CW Practice
<singing (poorly)> “And we’ll have fun, fun, fun, till daddy takes the paddles awaaay …”
KE7JSM called me up tonight and wanted to know if I was up for a little code practice. “Sure,” says I and we toodled off to 144.080 MHz, our usual local-CW watering hole.
The interesting thing about tonights session is that his non-Ham father is going to be listening in. He has one of those little Kenwood HTs that will receive CW and SSB, but will only transmit FM. He can listen, but couldn’t join in even if he had a license. His dad used to be in the military as a radio … well, he wasn’t really a radio op because he never operated the radio, just sat at a mill (typewriter) copying code transmissions and the like. I envision one of those rooms with about twenty guys, all typing away, each listening to their own Morse code transmission, and holding a conversation with their neighbor at the same time.
You’ll note below, right in the middle of our conversation, he got a phone call. It was his father who was supposed to be listening to our practice. He called to laugh about our conversation; he was getting quite a kick out of it, but we were going awfully slow; couldn’t we speed it up a bit? He was sure he could copy us at about 10x what we were doing. Ten times! <GAAAAH!> I was struggling with the 5 WPM we were sauntering along at.
As usual, when I log these, anything lowercase is stuff I filled in later, not stuff I actually managed to copy. <sigh>
[something waaay too fast; sounded vaguely like callsigns]
KE7JSM DE N7GMT = YOU ARE A SPEED DEMON HIHI = KE7JSM DE N7GMT /K/
RR n7gmt de KE7jsm ..T SORRY IM SOOF(?) ..ST.. (rusty) ILL SLOW DOWN = IS THIS BETTER? N7GMT DE KE7JSM /K/
KE7JSM DE N7MMT = RR I COPIED ALL OF YOUR LAST TRANSMISSION, SOMETHING I CAN NOT SAY OF JEDS = HW CPY? KE7JSM DE N7GMT /K/
RR N7.MT DE KE7JSM I COPY ..ST (most?) ..NE = .. (id?) LIKE TO TAKE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO DE..E (send?) A SHOUT OUT [TO] MY DAD = HI DAD = WOW THIS REALLY TAKE(s?) ..E..BR HANG ON [phone call]
RR… standing by, wondering who would be so rude as to interrupt a CW practice session … well, whoever it was probably don’t know …
SORRY HE JUSM [sic] CALLED M(y?) HONE [sic] TO L..U..H (laugh?) = OK ..ACK ... DE KE7JSM /K/
RR ... KE7JSM DE N7GMT /K/
RR N7WMT DE KE7JSM YEAH .SOMETINES [sic] I GT MY ..GAN WOIXED (really?!) UP = MK ..EPP THIS HAS BEEN A GOOD FiRST PRACTICE = H OW WE QSY bAcK to 34? N7GMT DE KE7JSM /K/
OK BUT THE CALL IS N7GMT GMT NOT WMT HIHI = QSY TO 34 = KE7JSM DE N7GMT /SK/
... /SK/
And that, as they say, was that.