Share you CW journey

If you’re learning or have mastered CW you’ll know what a journey it can be and how easy it is to fall by the wayside. There is no one right way to master The Code but there are probably a lot of common pitfalls and we all need a little encouragement now and then to keep us on track.

We’d love to hear your learning stories, what’s worked, why you’ve hit a wall and how you overcame set-backs.
Under ‘Resources > Your stories’ we’d like to share your experiences…even if you’re still learning.
In ‘Resources > Learning tools’ we are trying to bring together learning tools that have worked for members.
Once you start having your first tentative CW QSOs you may find there are some hints, tips and tools to help you not feel like an utter failure :o) You can share those in ‘Resources > Operating aids’.

Whatever your experience, what ever has helped you go from Zero to Hero, why not share it with you Ham Buddies so they can be CW heroes too. Drop us a line with your stories, photos, articles and ideas and we’ll try to publish them here.

You can reach us on email admin@lidscw.org or, of course, send us a Tweet to @lids_cw

Getting active on CW

If you are learning to get comfortable using CW it’s important to have regular on-air contacts to build your skills and maintain your confidence. If you want to make those normal (template) QSOs a bit more of an interesting challenge then why not get along to EUCW and check out the Snakes and Ladders activity.

Snakes and Ladders simply takes your normal QSOs (anything longer than 5 minutes) and looks at the QRA or Maidenhead Locator of your contacts. At the end of each month it analyses all the participants logs and chooses some of those locator squares to be snakes and some to be ladders and you gain/lose points accordingly!

The great thing about Snakes and Ladders is that you don’t have to do anything above and beyond your normal QSOs other than log the other stations QRA/locator and submit your log at the end of each month.

Find out more here http://www.eucw.org/

If you’re a FISTS member you can download a handy log converter which automatically reads your log and prepares you Snakes and Ladders submission. https://fists.co.uk/