Category Archives: Radio

Developing my new hobby of Amateur Radio

CW aka Morse, Project diary, Radio

Any progress learning Morse?

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My previous post was at the beginning of April. It’s now early September.  I have made a little progress, though I feel that I’m reaching the limits of my typing speed and accuracy.

Between April and early June, I was mainly using the IZ2UUF app which doesn’t record progress.  I thought I needed to push myself, so I reverted to LCWO in mid June.

LCWO does keep a record so it should be possible to answer this. At the end of March I was scoring about 60 % accuracy at 17 wpm random letters on LCWO. Since reverting to LCWO in mid-June, by mid-July my accuracy improved to around 70 % on average with an occasional burst of 75 %.  By the end of August, it had improved to around 75 with the occasional burst of 80 % , after increasing the test length to 3 minutes, which, I think, is helping me to feel the letters, rather than think about them.  I think this may be what people mean by ‘head copy’.

I’m a long way from my target of 90 % before going on ‘boot camp’ in October – feel that I’m approaching the limit of my typing speed and accuracy.

 

Radio, Ramblings

BBC Longwave Shutdown – 27 June 2026

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The BBC shut down its 1500 m, 500 kW, long wave transmitter at Droitwich on 27th June 2026.  The  transmission was at 200 kHz until 1st February 1988, when it was changed to 198 kHz to comply with international agreements that all radio transmissions should be at multiples of 9 kHz to avoid mutual interference.

Droitwich

The longwave transmission was principally from Droitwich, in the English Midlands, established in 1934, replacing older facilities at Daventry.  The aerial (antenna) was a centre-fed T, hung between two 700 ft (200 m) high steel lattice masts which were 180 m apart.  The transmission power was 500 kW and could be received across most of Western Europe, although there were boosters at Westerglen, and Burghead in Scotland, to give coverage to the Northern Isles and Shetland.

It may be noted that the site is now owned by Arqiva Ltd, who are ‘the sole provider of national terrestrial television (Freeview) and national radio transmission in the UK.’  That company is majority-owned by ‘investment groups’ such as Australian pension funds.

It is perhaps no co-incidence that the historic buildings have already been demolished (thereby obviating any possibility for ‘listed’ status), but there is some campaign to list the aerial masts.

Reasons for shutdown

Publicity about the shutdown implied that the transmitters were life-expired, being 90 years old, using amplifier valves that had to be specially made and consuming huge amounts of power.  There were two output valves in each unit each rated at 250  kW and cooled by boiling water in the ceramic cooling jackets.

However, this is by no means the whole story.  The installation had been updated several times, particularly during the Second World War, when it formed an important part of the war effort.

Moreover, the original installation had been replaced in 1960 by war-time transmitters that had been previously used near Hull for overseas broadcasting. These were about 40 % efficient, compared with 22 % for the original transmitters. At the same time, the power supplies were updated to more efficient transformer and rectifier systems to replace the motor-generator sets.

Since the original buildings had been demolished, the electronics must also have been re-housed.

The main driver for closure seems to be that with much reduced numbers of listeners, it was deemed not to be cost-effective to renew the installation, even though it carried other services, including being a frequency standard, and used for radio teleswitching of off-peak electricity services.

The move was in part due to the long-wave platform being owned and operated by a third party [Arqiva] and, in the broadcasters words, “it is coming to the end of its life as a technology”, with alternative digital platforms “offering enhanced quality listening”.

This is not unreasonable for a public service broadcaster, any more than we would expect a public railway service still to be run by steam locomotives.

In April 2024, the BBC migrated their flagship Radio 4 long-wave broadcasts to the various online and digital platforms; DAB, Digital TV and BBC Sounds.

An extension of broadcasting from Droitwich until June 2025 was negotiated by the energy industry, which relies on the BBC carrying the Economy 7 teleswitching signal on BBC Radio 4 LW. There are believed to be nearly a million homes and businesses still reliant on older meters that use the teleswitching signal.

These can now be provided by other systems such as the time and and 60 kHz carrier frequency signal from Anthorn.

In this context, it is worth pointing out that Anthorn also has a VLF military transmitter operating at 19.6 kHz and output power of 550 kW, requiring an elaborate aerial with a central mast 748 feet high and operating at several hundred kilovolts.

Second World War

The  long-wave T-aerial had no upward radiation, so could not be used for direction finding by enemy aircraft. However, the high-powered Medium Wave transmitters on-site were used for programmes in many European languages, for ‘The Voice of America’ and for Morse transmissions to resistance groups in occupied countries.  These had a vertical wire aerial which the enemy could use for direction finding.  RAF Fighter Command could order various groups of synchronised transmitters to close down, thus confusing enemy navigators. Later on the Germans used their domestic transmitters for guidance, and the long-wave transmitter was used to issue a jamming signal.

Historical Details of Droitwich

There is a fascinating BBC film from 1935 (restored by the British Film Institute) showing the construction of the station here: Droitwich – The world’s most modern long wave transmitter

Anyone watching it now will be interested in the smart hats and clothing of the workers, the manual labour of the riggers and especially the brief shot of the open 3-phase knife switches of the generators casually being closed with a fizz and a flash!

A paper Droitwich Calling written by John F Phillips of the BBC in 1994 and revised 2006, give a detailed history of the origin and development of the transmitter, and the details of the 1934 installation given below are taken from this.

It is interesting that there is no mention of how programmes were sent from the BBC studios to the transmitters, although it is known they were routed through Post Office landlines, as this gave the Government ultimate control of broadcasts, because they could just pull the plug!

Power supply

The power was originally generated on site by four 750 hp (550 kW) six-cylinder marine-type diesel engines, each driving a 470 kW alternator, which would be enough power for 5,500 homes.  In fact, the transmitter consumed about 1.1 MW under normal load. The power supply was later connected to the National Grid by two separate feeders and the generators were kept for emergency use.

There was a high-tension room containing duplicate mercury-arc rectifiers each with an output of 600 kW at 20 kV, along with two motor-generators each capable of delivering 300 kW at up to 12 kV for the medium-wave transmitter on site. The 415 V 3 ph supply to the rectifiers was controlled from a panel by open knife switches which were changed over daily – their blades were frequently felt to check for overheating!

There were filament current and grid bias motor-generators in the transmitter hall.

Elaborate precautions were taken to prevent the paralleling of power supplies and to prevent access to the transmitters when the power was on.

The transmitting valves were water-cooled, with the cooling coils being situated over a 300,000 gallon cooling reservoir.

Modulation

The long-wave transmitter employed ‘Series modulation’, whereas the medium-wave transmitters on-site use a low-power choke control (Heising) modulation. Series modulation works by placing the modulating (audio) amplifier in series with the HT supply of the final RF amplifier, thus causing the amplitude of the carrier wave to vary in correspondence with the audio signal. The advantages are excellent linearity and elimination of a modulation transformer.  However a lot of power is wasted as heat in the modulator valve and a much higher HT voltage is needed to account for the additional voltage drop across the modulator.

In each transmitter, the carrier frequency is generated in a triode oscillator running at half the carrier frequency which is fed to a frequency doubler. Elaborate precautions are used to ensure a constant supply voltage and temperature to the oscillator, thereby achieving a stability of 10 parts in a million.

Power Amplifier

The two main power valves each have an anode voltage of 18,000 V at 7 amps, equal to a power of 128 kW.  The valve filaments consume 460 A at 33 V, equal to 15.2 kW.

Aerial

An aerial transformer house, situated midway between the masts, matches the feeder impedance to the aerial, which is a single-wire T.

The earth plane (counterpoise) consists of 72 bare copper wires extending radially from the aerial transformer house, a few inches below ground.

Museum

The Droitwich Heritage Centre in the town of that name contains an exhibition called ‘Droitwich Calling’ that has some original artefacts and information about the Transmitter Station.

CW aka Morse, Learning Morse, Radio

The Morserino-M32 Reborn

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Back in 2024, I wrote about the Morserino CW keyer and trainer, bemoaning that although it looked ideal for my needs it was no longer available due to vital components being discontinued. Note the spelling – don’t put in an ‘h’, as it may take you to a dodgy website.

Whilst researching the QRP Labs Transceiver kit, I noticed (somewhat tucked away, it has to be said) that QRP Labs had the Morserino M32 Pocket for sale for $80.  Yes, they have acquired the licence to manufacture an updated version of this device in a ‘pocket portable’ version.  Since I was buying the QMX+ transceiver kit and paying for delivery, it was a no-brainer to add the Morserino to my order.

I haven’t yet had much time to investigate all its features, but I have tried the capacitative keyer in iambic mode B (the default) and it is delightful. It shows its interpretation of what you are keying and it can also play random morse characters, words, call signs, etc, etc, for practice copying.  I’ve been neglecting my keying and I can see that I’m going to make a lot of use of it.

Because the keys are capacitative, they’re not vulnerable to rough handling, whilst the feel is not much different from the mechanical paddles of my keyer, which are set to a very light touch as recommended by the experts at my club. However, the device is very light and doesn’t have any feet, so will slip around the table unless held down.

It can run from an internal rechargeable cell, so it really is a pocket device. For scale, it is about 12 cm long, 5cm wide and 2.3 cm high
( ~ 4¾ x 2 x 1 inches). (The red labels are mine!)

 

Morserino showing battery
Morserino showing battery

You have to buy the internal cell yourself, as they can’t send them by courier: it’s an AA size 14500 Li-ion 3.7 v cell with a ‘button’ end, which I had to get from Ebay.  Be careful, as there are a variety of similar cells which have different voltages. You have to unscrew the four screws on the base and lift out the circuit board to fit the cell. When replacing it, ensure that the three wires to the paddle don’t obstruct the speaker or the input knob.

My battery was partially-charged and took some hours to recharge.  Plug a USB C cable to an ordinary cell phone charge and remember to switch the battery switch ON, otherwise it doesn’t recharge.

Morserino connectors
Morserino connectors

My M32 Pocket came with firmware version 7 installed but they are now on version 8 which has the Morse learning games and various other improvements. I was able to update the firmware easily from my PC where I have the Google Chrome browser installed. Go to the https://www.morserino.info website and then use a proper data cable to connect the USB port of the M32 Pocket to a USB port of the computer.

Follow the on-screen instructions on the web page to install the required update. You have to say which computer port to connect to.  In my case it was COM3 (Java). It took a few moments to download and install, then the device restarted, giving access to the new features.

Morserino showing battery switch
Morserino showing battery switch

I am writing a separate blog about my initial experience with using it.

Learning Morse, Project diary, Radio

IZ2UUF Morse Koch CW App

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It’s April Fool’s Day, so a good time to review my progress with learning Morse.

I’ve been attending the Sutton and Cheam Radio Society’s regular Monday evening meetings, where a group of us are trying to improve our CW.  Their shack is on top of Epsom Downs, in an excellent location with long uninterrupted views north and south. They’ve got a decent long wire dipole HF antenna and a couple of vertical VHF antennas.  We have been able to hold QSOs with a large number of European stations.

IZ2UUF Morse Koch CW  Android app

I realise that I need 20 wpm to be able to hold QSOs and I’m not getting there using LCWO, so I’ve just started to use IZ2UUF Morse Koch CW, which is an Android app.

I’m finding it excellent. You can select the number of characters (which build up in the same order as LCWO or its own order), the speed and the length of the test.  It sends them on the phone  both in Morse and letters on the screen.  The nice thing is that it repeats each group three times, which is brilliant when you need to catch something subtle.  After each group, it then speaks the characters, so you don’t need to look at the phone, which is good if you’re using headphones whilst walking, for example.

I think I’m making progress.  I’m running it at 20 wpm since I do know at least 40 characters.  My main problem at that speed is confusion between a character and its inverse, such as F and L or K and R.

Obviously at that speed you can’t think about each character, they just have to trigger the correct response.  This is where the repetition is very helpful.

At present I’m using the free version, which has all the features I need right now. I’m thinking of upgrading to the PRO version so that I can do the simulated QSO exercises.

The author of this App is to be highly commended for what must be the best Morse app out there.

CW aka Morse, Project diary

The Practical Telegraphist – Review

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The Practical Telegraphist  is a translation by Chris Rutkowski, NW6V, an American expert on CW telegraphy, of a book written in 1851 by Clemens Gerke, an ‘Inspector of the electro-magnetic telegraph at Hamburg’.

Gerke is of international importance, as he re-wrote Morse’s arrangement of the code into a version very similar to the current International version of the Morse alphabet.

The book is 100 pages long and some of the translation (or maybe the original text) is idiosyncratic – for example, we are told that they put condoms on the bottom of telegraph poles as, ahem, a preservative!

The translation mainly uses American units (inches and miles): it is not clear whether the original used metric units, which were becoming universal in Europe at that time, but a variety of other units occasionally appear, perhaps where Gerke used traditional units of uncertain value.

Gerke’s telegraph was a considerable undertaking, running from the coast at Cuxhaven to Hamburg, a distance of 130 km or 80 miles, via intermediate stations. There was also a line from Hamburg to Berlin, 290 km or 180 miles.  He mentions other telegraphs that had been spreading everywhere over the preceding ten years, along with the development of the railways, so there was a significant network by 1851.

Electro-galvanic Batteries

The first chapter describes in detail the construction of ‘electro-galvanic’ batteries for use in telegraphy.  These make use of quite dangerous chemicals like hydrochloric acid, sulphuric acid, nitric acid, mercury, with plates made of zinc and copper for the electrodes.  He preferred the ‘Daniel Cell’ where the inner negative pole is a copper cylinder housed inside a porous clay pot (best made in the royal porcelain factory in Berlin), filled with copper sulphate solution.  The outer pole is a zinc cylinder surrounded by salt water or dilute sulphuric acid and the whole is contained in a ‘strong beer glass’! (They must have liked their beer, because the glasses were about 4 inches in diameter and filled 5 inches high!)

This cell produces an EMF of about 1 volt, and he makes it clear that you need several of these ‘side-by-side’, connected in series, but it seems that the exact number required was a matter of some trial and error.  He recommends that batteries are installed in series at both ends of the line to ensure there is enough power for the writing machines.  It seems that often a sensitive relay (hitherto a secret revolutionary device) was installed in the line and the relay then drives the writing machine with power from the local battery.

Insulation

A big headache was to obtain reliable insulation of the line.  Most of the line was carried on the pine telegraph poles with which we are familiar, 23 feet above the ground and 150 yards apart, and using glass insulators.  However, these were prone to cracking or to damage from small boys throwing stones at them!  Where it was necessary to use an underground line, usually the copper line (stated to be almost ¼ inch diameter) was carried inside a metal tube filled with gutta-percha, a type of latex.  Gerke gives a lot of detail about how to preserve this material from degradation, which was a serious problem.

Writing Instruments

Much of the rest of the book deals with the arrangement of the telegraph lines and setting up the ‘writing instrument’ which used a stylus depressed by an electromagnet to impress indentations on a paper tape.

Telluric Activity

The system suffered greatly from interference which he largely attributes to  ‘telluric currents’, because they only use a single wire to connect telegraph stations, with the return path being via the ground.  I had not appreciated that natural ‘telluric currents’ flow through the ground, being induced by lightning, the earth’s magnetic field and other effects. The telegraph uses low voltage and current, so it does not take much telluric and atmospheric influence to upset the delicate balance of the electromagnets in the telegraph’s detectors.  Gerke makes it clear that a principal skill of a telegraphist was to constantly adjust the balance of the detectors.

Instrumentation was at best crude and in many cases he suggests touching the ends of the wires to the tongue to detect the presence of galvanic fluid.

Improving the code

The problem with Morse’s (or same say his colleague Vail’s) version of the code was that some characters used longer than standard dashes, whilst others had gaps between the dots.  Moreover, some letters important in German (especially umlauted ä, ö and ü) had no corresponding code  The variable-length dashes and the intra-letter pauses were both difficult to key and susceptible to misinterpretation especially on a noisy line.

A Professor Steinheil (who constructed several railway telegraphs in Germany) devised an alternative code which used fewer elements (dots and dashes) and avoided the intra-letter spaces of Morse’s, but it had several serious defects.  In particular, it used the same code (––·) for letters c, k and q,  the same code for (–·) for d and t, and the same code (–··) for f, v and 5, whilst omitting codes for the umlauted vowels, for x and for y.  Gerke says this is because Steinheil never wanted to use more than four elements in each letter.

Gerke’s version of Morse Code

Gerke says that his code, largely the same as Morse’s, includes all the letters, including the umlauted vowels important in German, whilst overall not needing more bits of time than Steinheil’s.  Moreover, he says, he took into account the frequency of use of letters (from consultation with typesetters), which had not been considered by Steinheil, and that in practice it would be faster to write using his code.  Although he doesn’t say how many words per minute his telegraphists could accomplish, he says that this was as fast as ordinary writing with a pen (which is typically 13 to 20 wpm) and therefore quite sufficient.

The current International Morse Code is almost the same as Gerke’s.  He kept Morse’s codes for the digits, whilst the current International code use a more consistent and logical arrangement.

Interestingly, Morse, Steinheil and Gerke all omitted letter I: the current code for I is what they used for J.  Some other letters were changed for the current code, including O, P, X, Y and Z.

Conclusion

The Practical Telegraphist is now only of historical interest.  In the 1850s, they lacked much in the way of instruments, which greatly hampered their work – much investigation relied on experience, trial and error,  and testing with the tongue – but it is fascinating to see how our knowledge of electricity has developed whilst the telegraphist’s art is much the same.

Learning Morse, Radio

Morsle Morse Game

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I have just learnt about a Morse Challenge Game at https://morsle.fun/

Each day you are given a five-letter word presented initially at 40 wpm, which initially just sounded like a lot of buzzing to me.

You have to enter your guess at the letters and then any that you get right turn green.  You then get two more goes at that speed.  If you haven’t got it, the speed reduces by 5 wpm to 35 wpm and you have three more goes, and so on.  You can save your statistics and the next day there is another word.  There is also a practice mode if you are trying to improve or you don’t want to wait !

I did manage to get a word at 40 wpm!  This was partly a lucky guess, but funnily enough, the ‘shape’ of the letters did stand out.  For example, you can hear how many symbols are in each letter and perhaps which ones are long and which are short.  The real thing is that with only five letters, you can retain the overall ‘buzz’ and there is then time to think about it.  Very different from a continuous stream of traffic where you have to recognise each letter immediately.

Good fun – worth giving it a go.

CW aka Morse, Project diary, Radio

Fitting a Heavy base to Hi-Mound Morse Key

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Fitting A Heavy Base

When I bought the key from Ebay, it was on a nice polished mahogany board which probably had a straight key on it previously, because it has some old screw holes and other marks.  It is also rather large for my crowded desk, and still slips about, so I need a heavy steel base like that for the CWMorse key.  That cost £26 from a ham radio shop, and the Hi-Mound key is slightly too long to fit it.

On Ebay, I found a seller who will cut steel bar to length, so I ordered a 100 mm length of 75 mm wide bar at 10 mm thick, weighing 590 grams,  for less than £7 inc delivery.

Steel Base Plate

I filed off the rough edges, cleaned off the black mill-scale and drilled four 4 mm holes to match those in the base of the key.  I bought a cobalt-alloy drill bit and was surprised how easy this was with my small battery-powered drill.

Underside of Hi-Mound Key

Once I’d removed the key from the mahogany base, I was surprised to see that the connections under the key are not protected from accidental short-circuit, so I put tape over them and then bolted it to the base-plate using 3 mm bolts, after I had first sprayed it with Silver Hammerite paint. Then I put on self-adhesive feet

Underside of Steel base-plate

This is pretty good – if the desk is free of dust and I slightly dampen the feet, it sticks very nicely to most surfaces and doesn’t wander about even under enthusiastic keying.

Hi-Mound Key on new steel base

Now it needs a cover to keep dust and dirt out  The base of the key itself is 85 by 65 mm and of course, the steel base is 100 x 75 mm.    I have been totally unable to find a plastic or metal box  with those dimensions.  I could buy some thin sheet aluminium and cut it to fit, or get some clear plastic sheet and do likewise

Key cover made from card
Key cover made from card

But pro tem I have decided to cut one out of stiff card, painted silver, as shown below.  TBH it doesn’t look very elegant and I still need to find the best way of attaching it.  I’m thinking of a magnetic catch

CW aka Morse, Project diary, Radio

Twin-Paddle Morse Key

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Choosing a Morse Key

I’d read that it was a good idea to be able to read morse fairly well before learning to key, because that way you learn the rhythm of the characters. I also read some of the debate between the merits of straight and iambic keys.  I’d read Chris Rutlowski’s book on CW, and he is an aficionado of high-speed straight keying. Early telegraphers suffered from ‘Glass Arm’, which is a form of RSI, from the constant rapid up-and-down motion of the arm, something that typists can also suffer.  Rutlowski claims that by developing a rhythmic style style such as he advocates, this can be avoided.

However, early telegraphers got round this by using a side-to-side key and and especially using a ‘bug’ that employs a spring mechanism to generate rapid dits.

The modern development of the ‘bug’ is the dual-paddle iambic keyer (I daren’t write Iambic because that looks like lambic!) which generates dits and dahs electronically.

Twin-Paddle Keys
CapKey

After an initial foray with a straight key, I decided to get with it and learn how to use an iambic keyer.  I made the twin-level capacitive Cap Key Keyer.  Unfortunately the CapKey keyer wasn’t very reliable probably due to mistakes I’d made in the layout of the circuit board.

CWMorseUS
Twin Paddle Morse Key

So I bought an inexpensive twin-paddle key by CWMORSE.US, available from several UK Ham stores. I paid for the steel base which is 75 x 75 x 12 mm and weighs about 530 gm  – with the weight of the key, the total is about 700 gm. It has decent rubber feet and if I wet them slightly, they stick well to the desk and don’t shuffle about.  You can adjust the two contact distances separately, but the tension has only one adjuster.  I’ve got it set to about 1mm movement on each paddle and quite a high contact resistance.  I think it works well, but I definitely perceived occasional contact bounce.  The contact works by pressing a brass contact against a central brass pillar which is not easy to see, but I clean it by pulling a piece of strong, rough paper between the contacts which brings away a little dark tarnish.

CW Morse Key with heavy steel base
Hi-Mound Twin Paddle Keys

I thought I’d see whether I could get a better key. Various radio shops have some extremely expensive keys on sale, whilst an Internet search brings up various cheap Chinese keys which didn’t seem to have any reviews and I doubted they would be better than what I have.

And then some Hi-mound twin-paddle keys started appearing on Ebay.  Some of these are again ludicrously expensive whilst others are in poor condition – presumably found in an old shack or junk shop. I did note that there are several different variations on this keyer.  For example the MK-703 has a heavy base, separate left and right paddle and contact adjusters, and a moulded transparent cover.  The MK-706 looks similar but without the additional base. I have noticed that other (more recent?) MK-70x keys only have a single tension adjuster.  Various reviews (and talking to aficionados at the radio club) showed that these are very popular, with people liking the close paddle spacing, which is about 8 mm between the outer edges of the pair of paddles, and about 4 mm between their inner edges, about half the spacing of CWMORSE key.

Hi-Mound fitted with new jack

Then a very clean – new-looking – MK-706 style came up for £65, so I jumped at it.  One downside is that it doesn’t have a cover, so I will have to find something to fit, as I want to keep it nice!

Trying out the key

Is this key better than the cheapo CWMorse one?  It certainly felt very different when I tried it. I’d increased the lever tension and reduced the contact distance on the CWMorse key, so found the lever tension far too light on the Hi-Mound, and so I increased that quite a lot.

Hi-Mound Contacts and adjusters
Adjustments

I also played around with the contact distance, which was too large on both levers, and I’ve set it closer.  This means that I can feel the levers click as they make contact. Both levers move about 0.5 mm to make contact.  The levers are quite long and flexible, but there is still enough click to give tactile feedback when they make contact. Indeed it has taken me some practice to get used to it – I didn’t like it at first and wondered if I’d made a mistake.  The contacts are properly shaped to give a distinct contact point and they don’t move up and down like the CWMORSE key, so the contact seems less prone to bounce or intermittent contact – essential for accurate keying.  I’m not sure what the contact material is and I don’t intend to investigate!

Fitting A Heavy Base

The key is on a nice polished mahogany board but this is rather large for my desk and doesn’t stabilise the key.  My next post describes how I made a heavy steel base plate for it.

CW aka Morse, Learning Morse

Learning Morse

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It’s the end of August 2025, the anniversary of me starting to learn Morse seriously. It’s time to review progress and note any lessons that I’ve learnt.

What stage have I reached?

I can read words at a speed of 15 wpm, but with delays between words, so I can’t really manage sentences at that speed. This is because I hesitate over characters, and then miss the next word.
My effective speed is more like 12 wpm.

Overall, I have put in about 2,000 lessons using the LCWO (Learn CW online) app.  This amounts to at least  200 hours of practice, or about 4 hours a week.  It feels like a lot more.

I can send with a Morse paddle and keyer, again at an effective speed of about 12 wpm, but my accuracy and rhythm leave much to be desired.  To send rhythmically, you need to be thinking ahead whilst sending, and this requires you to employ some of the brain’s ability to process characters subconsciously.  This is the same ability that you have to use in order to read Morse at anything more than a snail’s pace.

So at my stage, where I do know about 45 Morse characters, sending helps to improve my reading and vice versa.

Lessons learnt

I have been re-reading some of Chris Rutlowski‘s book on learning and using CW, which I bought a year ago.  The learning process he described made little sense to me at the time – he spends quite a lot of time describing the rhythmic nature of keying, but it isn’t possible to attain a rhythm until you can recall the characters effortlessly.

However, I now appreciate that sending accurately, even using a paddle and keyer, requires you to become much more aware of the rhythmic nature of the character train.  Unless you are aware of this, you will leave incorrect gaps between letters and words that cause confusion to the listener, especially when they’re using a decoding app.

I feel that I should have started to practice keying a little bit sooner, because both sending and reading Morse at a decent speed does require you to feel the rhythm of the characters. However, I didn’t make any progress until someone suggested the https://hamradio.solutions/vband/ website.  This lets you practice keying on a practice channel, or to open a channel with your known contacts.

I have managed a couple of QSOs over radio with friends, but I feel that I have a long way to go to be able to manage 15 wpm reliably, as this seems to be the speed that is needed for straightforward QSOs.

I intend to ‘plug on’ until I reach this stage.

Battling with Tech, Radio

First Successful QSO

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Wowee! Yesterday, 4th August 2025, I had my first successful QSO! It was on CW with my radio club friend G0TIQ, on 28.050 MHz.  He lives in Kingston, about 10 miles from here and we received each other 559 (i.e totally clear).

I was using my paddle with the radio’s keyer set to Elekey B (i.e. iambic B) at 10 wpm, which is the fastest that I can read at.  But I was using an Android morse translation app to confirm and record the QSO.  Still, I don’t think I would have passed the old Post Office test!

Unfortunately we weren’t able to communicate on SSB (single side band, i.e. voice). We tried various bands but I was getting a lot of QRM (Noise).

I’m still getting used to the various settings on my Yaesu FT-710.  Switching modes between CW and SSB automatically changes various other settings.  This makes sense if you’re an experienced radio operator, but it is mystifying to me, especially as some of the on-screen indicators cryptic at best.

You can see from the screenshot that some of the settings are obscure – the TX power for one.  Also the SWR reading is only valid whilst the Tx is operative.  It does go to 1 on TX.  I don’t know why Tune is in red – in fact it is not clear which colour shows that a setting is active.  White or Blue, for example.  Hopefully it will become clearer with more experience.

Moreover, I am not sure how good my antenna really is.

Nevertheless, this is a first to be celebrated!