[TenTec] Higher speed CW

[Lyle Dunlap]

John, there is not much out there that I know of, for good practice, a real shame.  Not like the old days when we could practice by copying Press for ships newspapers.  That was really good.    

Not sure what W1AW does anymore, they were always pretty slow even at their fastest.  

Keep trying to copy a little faster than you can do so at 100%  Do not worry about missing words, it will come.  
Old days no one but commercials had the ability to SEND faster cw so hams for the most part learned the old DIT DAH method.  Good bug operator could not do much over 40 for any length of time anyway.  

When the paddle came along, that was an improvement both in speed and usually sending, although still nice to hear a good bug or paddle op.   

Have said this before but if you can get to around 50 or 55 thats when you no longer listen to characters and simply hear words little faster you simply hear phrases.  Rather like reading headlines of a newspaper, you just hear it instead of seeing it.  

You will get so you can, with headphones anyway, watch TV, or day dream about something and  be listening to 60 to 80 wpm.  That is not top speed either. (some may scoff at that statement but its true) 

Time may not be convenient for you but several of us, W4BQF, W9FCX (myself) and sometimes KB9XE get on 3524 (winter) 7024 (summer) at 5 am CST.  We run for usually about an hour.  I use a generic compaq keyboard that goes into a keyer.  I guess using some sort of reader may help one to get  speed up but dont let it become a crutch.  Have only seen pictures in catalog of a reader myself.  Not good for rapid QSK however.  

I may of made this too long, for those not interested in higher speed cw, DELETE.  

73 Lyle W9FCX