Finished CW Academy Intermediate

In an earlier post I mentioned I signed up for an intermediate semester at CW Academy at CW Ops. This semester has ended now. It was quite the journey I must say! Studying 1 hour a day for 8 weeks straight is really a challenge.

Studying

I was able to find some time during the weekends, but during the weekdays with work and other things on my mind, it was really hard to find time and head space. But I did it! This was mainly because the two online meetings per week with the other participants and advisors was so stimulating, I did not miss one day of training. Even when I was ill and in bed with fever, I still managed to do an hour training per day.

Online meetings

The online meetings where really motivating and nice to participate in. The other students were struggling with exactly the same issues. The advisors keep on telling us all these struggles were completely normal and all we had to do was keep on practicing. Also they came up with fun practices to do during the online meetings.

Progress

I must admit I had a lot of trouble keeping up with the pace. We started at 25 wpm character speed and 10 wpm effective speed. Gradually we’ve grown to 25/20. I believe the goal was to end up at 25/25, but I didn’t manage to get there. And when I’m keying on the air, 18wpm feels more comfortable because I make far little mistakes then. So I got the advise from the CW Academy advisors Vincent and Rene to get on the air as much as possible. Keep on practicing with LCWO.net and MorseRunner to practice more on my Instant Character Recognition (ICR) and keep studying the CW Academy practice files.

Conclusion

Although I did not reached the target speed, I did learn a great deal during this intermediate course! I have learned it is extremely important you keep on practicing and don’t mind the performance at the moment. Some days it works great and other days you will ask yourself if you will ever learn it. Just ignore and keep on practicing. Our advisor Vincent asked if we want to continue with the advanced course. But I don’t feel like that yet. He acknowledged I don’t have the level for advanced yet unfortunately, so if I want to participate, I have to do another semester of intermediate first.

We will see. For the time being I am really happy with the progress I have made and I got on the air! So I’m trying to make a few QSO’s every day and try to have as much fun as I can.

Vincent and Rene, thank you both very much again for being our advisors during this great journey! Kees PA3KL, Bas PE4BAS and Dick PA1DI, thanks for being great co-students! It was a really nice experience and we will meet again!