did you, sonny?!
>
>  Something I will never forget.
>
> --  73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane
>    Elecraft K2/100   s/n 5402
>
>    Retired and loving every minute of it
>    Work was getting in the way of my hobbies
>
> ______________________________________________________________
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>
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>

--
Rick McClelland, AA5S
Fort Collins, CO
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[Vic K2VCO]

I've heard several stories like this. It's a special skill, which is different from what
most of us who learned the code as hams have developed. The text goes into the brain,
where it is buffered, and then out the fingers.

In some cases the people who can do this may not be able to tell you the content of what
they copied. And they can do it with plain text, code groups, or a language they don't
understand.

On 6/29/2011 9:57 PM, Phil Kane wrote:

> On 6/29/2011 8:48 PM, WILLIS COOKE wrote:
>
>> For that matter, it would be pretty hard to head copy and then
>> write a full minute with no errors to pass the FCC code test.
>> Head copy is pretty much a ham radio thing.
>
>    Starting in the late 1960s I was one of the FCC code examiners in San
>    Francisco.  One day  an "old timer" coast station operator came
>    up for the Radiotelegraph First Class code test - 25 wpm -
>    where a "mill" could be used.  He said that he wanted "the
>    First" before he retired.  He set it up, and just before I
>    started the tape he asked whether it was OK to smoke during the
>    test. In those days, no problem.  He put on the "cans" and said
>    "start the tape".  He reached into his pocket, took out a
>    cigarette.  Then he reached into another pocket, and pulled out
>    a book of matches, lit the cigarette, put the extinguished
>    match in an ashtray, dropped the matchbook on the floor, bent
>    down to pick it up, put it back in his pocket, sat back for a
>    few seconds, and then started typing like a madman about
>    halfway into the 5 minute tape - perfect copy. When the tape
>    was finished, he turned to me and said "didn't think I could do
>    it, did you, sonny?!
>
>    Something I will never forget.
>
> --  73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane
>      Elecraft K2/100   s/n 5402
>
>      Retired and loving every minute of it
>      Work was getting in the way of my hobbies

--
Vic, K2VCO
Fresno CA
http://www.qsl.net/k2vco/
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[Tony Estep]

>
> On 6/30/2011 7:37 AM, William Ravenel wrote:
> ...Bought a paddle and decided to learn to use it with my left hand so my
> dominant right hand could take notes. I also decided to set the paddle up
> with dits on the left ....

===============
Very cool. As we all know (or should know), Jimi Hendrix's guitar was strung
the standard right-handed way.

Tony KT0NY
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[Ross Primrose N4RP]

On 6/30/2011 11:17 AM, Tony Estep wrote:
>
> ===============
> Very cool. As we all know (or should know), Jimi Hendrix's guitar was strung
> the standard right-handed way.
>

No, it wasn't. He used a right-handed guitar, but it was strung in the
standard left-handed way.

73, Ross N4RP

--
FCC Section 97.313(a) “At all times, an amateur station must use the minimum transmitter power necessary to carry out the desired communications.”

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[k6dgw]

On 6/29/2011 9:06 PM, Duncan Carter wrote:
>
> I'm a leftie who was forced to be right handed in elementary school.
>
Same here only it didn't work with me.  I reverted to left-handed
printing as soon as I hit middle school.  While there, my new found
Elmer [a leftie] told me "We will learn to send with our right hands so
we can keep a legible log with our lefts."  In those days, the FCC
required you to make a log entry every time you transmitted ...
anything, regardless of whether or not it resulted in a Q.

I normally paddle right to this day, although I can easily paddle left
too.  My paddle is standard, dits on the thumb.  I cannot write
right-handed however.  The ability to change the paddle config in
Elecraft rigs has been more of a usable feature for me than one would think.

73,

Fred K6DGW
- Northern California Contest Club
- CU in the 2011 Cal QSO Party 1-2 Oct 2011
- www.cqp.org
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[Geoffrey Mackenzie-Kennedy]

Vic, I wonder if this is a special skill or an example of some normal human
ability which has not been suffocated at an early age by some poor teaching
process, at school for instance,

In the world of music some of our friends, and many others of course, can
listen to a short work which they have not heard before (head copy into
memory), and then play it back (fingers). As far as I know these friends of
ours all took their first music lesson at a *very* early age before starting
to go to school, and were not taught to read notes (the dits and dahs)
during their first lessons. Instead they were introduced to some other
fundamentals of music such as patterns and time, then notes.

73,
Geoff
GM4ESD



On June 30, 2011 at 4:05 PM, Vic K2VCO wrote:

> I've heard several stories like this. It's a special skill, which is
> different from what
> most of us who learned the code as hams have developed. The text goes into
> the brain,
> where it is buffered, and then out the fingers.
>
> In some cases the people who can do this may not be able to tell you the
> content of what
> they copied. And they can do it with plain text, code groups, or a
> language they don't
> understand.
>
> On 6/29/2011 9:57 PM, Phil Kane wrote:
>> On 6/29/2011 8:48 PM, WILLIS COOKE wrote:
>>
>>> For that matter, it would be pretty hard to head copy and then
>>> write a full minute with no errors to pass the FCC code test.
>>> Head copy is pretty much a ham radio thing.
>>
>>    Starting in the late 1960s I was one of the FCC code examiners in San
>>    Francisco.  One day  an "old timer" coast station operator came
>>    up for the Radiotelegraph First Class code test - 25 wpm -
>>    where a "mill" could be used.

<snip>


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