I hate to say this for fear of jinxing myself, but I think I’ve broken trhrough the 20 wpm barrier. For the longest time, I seem to have been stuck at the 20 wpm level, but now I’m able to copy and maintain a CW QSO at 22 wpm. I’m still a little sloppy with the paddles at 22 wpm, but with more practice I should get that down pat.
Again, it was the contesting that helped me break through the barrier. Over the last two weekends, I’ve participated in three contests: the Fists Sprint, the PA QSO Party, and the IL QSO Party. The first two were a bit slower than the IL QSO Party, which took place this weekend. The IQP had a bunch of operators chugging along at speeds over 25 wpm.
For contesting, I’d like to get a keyer that allows me to change speeds more easily. With this Heathkit keyer that I’m using, I have to hit three keys to change speeds. For example, to set the speed to 18 wpm, I have to hit 1-8-WPM. That’s not a big deal for ragchewing, but in a contest you want to be able to slow down quickly to work the slower stations and then quickly speed up again. What this keyer should have is a set of function keys that could be programmed to do simple operations like that.
Too bad this keyer is so old, or I might even be able to figure out a way to do just that. Probably easier, though, to just get a microprocessor experimenter board and program a whole new keyer. The NJ QRP club has something the call the QuickieLab for only $25 that would probably would work.
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