Oh I think about mine all the time - just never get around to improving it! Had a qso with F5DE this afternoon so that was good but tough going due to my barn door filter. SSB style. 

Yes its not as if I live in the incredibly rare "G" prefix area.... Last night was a bit of a washout but I would like to try and help fellow newbies in the US this afternoon for the Rookie Roundup. See if I can add to my meagre tally of US CW contacts.

Hi Pat,

I have the impression that DX is "outside of Europe" for European hams, so I made a mistake. Live and learn.

73

Scott

Came down this morning at 6:20AM a bit bleary eyed and turned on the radio, tuned to 30m and heard OE6JTD so came back to him. He was 579 and he gave me a 559 and then said DX PSE. OOOPS!! I had not been fully awake and had missed his call of DX.....

I'm learning. 

I just realised that because I ride a pushrod air-cooled Italian 50hp motorcycle I am doing the equivalent of motorcycle QRP.  I have had people incredulous I could ride to the south of France and back on a little Guzzi - surely you need 150hp to do this? Or asking me when I am going to "move up to a big bike?" After 39 years on motorcycles I reckon I have worked out what suits me. 

I use 25w into my hybrid W3EDP at the moment but one day certainly I hope to operate backpack/portable with an FT817 or similar and throw a doublet into a tree at a picnic table and go for it with the straight key!

Or in my case the benefit of hardly any experience! I think it would have been good to be in my position as a novice CW operator in the days when the US had the novice ticket and they had to use that band, as there would have been so many more non-contest CW ops starting out to have a qso with.

In Europe, I think 40m and even 30m serve the part as the place where its best to start out on, particularly 30m with it's seemingly slower pace of life. 

There has never been a better time to learn CW than today. There are many programs and websites like LCWO that mean that learning is rather different than it would have been 50 or even 20 years ago, at least for learning the basic character set. The odd thing with CW is that it "gets ya". I thought it would only be a small part of my radio life once I had started on it and it had become my radio hobby entirely almost. 

I'm only a pretty new ham (2 years) and am still on my first radio, an Icom 718. I like its ease of use and intuitive feel, and the price was right (near new). What I don't like is mine came with no CW filter. 

Over here there are quite a few new guys like me plugging along on 40, 30 and 17.  I have had a bit of a qso drought for a month, but broke the drought on Friday night with a very short qso with a ham in Lithuania. With less than 100qsos to my name, I aint fast but I try to be clear.

Congratulations James on your first CW QSO - it sounds exactly like my first one!  Stick to it it gets a little easier, though I only have 50 or so.

I think I must be relatively lucky that in Europe there are a large number of CW ops calling at a speed I can understand pretty easily, especially in the former Eastern Bloc countries. Looking at my log shows a lot of Ukraine, Russia, Latvia, Slovenia etc....

I was reading a old copy of KeyNote online and this made me chuckle;

The guy telling the story was a 2nd radio officer and was testing the lifeboat hand crank set as they had to do, in company with the Chief RO. He asked why it was painted bright yellow, "so you can see it when its floating in the sea easily" he was told. And then the chief to prove the point, threw the set in the ships pool, whereupon it sank like a stone.....

Best piece of advice? Stick to it. Rome wasn't built in a day. 

I'm just plugging on trying to make one or two contacts a day as time permits, but I need to do a lot more listening as well instead of acting like a DX hound and pouncing on folks! I'll try and mix a good 30 mins/hour listening and decoding general qsos as often as I can now. Got good old CO8LY last night strong 599 very nice!!

I'm a beginner Ray, and I tend to do as you suggest. I stay away from the low ends of the CW portion mostly, and if someone is calling pretty fast (say if I cant get thier call after 3 tries!) then I would not respond. I will say I have had it the other way - I was calling CQ and the responding station came back at 30wpm when I send at about 10/12 or so.

Its only a hobby, so I just get on with it.

This is a all such a relief to me!  As I'll mostly likely never be able tafford a super station.  So as a new guy, I'll just stick with my IC718, manual tuner, and home made wire antennas and a straight key for the rest of my life..... 25w fun....

Thanks for the link Jim - looks like something I have to consider a bit down the track. At the moment I need to get the narrow filter for my IC718 to improve the whole CW experience...