First steps...

I was recently looking through an old box of projects I built for a specific capacitor I knew I put into *something* I made and I ran across my Yaesu FT-817. I got licensed as a Tech in 2001 but I had so much to do that I never got around to learning CW and that's the real reason I wanted to get into amateur radio in the first place.

Anyways, I saw the radio and decided to give CW another shot. I took and passed element 3 on August 10th and after downloading the G4FON software I'm up to about 25 letters/numbers/punctuation marks at a speed of 15/5. I found that I had been trying to learn at about a speed of 20/15 and I think that was a big part of my frustration (I could'nt keep up when writing the letters) and slow learning. I do find that 20 WPM creates an easier rhythm for each letter, 15 WPM just feels too much like individual dits and dahs. At a 5 WPM spacing I have trouble differentiating when a new word starts because there is so much space between letters anyways, but I think that in a real QSO it will be fine since it will be real words and not just random letter groups.

So I hope to take element 1 at the next ARROW test, please cross your fingers for me! :)

I set up my radio at a desk near a window looking out on my backyard so that I don't have to run the feedline around or over the house when I build a dipole (looking forward to HF privileges!!!). Getting the coax lines from my previous antennas, which are still mounted on my roof, from one side of the house to the other was a fiasco! I tied string to a heavy roll of duct tape and stood on one side of the house and threw it over the roof, then I tied that string to the PL-259 connector and dragged it over the roof. The first coax went over easily but the second one took many attempts and I first had to pull it over the porch and then the main roof. Oh well, it's all done now and thankfully the coax lines were long enough (I was worried). I think my neighbors think I'm insane, though.

Oh yeah, I never did find that stupid capacitor.

Seth - KC8ROE

Submitted by Seth Koster on Sun, 08/13/2006 - 16:36. Seth Koster's blog | login or register to post comments