They're longer than Sprints, but pick out a state QSO Party each month and dabble in it. No restriction on power level or type of key used. Each state QSO party has a flavor of it's own.

IMHO, the SKCC is the best thing to come along for NEW cw operators in a long time.

For some years, straight keys were viewed as similar to a bicycle with training wheels. SKCC (like ARRL Straight Key Night), was started to celebrate the simple facets of morse operating.

After the SKCC was first started, the 80m and 40m Novice bands
had almost as much activity as they had back when every new ham started as a Novice (this was before the FCC "refarmed" the 80m Novice band).

There used to be a high speed CW club; the 'Chicken Fat Operators',
but I don't think they're still around as a group.

Glad that you are enjoying CW.

Since you mentioned that you are interested in traffic handling, I thought I'd plug the Texas CW NTS
nets.

The Texas Slow Net is a slow speed CW traffic handling and training net. It meets daily on 3552 KHz,
at 7:45 pm. I have some information about it on my site at:

http://sites.google.com/site/arsw5ese/home/texas-slow-net

The Texas CW Net runs at a little faster clip, at 7 and 10 pm daily, on 3541 KHz. There is some
information about it, and downloadable monthly newsletters, at:

http://web.me.com/sr_phillips/Site/K6JT_TEX/

An overview of formal CW traffic net operating procedures is at:

http://www.qsl.net/n5lf/cw-nts.html

Sadly, N5LF became a Silent Key a few years ago, at much too young an age.

Hope this helps.

If it were me, I would get one nice radio that you plan to use for your home station, and get something completely
different for SoTA activity.

The current consumption of the FT-857 will require that you power it with a pretty hefty battery. Even the
FT-817 is pretty current-thirsty (although it's a lot less than the FT-857).

I backpack periodically, and use this radio:

http://sites.google.com/site/arsw5ese/home/wilderness-qrp/texas-qso-party-2008/ATS3_QSL.jpg

Receive-mode current consumption is about 25 mA.

Or something like one of these would work very well, too:

Small Wonder Labs SW+; only 14 mA when receiving:

http://www.smallwonderlabs.com/swl_swp.htm

Wilderness Radio - SST, Norcal 40, or Sierra
http://www.fix.net/~jparker/wild.html

73 Scott W5ESE

Also pretty bad are letters for which the phonetics end with the same sound,
such as ECHO and TANGO. Wish I had a nickel for every time a DX station has
copied my suffix as 'TST', 'EST', or 'TSE'!

Luckily, I spend most of my on-air time using cw!

73
Scott W5ESE

One thing you may want to consider. If you send a DX station a card with an obsolete call, they many quickly look up your old callsign in their log, not find it (since you contacted them with your new callsign), write 'NIL' on one of their cards, and send it to you through the bureau. This is particularly true if English is not their first language.
I would just use your old cards for contacts made using your old call, and get some new ones printed with the new call asap.

You might also enjoy this classic article from November 1956 QST.

'Your Novice Accent - and What to do About It' - by W6DTY

http://sites.google.com/site/arsw5ese/home/wn5rmq/Accent.pdf?attredirects=0&d=1

Lots of good tips on CW operating procedure (and I love those old cartoons
from Gil Gildersleeve!).

Hope to hear you on the air; I am near Austin.

73
Scott W5ESE

Thanks for MS, Tor!

With a modest antenna, 10m propagation was mostly a morning opening to Florida
for me in South Texas.

That seems to be a pretty frequent path on 10m from here.

Thanks to all the FL folks for turning out; you sure made it fun.

I don't know if that path is a sporadic E phenomenon or tropospheric across the gulf.

Signal strengths and the population of stations heard went down rapidly for the
non-gulf paths to GA, SC, and NC.

Scott W5ESE

the voice distress call "MAYDAY" is also from French.

m'aidez or "help me"

Scott W5ESE

eQSL is not accepted for any of the ARRL awards; for electronic
confirmation, you must use LoTW.

For WAS, all contacts must be completed from the same location, or from locations no two of which are more than 50 miles apart. For DXCC, all contacts must be completed from the same DXCC entity.

73
Scott W5ESE

For sweepstakes, consider downloading and reading the 2010 November Sweepstakes Operating Guide at:

http://www.arrl.org/sweepstakes

Another one coming up quick (December 11-12) is the ARRL 10 meter contest. Always good fun. Take a look at the rules in advance at

http://www.arrl.org/10-meter

73
Scott W5ESE

You don't have to send your log in to the contest sponsor for the other stations to get credit for the contacts they completed with you. There have been a few situations (during a WRTC a few years ago) in which some "unique" contacts were deleted from logs.

Sending your log in is good practice, though. That way, you can find out any issues in the syntax of your log. It's also fun to see your results in there with all the "big guns". 

Scott

I think it depends on the state.

The Ohio QSO Party is actually mostly CW (56% in 2009).

http://ohqp.org/results2009.htm

My understanding is that the Texas QSO Party is nearly 50/50.

Wisconsin is also about 50/50.
http://www.warac.org/wqp/2010/10results.pdf

73
Scott W5ESE

I've hesitated to reply to your column. I built a Ten-Tec 1056 receiver, but just I built it for one
band (40 meters).

There are several components that have to be swapped to switch between bands.

In general, direct conversion receivers tend to be vulnerable to mechanical vibrations
(microphonics). So any scheme that is not "mechanically durable" will likely result in
poor performance.

This particular DC receiver does perform very well, at least on the lower bands.

I figured that the price of this is low enough, that if I want one for another band,
I'll just build another one, rather than risk flakey behavior.

73
Scott W5ESE

I share your concern.

On the other hand, my CK is 76, and I didn't enter my first CW sweeps until 4 or 5 years ago.

The record participation for Sweepstakes CW was set in 1958 (1677 logs).  (I think)
And keep in mind, all 1677 of those filled out paper log and dupe sheets and paid
postage to send their results to Newington.

Last year, there were 1552 logs, which is good, until you learn that is only about 120
more logs than were submitted in 1939(!).

The record participation in Sweepstakes PH was set last year (2048 logs). (I think)

Although my data isn't quite complete, you can look at it at:

http://sites.google.com/site/arsw5ese/home/sweepstakes-participation

Sweepstakes participation, both PH and CW, has been on an uptick after bottoming
out in the early 1980's. Guess maybe the ARRL has figured out that radio amateurs
that actively participate in ARRL-sponsored contests are more likely to renew their
memberships each year than those who don't.


73
Scott W5ESE