I wasn’t sure that I would actually get serious about my CW practice this year, though proficiency has been a goal for me for some time. But a few a weeks ago, someone pointed to a couple of apps and I installed them. I started to poke at them and play them like games in the morning over coffee. That bled into character practice at odd moments when I could pull it off.
Not satisfied with what was available to me for reasons that you can only really understand if you live in the mess that is my head, I pulled together a Python script to take stations that are currently activating POTA sites and play them out as code. Some tweaking there has it so that each call is played three times at 20 wpm. It’s getting there. I’m getting there.
This week, I started on the W1AW mp3s that are on the ARRL site. 5 WPM this week. I’m getting solid copy. 7.5 WPM starts on this coming Monday. Then hopefully up to 10 after 2 weeks of that. My plan is to push it until I get stuck. This is a technique that works well when working on ear training in music as well as with the practice involved in playing a musical instrument. I have high hopes that it will apply to this.
In between, I will play with the Koch method trainer and the CWOps trainer on one of the apps. I hate typing as I copy which is part of my aversion to those apps. Scribbling on paper and typing after the exercise is over is also friction, but it works better for me.
What matters here seems to be that I’ve come across a method of study that is keeping me moving despite the 10,000 other things that I have to do in a day. That’s worth documenting.
And if I can copy 20 WPM and do a POTA QSO before fall of this year? That would be amazing.