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Contest Joe

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Three Months of CW - Entering My First Real QSO

· Contest Joe · 08/23/2026 11:00 PM

I'm still kind of processing it, honestly.
If you've been following along, you know I went through that rough first month where the code just sounded like noise to me, and then something clicked around week seven or eight where my brain started actually hearing letters instead of just dots and dashes. That was a huge turning point. But there's a massive difference between copying code in your head while listening to practice sessions and actually sitting in front of a transceiver, sweating, trying to decode a real person sending in real time with their own fist and their own quirks.
Real people do not send like computer-generated practice audio. I want to state that clearly for anyone who's where I was two months ago. The software is clean and perfect and consistent. Humans are... not. The guy I worked had a slight swing to his timing, nothing crazy, but enough that my brain kept second-guessing itself on every character. Is that an A or an N? Was that pause a letter space or a word space? You start doubting everything.
Here's how the whole thing went down. It was a Sunday afternoon, propagation on 40 meters was decent, and I was just listening around 7.050 or so, which is kind of the novice/slow CW area that a lot of new operators use. I was copying maybe 60 or 70 percent of what I was hearing, which felt discouraging, but my Elmer had told me that's totally normal at this stage. Then I heard a station calling CQ at what felt like a manageable speed - maybe 12 or 13 words per minute. I grabbed a pencil and paper and started copying the CQ. Got the callsign. Got everything.
And then I just sat there for like 30 seconds arguing with myself.
My heart was actually pounding. Which is embarrassing to admit but I think every new CW operator goes through this. You know what you're supposed to send. You've sent it a thousand times in practice. But there's something about keying up on an actual frequency with actual people potentially listening that turns your hands into stupid useless appendages that forget everything.
I'm using a straight key right now, by the way. Still not confident enough with paddles to use them for actual contacts, even though I've been practicing with them. Old-school muscle memory with the straight key just feels more reliable when I'm nervous.
So I keyed up and sent his callsign twice and then my callsign twice. Then I let go of the key and waited. And he came back to me. He actually came back to me. He sent my callsign and then "GM" and then "TU" and then his name and his QTH and a signal report. I had his signal report written down - 599, which is the standard exchange and honestly probably not entirely accurate but that's just how CW works - and I had my name ready, and I actually managed to put together a coherent reply.
The whole QSO was probably four or five exchanges. Nothing deep. Name, QTH, signal report, "rig is a [radio] running [power]," "wx is cold and cloudy," "73." Pretty much the standard beginner QSO template. But it felt like I'd just climbed a small mountain.
A few things I learned from this that I wish someone had told me sooner:
First, write everything down before you key up. I mean everything. Have your callsign written on paper in front of you. Have your name, your state, your signal report. Don't rely on your brain to produce this information on demand when you're nervous, because your brain will fail you. It just will. Having it on paper in front of me made a huge difference.
Second, if you miss something, it is completely okay to send "PSE RPT?" which means "please repeat." I had to do this once during the QSO when I missed part of his QTH and I was genuinely afraid to send it, like somehow admitting I missed something was going to be a disaster. The other station just repeated it, no problem, no judgment. Nobody cares. This is normal CW operating.
Third, find the slow end of the band. On 40 meters that lower portion of the CW sub-band tends to have slower speeds, more patient operators, and a higher concentration of people who remember being beginners. I've heard 20 meters gets a lot faster and more compressed. I'm not ready for that yet and I'm not even going to pretend I am.
Fourth - and this is something I didn't expect - making a successful QSO did more for my confidence than probably two weeks of practice. There's something about the real thing that cements it in a way software can't. My copies that evening were noticeably better than they'd been that morning. I don't totally understand why but I think success just sort of unlocks something.
I'm still nowhere near where I want to be with code. My goal is to get comfortable around 15 to 18 words per minute before I think about seriously entering any CW contests, which is kind of the whole long-term plan with all of this. Contest operating is what got me into ham radio in the first place, back when I watched my buddy work a pile-up during a big DX contest and I thought it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen.
Right now 15 WPM feels like it might as well be the moon. But three months ago I couldn't tell an E from a T without thinking about it for five seconds, so I'll take the progress.
If you're somewhere in the middle of learning CW and you haven't made your first contact yet, I'd genuinely encourage you to just do it. Pick a slow CQ, have your information written out, breathe, and key up. The worst that happens is the other station doesn't copy you and asks for a repeat. That's it. Nobody's going to laugh at you. Most CW operators were beginners once and they remember it.
More updates to come. I've got a straight key that needs a lot more work, paddles that need even more, and apparently a long road ahead before I'm competitive in any kind of contest. But for one Sunday afternoon, at least, I was a CW operator.
73 de Contest Joe
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Two Months Into CW - The Moment It Finally Clicked

· Contest Joe · 08/09/2026 11:00 PM

If you read my post from last month about my first month of learning CW, you know I was pretty frustrated. I was drilling away with the Koch method using the trainer software every single morning before work, usually 15 or 20 minutes, sometimes longer on weekends. I was stuck around 10 words per minute and the characters just weren't sticking the way I wanted them to. I'd hear a V and think "dit dit dit dah" and by the time I'd consciously worked through that in my head, I'd already missed the next two characters. It was exhausting.
My Elmer, a guy I met at our local club's license exam session back when I was studying for my General, kept telling me to stop trying to decode the dits and dahs and just let my brain hear the whole character as a sound. He said it the same way every time we talked about it: "Stop counting. Just listen." I heard him. I understood the concept. I just couldn't make my brain do it.
Then about three weeks ago on a Tuesday morning, I was copying random code groups with the trainer set to 15 wpm character speed and about 10 wpm effective speed — the Farnsworth method spacing — and something was different. I wasn't thinking about the dashes and dots in the letter K. I just... heard K. Same with R. Same with the number 5. I didn't realize what was happening until I looked down at my paper and noticed I'd been copying pretty cleanly for maybe two minutes straight without really trying.
I actually stopped the trainer and just sat there for a second. Then I started it back up because I was afraid to lose whatever had just happened.
It didn't all suddenly become easy after that. Let me be real clear about that. There are still characters that trip me up consistently. Q is one. Y is another. Anything with a bunch of dahs tends to blur together when I'm tired. But something fundamental had shifted. The copying felt less like translating a foreign language and more like just listening. Even a little bit.
I went down to the shack that evening and tuned around 40 meters in the low end where the CW activity is and just listened for a while. I've been doing that regularly actually — just tuning around without trying to copy anything specific, just getting comfortable with the sound of actual on-air CW rather than the clean perfect tones of a software trainer. Real radio CW is messy. There's QRM, there's guys whose timing isn't perfect, there's fading. The trainer didn't really prepare me for that part.
I tried copying a few QSOs and I could get maybe 60 or 70 percent of it on a good signal. Not enough to actually respond to anything, but enough that I felt like I wasn't completely lost. That's genuinely progress from a month ago when I could barely pull out callsigns.
The thing I wish someone had told me earlier — and maybe they did and I just needed to experience it myself — is that the frustration plateau is real and it lasts longer than you want it to. I hit a stretch of about two and a half weeks in week six and seven where I felt like I was actively getting worse. My accuracy was dropping, I was second-guessing characters I had previously nailed, and I was starting to wonder if I was one of those people who just doesn't have the brain for this. My Elmer basically told me that's normal and to just keep going, which is the kind of advice that's both completely right and also kind of annoying to hear when you're in the middle of it.
I've also started supplementing the trainer with the LCWO website, which has some different exercise formats that help break things up. The callsign copying practice there has been particularly useful because callsigns are obviously what I'll be dealing with the most on the air. You get a feel for the rhythm of a typical ham callsign pretty quickly. There's also a feature where you can slow down specific characters that are giving you trouble and drill those individually, which helped me a lot with F and L, which I kept mixing up for an embarrassing amount of time.
One thing I've started doing on weekends when I have more time is copying ARRL code practice transmissions on . They broadcast CW practice at various speeds on a regular schedule and they publish the text afterward so you can check your copy. There's something about copying real transmitted signals with actual propagation effects that the software trainer doesn't give you. Plus it just feels more like ham radio, which helps with motivation when you're grinding through drills.
I set myself a goal of making my first actual CW QSO by the end of this month. That's about two and a half weeks away. I'm nervous about it but I've been practicing a simple exchange — RST, name, QTH — and I think I can get through it if I find someone patient. There are operators out there who specifically look for beginners on certain frequencies and will slow way down. I've been told that QRS (please send slower) is one of the most important things to know how to send, which honestly cracked me up because of course that's critical information.
My Elmer suggested I try making contact during a slower part of the day when experienced operators are more likely to be hunting for any contact and won't mind taking it slow. He also reminded me that I don't have to copy everything perfectly to have a valid QSO. People have been making CW contacts with partial copy for as long as CW has existed. The culture around it is actually pretty forgiving from what I understand.
I'll post an update after I finally pull the trigger on that first CW contact. If it goes anything like my first ever HF contact on voice did, it'll be simultaneously terrifying and one of the most satisfying things I've done in this hobby. And probably a lot shorter than I expect because I'll blank on something obvious and just sign off early out of panic.
That's kind of where I am at the two month mark. Still very much a beginner, still making mistakes, but starting to believe that this is actually going to work. If you're in month one and feeling like you're never going to get it — I hear you. I was you. Keep going.
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The Humbling Experience of Learning CW - My First Month

· Contest Joe · 05/30/2026 02:00 AM

I started with one of those popular computer programs that everyone recommends. You know the type - starts you off with individual letters at 5 WPM, builds up from there. Seemed logical enough. The first week went pretty well. I was feeling confident recognizing A, B, C, and the handful of other letters I'd learned. Dah-dit, dit-dah-dit, dah-dit-dit. Easy enough, right?
Reality Check Number One
Then I tried listening to actual CW on 40 meters during prime time. Holy cow. What I heard sounded absolutely nothing like the clean, perfectly-timed computer code I'd been practicing with. Real operators have different timing, different spacing, and some of them are flying along at what sounded like warp speed. I couldn't pick out a single letter, let alone a whole callsign.
That's when an old timer at the local club set me straight. He told me I was making the classic mistake of learning letters instead of learning the rhythm and sound of each character. He said I needed to forget about counting dits and dahs and just let my brain absorb the patterns. Easier said than done when you're a methodical person like me who likes to understand exactly how everything works.
Back to Square One
So I started over with a different approach. Instead of that computer program, I found some Koch method training software that throws whole letters at you from the beginning at higher speeds. The theory is that you learn the sound of each character at full speed, rather than slowly building up from turtle pace. It felt like drinking from a fire hose at first.
The breakthrough came during week three. I was getting frustrated and almost ready to quit when something just clicked while listening to the letter 'K'. Instead of thinking "dah-dit-dah," my brain just heard 'K' - like hearing your name called across a crowded room. That was the moment I understood what the old timer meant about rhythm and sound patterns.
First Real QSO Attempt
After four weeks of practice, I finally worked up the courage to answer a CQ on 20 meters. The other station was calling CQ at what sounded like a reasonable pace, maybe 12-13 WPM. I knew my sending was probably pretty rough since I'd been focusing mostly on receiving, but I had to start somewhere.
My hands were literally shaking as I keyed up my response. I sent my call slowly and clearly, or at least I hoped it was clear. The other operator came back to me right away - success! He was very patient as I struggled through giving my name, QTH, and signal report. Looking back, that QSO probably took three times longer than it should have, but he hung in there with me.
What really struck me was how different it felt from phone contacts. There's something almost meditative about the rhythm of Morse code. No background noise, no accents to decipher, no competing voices. Just clean, simple communication distilled down to its essence. I can see why some operators prefer it.
Learning from Mistakes
Of course, I made plenty of errors along the way. During my second CW contact, I completely blanked on how to send '9' and had to look it up mid-QSO. Embarrassing, but the other operator just waited patiently while I figured it out. The ham radio community really is forgiving of newcomers.
Another time, I thought I was being smart by pre-programming some common phrases into my radio's memory keyer. But when I accidentally triggered the wrong memory and sent "QRT SK" instead of "QRL?", the frequency cleared out pretty quickly. Lesson learned: know what your keyer memories contain before using them on the air.
I also discovered that my straight key technique needed serious work. My timing was inconsistent, and after about ten minutes my hand would cramp up. A local elmering session taught me about proper arm position and using wrist motion instead of finger movement. It made a huge difference in both comfort and character clarity.
Current Status and Goals
As of this writing, I'm comfortable copying around 10-12 WPM under good conditions, and I can send reasonably clean code at about the same speed. I've completed maybe a dozen QSOs on CW, ranging from quick signal exchanges to longer conversations about antennas and weather.
My immediate goal is to get solid at 13 WPM, which seems to be the sweet spot where you can participate in most casual CW activity without holding anyone up. The next milestone after that will be 20 WPM, which opens up more contest and DX opportunities.
I've also started experimenting with different keying devices. The straight key is good for learning proper timing, but I recently picked up a magnetic paddle to try with my radio's built-in keyer. It's taking some adjustment, but once I get the hang of it, I should be able to send much faster and with less fatigue.
Advice for Other Newcomers
If you're thinking about learning CW, my advice is to just start. Don't overthink it or wait for the perfect time or equipment. A simple computer program and your existing transceiver are all you need to begin. The hardest part is making that first contact, but once you do, you'll understand why so many hams are passionate about this mode.
Also, don't be discouraged by the learning curve. Progress feels slow at first, but it does accelerate. Those breakthrough moments when your brain suddenly "gets" a new character or when you copy your first complete callsign without having to think about it - those make all the frustration worthwhile.
Most importantly, get on the air as soon as you know enough letters to have a basic QSO. You'll learn faster from real contacts than from any computer program. The CW community is incredibly supportive of newcomers, and you'll find that most operators will slow down and work with you.
Next month, I'm planning to try my hand at a CW contest - probably one of the smaller, less intimidating events to start with. Should be interesting to see how my skills hold up under that kind of pressure!
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Contest Joe

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Blog Entries posted by Contest Joe

Three Months of CW - Entering My First Real QSO

Two Months Into CW - The Moment It Finally Clicked

The Humbling Experience of Learning CW - My First Month

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