Amateur Radio in Northwest Arkansas
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Amateur Radio in Northwest Arkansas
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I'm a supporter of CW. Obviously. Let me give you some personal history before I make some observations and give you some pointers. When I got my novice ticket in 1978 CW was all I could do. I had an old Heathkit DX-60B transmitter and a Heathkit SB-303 receiver. For an antenna I had 130 feet of copper wire strung out across the back yard and later a dipole for the 15 meter band. I used a straight key to send code. I had no fancy equipment. I struggled to learn Morse code and I made the mistake of learning to send code before I could receive it. Bad, bad mistake. That made it even harder to learn, but I persevered. I finally passed the 5 word per minute code test and the written test to get my novice license. I was both happy and proud. I got on the air with my primitive equipment and started working stations. At first I struggled with making contacts because my code speed was so slow and I had to learn the protocol for making contacts. It was like learning to walk all over again and I made mistakes. As I began to make more contacts I gained self confidence, experience and the desire to make more contacts. At the time I was working midnight shift so I would set up all night on my days off working stations on 40 and 80 meters. (Top of Page) I had earned the ARRL Worked All States award in three months and I did it on the novice bands! I was told it would be very difficult because you couldn't get some states like Hawaii, Vermont, Rhode Island and New Hampshire. I persevered. At first I wasn't too familiar with the patterns of call signs and I almost missed some good contacts. One evening on 15 meters I heard an AH6... and I thought, "Oh no, another Californian." I answered anyway and it turned out to be my first Hawaiian contact. I worked a total of 37 DX contacts using a two-element beam made from an old CB antenna, 15 meter dipole and a long wire. One morning I pointed the beam to the Northeast toward Europe and made thirteen contacts as fast as I could exchange the necessary information. They were piling up on me! That morning I was the rare DX station. The band sounded dead, but I sent out a CQ anyway. I immediately got a response from the University of Helsinki (Finland) Club Station. I was off and running. As I recall the UK, Sweden, Russia, Poland, France, Italy and Belgium were among those fast and furious contacts. I don't recall them all at the moment because my original logbook is buried somewhere amongst my junk. I recall another memorable contact. It was early one morning and I was listening on the 15 meter band. It was very quiet and then suddenly I came upon a station tuning up. It sounded like the guy was across the street because his signal was so loud. I listened patiently and then I heard him send... de HK3DDD. He was in Bogotá, Colombia. I called him and we had a really nice ragchew. When I finally signed with him it sounded that the whole world was trying to call him. I was just in the right place at the right time. What a thrill! (Top of Page) Okay, I know, I had to learn CW because it was my only option. I was motivated and I had no other choice. As an adult educator I have come to understand that adults have a perverse tendency to give themselves exactly three minutes to learn something new and become perfect. As a result they often fail and get discouraged. "I'm too old to learn code." "I don't have time to learn code." "I can't learn code. It's just too hard." "I can't learn things as easily as when I was a kid." Yadda, yadda, yadda. Want to know more about adult learners? Click here for adult education. Let's face it, you're just going to have to persevere. You get on the air and you hear operators going at fast speeds and you say, "Oh $#%&, I can't possibly copy this and these $%&* won't slow down to work me anyway." And then that critical little voice inside your head starts saying, "You're too dumb to learn code anyway..." There is an entire organization dedicated to helping you learn and practice CW. It is called FISTS. (Top of Page) First, let me say that it's okay to not learn code if you don't want too. Just please don't go around making snide comments about code being antiquated and ready for the scrap heap. I've heard operators on sideband making disparaging remarks about CW. Folks, get over it. I'm not going to get on the air and make nasty remarks about some operator's grammar when he really needs to learn verb tenses. It's none of my business. I say live and let live. CW, sideband, digital or whatever... Use the mode you enjoy and just do it.(Top of Page) I'm having to go through the re-learning process. Yes, I learning all over again and it's not been easy. I had been off the HF bands for more than 20 years. I barely used voice on 2 meters during that time. Then last Spring I was reading a report about the quality of services provided in the Katrina affair. It struck me when I read that ham radio operators got an A on their report cards for their work. Wow, that was great. That was exciting. I realized I had been missing out on radio activities for a very long time. And, doing amateur radio is just plain fun! I made the decision to get back into amateur radio right then and there. I started going to hamfests and purchased an older ICOM transceiver. I put up a simple inverted vee. I made my first CW contact in late April. It was my first contact since 1986. The QRM was horrible and I struggled to copy the other station. I ended up losing the contact, but I had made a start. It was interesting that I still knew the morse characters and could send reasonably well, but I felt like I was learning to receive all over again. I guess I expected to take up where I left off, but it didn't happen that way. The last I remembered I was doing 20 wpm, but now I was struggling from one character to the next. When I thought I understood a character three or four more had already gone past. I realized that I was going to have to get back into the swing a little bit at a time. I was going to have to be patient with myself. Conclusion: Give yourself permission to learn a bit at a time. Be patient with yourself because it takes time to learn something new. And, don't take it too seriously. It's a lot easier to learn when it's fun. Notice how easily children learn new things. They don't have that "I can't learn this" button installed in their little brains. They just do it and you can do it too. My best advice is FISTS! (Top of Page) |
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