Other than my nightly sked with Wes, truth be known it's been quite a while since I've sat down in my shack for the sole purpose of just making some contacts and random rag chewing, but my purchase of a new set of Bencher paddles at the hamfest yesterday got me in the mood, so that's what I did today. I cruised around 30 and 20 meters and made about a dozen or so contacts ranging from TX, SC, CO, IL, MS, even a little DX with the Cayman Islands. All of them were QRP at 5 watts and of course........... all in CW 8) .
I am the same way; other than my skeds, I often find myself rarely just 'hobby hamming'. I DO tend to listen much more than I send. If I hear some rare DX calling CQ and a pile-up, I think 'Tt's nice to hear from XXX.', but I already know that all stations are '599' all the time and there will be no conversation, so I just keep tuning. On the other hand, when I hear a DX station calling and seeming to want to have a conversation, WELL than I'm a Happy Ham. . .
(http://yorgie.com/webclass/excercise/complete/animalsmile/images/pig_smile.jpg)
. . . and give him a callback.
People are more interesting than paper.
73 de RadioRay ..._ ._
I usually try to make one contact a day after work before the kids get home. I'm still learning code, so I'm always using ssb. Right now my voice is shot due to allergies or something so I've had to take a break. I may stay off until I can make a with one of you guys using cw.
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Excellent! It takes some time to learn the code, but once you can do about 15wpm it gets really interesting.. You'll be amazed at how much reliable it is!
Gil.
Quote from: NWARadio on April 25, 2014, 12:10:15 PM
I usually try to make one contact a day after work before the kids get home. I'm still learning code, so I'm always using ssb. Right now my voice is shot due to allergies or something so I've had to take a break. I may stay off until I can make a with one of you guys using cw.
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I for one would be more than happy to set up CW QSO with you as would any of the others I'm sure. Don't put it off too long though, once you know all the characters you're ready to get on the air even if it's only at 5WPM. Nothing beats real live QSOs for practice, they're so much more fun than code training software which can honestly get kind of boring and frustrating after awhile. Hang in there.
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