Back in the 1980s, I taught a Novice class at Doric Scientific, the company I was working for then. At that time, of course, you had to pass a 5-wpm code test. To teach the code, I brought in a key and a speaker and connected them to a fancy Wavetek frequency generator, which probably cost about $2,000. I like to joke that it was the most expensive code practice oscillator ever.
Fast forward 35 years, and I’m teaching CW again. After much badgering from my ARROW clubmates, we’ve finally started a class based on the CWOps CW Academy program. We’re starting with Level I, obviously. The class materials—Student Handbook: Practice Instructions = Level 1 and Using Morse Trainer—are available at no charge from the CWOps website.
CW Academy uses an online application called Morse Trainer. Morse Trainer was written specifically for the CW Academy. The built-in practice sessions follow the CW Academy program letter-for-letter and word-for-word.
While you could probably learn the code by just using the CW Academy materials and Morse Trainer, it’s more effective in a class setting. I think the students motivate one another, and, of course, it’s useful to have an experienced CW guy on hand to give advice and answer questions. (If you’re an old hand like me, and you’re interested in teaching a CW class, you can find instructor resources on the CWOps website, including “Teaching Morse Code Using A Virtual Classroom Environment.”)
When they teach a class, the CWOps advisors conduct two training sessions per week for eight weeks. The classes are held online, using oovVoo, a video chat program. Here, we are going to meet on Sundays and Wednesday evenings, using Skype.
We started our CW class on Sunday evening with four students. The class started inauspiciously. I first tried using my shack PC, holding the microphone up to the laptop speakers to capture the code being generated by Morse Trainer in a browser window. Unfortunately, only one of the students could hear the code. After puzzling over that for a bit, I switched to my office Mac, and everyone was able to hear the code.
After that, everything went pretty well. Once in a while, the code would sound a little funny. I think the reason for that is that we were getting some feedback from one or more of the students. The CWOps recommend using headphones, partly to prevent any audio feedback from distorting the code. I think this is a good idea and plan to use them next week.
For the next class, I also want to up the character speed being sent. Morse Trainer lets you set the character speed and the overall speed (Morse Trainer calls it the Farnsworth speed) separately, and I had the character speed set to 20 wpm and the Farnsworth speed set to 10 wpm. I think that 20 wpm is probably too slow, so for the next session, I’ll set it to 25 wpm.
The goal here is to get these guys confident enough in their abilities to make CW contacts at next year’s field Day. After we’re done with the Level 1 course, I’m going encourage them all to get on the air and make some “real” contacts. One thing I’m thinking about doing is inviting them over to my house (or going to theirs) to participate in a QSO party. Getting on the air really is the best practice method out there, and QSO parties are a good way to get into the swing of contesting. If you have any thoughts or experience to share, please comment below.