[CQ-Contest] A call to action

[Jim Smith]

I really think that there's a place for CW decoders.  A friend of mine 
was learning CW and wanted to get into CW contests.  Unfortunately, his 
speed was nowhere near fast enough to participate.  He found that he 
could S&P using a decoder and it worked well enough to keep him 
interested.  With his modest station he wasn't trying to break pileups, 
just work a bunch of folks.  So, if he finds someone calling cq with a 
reasonable signal and not generating a pileup he had no difficulty 
working them.

One thing I found particularly interesting was his telling me that 
there's a bit of delay while the decoding takes place.  He found that, 
because of his impatience with the delay, he was starting to copy the cw 
himself with the decoder as a backup comfort factor.  Sounds like a 
winner to me.  He gets on the air, makes Qs, and without even thinking 
about it, improves his cw,

73, Jim	VE7FO

Alan Zack wrote:
> I don't know.  CW decoders just don't work well as a set of ears.  From my 
> understanding you must be right on freq and have a very good s/n ratio.  If 
> you are calling on the DX's freq and someone sends UP UP slightly off his 
> freq you won't decode it.  And if the DX is working simplex the decoder 
> won't decode because of all the different signals coming thru but your ears 
> can easily distinguish the DX's signal from all the rest.  If you are right 
> on the DX's freq the decoder may decode his call and who he is coming back 
> to but if he is sending 9M6SDX EU it may not decode the did/dit dit dah to 
> let you know he wants Europe only, etc.  I believe you still need to learn 
> CW.  What if the DX asks your name or QTH?  Will you know what he is asking? 
> Will you be able to send the info back to him?