CW practice on the W6KAP repeater

Local CW training is offered every Friday at 8:00pm local time (PT) and is being held on the W6KAP repeater in Volcano, CA. 440.450MHz, standard positive offset +5MHz, PL 127.3. It has very good reach into the valley. The repeater uses less than 5W and has a low noise preamp so if you can hear it you can usually reach it. The training sessions are run by Jim N6VN and George AJ6QL. 

The goal is to get hams interested in CW who have not done much at all with it or who haven't used CW in decades and would like to hop back in. 

We are starting out very slowly, the character speed is set at 10wpm but by inserting longer spacing this is being reduced to 5wpm (Farnsworth method). We already went through the alphabet, numbers and prosigns so it would be good if you could familiarize yourself with these. Don't worry much about the prosigns, we only use very few common ones and you can follow with knowing them. 

Next we will exchange very brief messages that you find in a standard CW QSO, such as signal report, QTH and name. Later some simple rig and antenna information. Eventually we will gradually increase the speed. Use whatever key you are comfortable with. You will need a tone oscillator that can be keyed. Most hams use their HF rig for that by turning off transmit (like turn off break-in) and turning the RF gain way down for less noise. Then hold the microphone of your FM rig close to the speaker where the tone comes out and you'll be heard on the repeater in "CW over FM". 

Please try it out and join us. Don't be concerned about making keying mistakes, we've all made those and still do. 

A special thanks to Ernie W6KAP for allowing us to use his repeater. For anyone interested, Ernie is holding a handheld (HT) net at 7:00pm every Friday before our CW training. 

73, George AJ6QL 

For more information about weekly CW training on the W6KAP Repeater, please contact George AJ6QL  joergsch@analogconsultants.com