My First CW Ragchew

 

My First CW Ragchew

March 9, 2023

 

I started to do CW QSO from January 2023, but only limited to short ones, mainly POTA/SOTA hunting and activation and SST (Slow Speed Test). In these QSO’s, the exchanges are simple and barebone. For POTA/SOTA, only callsign is necessary to exchange, even RST report is not that important, QTH (state/province abbreviation) and other information are optional. For SST, callsign, name and QTH are needed. Usually these QSO’s only cost about less than a minute. A new op doing S&P can listen the runner’s QSO’s with other hams for a while to copy his/her callsign and other information before calling the runner, this will reduce the new op’s copying workload during QSO quite a lot.

Ragchew, on the other hand, is a longer QSO in a casual and friendly manner, usually longer than 30 minutes. More information are exchanged in a ragchew, for example: actual RST report, name, QTH (city/town name), RIG, power, ANT, height, weather, temperature, etc. Endurance of copying and sending CW is needed for a ragchew QSO, this is difficult for a new op. In my experience, copying at 15wpm for less than a minute is already stressful, longer time copying will be over stressful, not to mention more errors will happen during sending, and thinking about what to send back after copying. CW ragchew is the second bar for a new op after the first one: doing a CW QSO on the air.

But ragchew is more interesting and in a more traditional way. Doing contest every day is not a life, slowing down and enjoying a ragchew in one’s own pace sounds more relaxed, and is the way to make some friends on the air.

March 9^th is a Wednesday, I came to work too early, so I drove onto the top floor of the garage building and set up MFJ-336S three-magnet car top mount and Diamond HF20CL antenna on my car roof. I started to wander through the 20-meter band searching for POTA activators, it was early morning, not too many activators yet, or they’re on the east coast that were too far away to reach.

After doing a quick POTA CW QSO with K7AZT at 14.041MHz, I found K7HZ was calling CQ at 14.035MHz, his speed was about 15wpm, very strong signal. I listened somewhere else and then back, he was still calling CQ. I thought 15wpm may be fine for me to copy, shall I call him back? Hmm, maybe… I hesitated for a while, thinking: sooner or later I’ll do a CW ragchew, why don’t I give it a try now? Well, just do it. I started my audio recorder, listened to a few more CQ callings from him, and then reached my magnetic paddle key on top of my Xiegu G90 radio, sent out:

K7HZ DE KG6YJ

After one or two seconds, he replied! His speed was about 15wpm. I concentrated my mind on the pencil and paper to copy what he sent, I wrote down something, but missed some. I copied his RST, his QTH with a wrong letter, I wrote down his name but couldn’t link that to his name…

This is what he sent (from the recorded audio replay):

R R KG6YJ DE K7HZ TNX FER CALL ES GM GM UR RST PEAKING 599 599 =

QTH IS CORVALLIS, OR. CORVALLIS, OR. =

NAME JIM JIM HW? + KG6YJ DE K7HZ K

This is what I wrote down:

When I hunted POTA, I can copy 20wpm CQ calls or even a little higher ones, that was because I only need to copy a few key words such as the caller's callsign, RST, etc. Now the real thing came, I even cannot successfully copy 15wpm in a normal CW QSO. 😟

Now it was my turn. I was sweating because I did copy all that he sent. I wanted to tell him I’m a new op. I sent:

BK SA eeeeeeee SRI NEW OP HAE (HR) S eeeeeeee I GM GM UA eeeeeeee UA eeeeeeee UR H 599 599 QM eeeeeeee QTH IS SAN JOSE, CA SAN JOSE, CA TU HW? K7HZ DE KG6YJ K

I didn’t sent “R” because I missed something that he sent.

Then he got back to me with much slower sending speed, about 12wpm, both dits and dahs became longer.

R R KG6YJ DE K7HZ SOLID CPY =

BUT UR I I FORGOT TO SEND NAME =

THINK I HEARD U SAY U R NE NEW OP ON CW SO I HAVE QRS SO CPY IS EASIER =

HERE WE HAVE RAIN ES TEMP IS IN LOW 40S =

HERE IAM RUNNING K3 AT 90W TO 3EL YAGI AT 40 FEET =

PSE SEND ME UR NAME ES IF U NEED TO IIIF U NEED T eeeeeeee IF U NEED ME TO REPEAT QTH OR MY NAME LET ME KNOW +

KG6YJ DE K7HZ K

This is what I wrote down:

  

This is the spirit of a real OM: slow down for new op. I was moved. This time I copied most of what he sent, I felt better. With code speed of about 16wpm, I had more spaces between words to reduce the practical speed, and sent:

R R K7HZ DE KG6YJ MANY TNX U eeeeeeee FI eeeeeeee U eeeeeeee FER UR KINDNESS MY NS eeeeeeee NAME IS JUN JW eeeeeeee W eeeeeeee JUN JUN =

PSE REPEAT U NAME ES QTS (QTH) KGHZ (K7HZ) DE KG6YJ K

As you can see, I still made quite some mistakes when sending CW. More practice is needed. Anyway, he copied. He replied slowly in 12wpm speed:

R R DE K7HZ OK JUN MY NAME IS JIM JIM =

QTH IS CORVALR eeeeeeee CORVALLIS, OR. CORVALLIS, OR. =

HW? + KG6YJ DE K7HZ K

This is what I wrote down:

 

Now I knew his name is Jim, and his QTH was copied. I replied:

R R R KGHZ (K7HZ) DE KG6YJ TW eeeeeeee TU SO MUCH.

MY RIG XIEGU G90 G90 AT 20 WATTS ES ANT IS HF20CL ON CAR TOP =

N eeeeeeee NOW IT IS RAINING TEMP IS 50S HW? KGHZ (K7HZ) DE KG6YJ K

I didn’t realize when I sent, but the recorded audio showed I kept sending KGHZ instead of K7HZ for his callsign. Maybe I was getting used to my own call sign prefix KG.

Now we were “talking” about equipment and antenna, good. Then he sent:

R R DE K7HZ FB JUN WITH 20 W ES ANT ON CAR TOP U ARE STILL PEAKING 599 599 =

ES YES I HAVE READ ABT UR RAIN ES SNOW IN MOUNTAINS =

SEEMS LIKE U ARE GETTING HVY SNOW ES HVY RAIN =

HERE I AM OLD HAM ES HAVE BEEN ACTIVE ON CW BANDS FER OVER 60 YRS = =

ES AM CW ONLY HAM = KG6YJ DE K7HZ K

This is what I wrote down:

 

 

Wow, he had been doing CW for over 60 years! I wanted to say: please accept my salute and respect, but I used ‘receive’ for which I had to write down this word on paper after I sent “R R R PSE”. Also I used ‘solute’ instead of ‘salute’, HI HI. Also I noticed it was time for me to go to work, I had to end the QSO soon. This is what I sent:

R R R PSE RECEIVE MY SOLU eeeeeeee SOLUTE + ES RESPECI eeeeeeee RESPECT TNX JIM =

OK NICE TO MEET U MN (ON) THE AIAE eeeeeeee AIR HOPE CUL K7HZ N eeeeeeee DE KG6YJ 73 K

He came back to me:

R R OK JUN ES YES HOPE TO HEAR U ON CW BANDS LATER TNX FER CALL ES QSO 73 + KG6YJ DE K7HZ SK GM TU E E

This is what I copied:

 

Then I send my last sentence (somehow I forgot to send his callsign first):

KG6YJ T 73 TU GM SM eeeeeeee SK 73 E E

Immediately I heard about 3 sets of “E E” on the air, the first set should come from K7HZ, but the other two might come from others. Obviously somebody else was listening to my QSO with Jim, and cheering, here he came:

K7HZ K7HZ DE WB6ZFG WB6ZFG K

It was WB6ZFG waiting for his turn talking to K7HZ. Then they started a short CW QSO at about 15wpm speed, sounds like they knew each other before, they talked about snow down in Bishop, had to run, just say hello, etc. So friendly.

On my paper logbook, I wrote down my QSO start time and then stop time, it was a 31-minute QSO. The audio recorder showed similar length. I could never imagine that I could do such a long CW QSO. If I can copy faster, if I didn’t make that many mistakes, the QSO will be a shorter one, then we can talk about more things. This kind of QSO is what I like: leisurely, friendly, more information exchanged, getting to know each other better, making friends on the air.

Going forward, there’re a few things that I can do to make better CW QSO’s:

1.       Improve my CW copy speed and accuracy.

2.       Try SKCC slow speed saunter which is slower than 12wpm.

3.       Then jump back to normal CW QSO as much as possible.

Practice makes perfect. More practice and more on-air time, better CW skills. J