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PA8E Kent PaddleThe other day I was browsing the club’s website (which has a very 90’s look and feel btw) and spotted a news article about a morse exam being organized in our neighbour country Belgium. That might sound weird but wait untill I explain!

When our Dutch FCC (AT) dropped the morse requirement for amateurs, they cancelled the whole possibility to do a morse program. When you think that is a bit radical, you’re right! Because now we have a situation where a Dutch amateur can do his/her full license exam, pass, but still can’t use HF in some countries like, for instance France! If in a country there is still a morse requirement and this country did not adopt the harec agreement, Dutch amateurs officially are not allowed on HF!

This wouldn’t be a problem if at least there was a option of doing a morse exam. But since dropping the morse requirement in The Netherlands, there isn’t. So when a Dutch amateur (who passed his exam for full license) still want a “CW included” notation on his license, he has to take the “Belgium-route” as it is named here. You have to take a d-tour to Belgium, attend a morse exam there and when you pass you can submit your paper in The Netherlands to get your “CW included” sign on your license. I think this is ridicoules but it’s the only way. Only a few indivitual amateurs did this “Belgium-route” so far, but now our club is looking for the opportunity to organize this for more interested amateurs.

I did contact the organizer for more specs of the exam. The next one is in March. But I concluded that I’m not ready for this one. You need to be able to receive at a speed of 13 wpm (that wouldn’t be a problem if I didn’t had the actual speed set for 6 wpm ) including the pro-signes. I did not yet trained those. And you need to be able to send 13 wpm. That would be a real problem since I didn’t send at all.

Maybe I can join the next exam!

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This weekend I entered the CQ WPX RTTY contest and the PACC.

I really like contesting in RTTY-modus! I’ve setup N1MM with MMTTY and that works fine. Did a relax contest weekend, doing breaks left and right, didn’t miss a hour of sleep. Most important thing is to have fun! Speaking of fun, I also did participate in the PACC contest which I entered for a few years now. It always was great fun doing it. This year for the first time I didn’t like it anymore. 2 Things that bothered me: I don’t like voice contests anymore. It’s so noisy! The whole band seems full. When I called CQ on a frequency that seemed free, after a while I heard a response for another station. So apparently the frequency was occupied only I was unable to hear it. And the other thing: the PACC should be around the Dutch Amateur. So IMHO Dutch amateurs should call CQ and others should S&P. But not during the PACC. There are so many amateurs in this little country and less (like it seems) foreign participants. Tuning around the bands I heard many foreign amateurs calling CQ PACC. That seemed weird to me. Low and behold I scored 50 QSO’s and I was done with it. Back to CQ WPX RTTY contest! Need many more practice on this CW-thing. I want to do CW-contests. If the are as much fun as the RTTY-ones I would really enjoy doing them.

Sadly I didn’t hear Jim, K5ND 🙁 I even set an cluster alarm on his call and let run HRD Logbook on the background so I would be alerted when he’s spotted somewhere, but no luck. Maybe more luck next time Jim! I already read you scored quite nice on this one! Congrats!

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Finally! My first try was at 10-27-2010. 1322 attempts later I’m arrived at lesson 40 of the 40 lessons in total at Learning CW Online website of DJ1YFK. This is how long it can take if you don’t practice every day. Sometimes I even abandoned the training for months, thinking I’ll never learn the code. But today I reached a milestone: the last lesson!

I’m learning Morse code with the Koch method at a character speed of 15 words per minute and an effective speed of 6 words per minute. So now I know all important characters at this speed I’ll continue training on lcwo.net to gain better actual speed. Also I start training copying call signs with Morse Runner which I tried a few times before and I’m now able to do runs. And….. last but the most important: I’m gonna make real contacts on air! Only made CW-contacts so far with Digital Master 780, so they don’t really count. 

My target is to put away the microphone and only make contacts in Morse code. Hopefully at speeds between 20 and 25 wpm. Maybe even participate in contests with Morse code. I’ve somehow got the idea I’m half way now. Let’s move along!