After eight years I applied for a new call: PA8E. For some time I was in doubt about my old call. PA1JIM doesn’t key well in CW. It’s too long and I didn’t like the combination 1-J. A few weeks ago one of my HAM-buddies, Gerald PA9G changed his call from PE1PQW to PA9G. A while back I did played with the idea to change my call but with the call-change of Gerald this came back to life. But then the big question: what new call should I apply for?
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At least half an hour a day: CW training at lcwo.net. It pays off. This evening I’m a little less tired then other nights and I started my daily Morse code training. I did not had my regular dips in the first training session of two minutes. To my own surprise I hit a 82% score in the first run! I could not believe my eyes! First score in the 80’s! And it was not a one day fly, the next three were in the 80 percent!
Just as I was thinking I will never learn this, no matter how many CW training I do. Day in, day out of scores around 60 or maybe 70 percent correct. Still working to three scores of 90 percent in one practice session. When I reach that, I will switch over to the numbers. And when I got three hits of 90% or higher I will train letters and numbers combined. I’m still a long way from home. On my to-do list also are the pro-signs. But when we will reach that bridge we will cross it.
After today I got back my motivation to go on with this CW training!
Last night at the radio-club I did some puzzling for my 1st attempt to build the K3NG’s Arduino CW Keyer. I want to build one especially to train Morse code keying. Therefor I need a display attached to the keyer and some training software.
I have a Hoxo 1621 4-bit 16×2 display laying around so I want to attach that to the Arduino Nano. After a breadboard session and some soldering smoke I have made the connection. Gave my first Sketch on Arduino a go, downloaded the source code of the K3NG Arduino CW Keyer from Github and walked by all settings. When I gave the compile a try, it error-ed on some libs missing. After some copy + paste the code compiled without problems (white smoke!). But when uploading to the Arduino I got again errors. The IDE did not see the Arduino although all port settings where correct. By then it was almost midnight and I wanted to go home for some sleep.
This morning I gave the compiling a second try on my Ubuntu desktop. This time compiling and uploading went without errors! Hopefully I was watching the display, but accept for the back-light nothing appeared 🙁
I don’t know if I made a mistake with this 1st attempt in pinout or if the HOXO 1621 is too much of a difference from a 1602. But some further investigation has to be done. I will be back with a 2nd attempt.
