This was the question I was asking myself earlier this hour after spending some time tuning across the CW portion of 80 meters.
I had neglected to fire up my Heathkit HW-16 (to give it a good warm up period), so I figured I would just stick with the Icom. It was all set up — the key was in place — and I was ready to go.
I tuned across the band and it wasn't long until I ran across a fellow calling CQ. His fist didn't have the steady rhythm of an old-timer, though his 2×2 1-land call certainly made it look like he had been around the block a while. He was 579 with a bit of QSB; a good signal from 1-land.
He must have been nervous because he garbled his own callsign a couple of times, and on one transmission he never sent the prosign “K”. Hmmm…. I figured he's either nervous or tired. He's sending at about 15 wpm, and I can match that pretty closely.
I answer his next CQ (he adds the “K” this time), sending my call twice.
Long pause.
He sends a garbled set of letters which include the number “4” and I think a “Z” and three question marks as a reply.
I send the exchange over, a little slower this time, making doubly sure my spacing between letters and words is acceptable.
He replies with “K …. 4 …. Z D ….. ???”
Hmmm …. I've been sending slower than he is and he can't copy me? Maybe my antenna's on the ground.
I send his call twice and mine three times at about 8 wpm. I hope I'm not insulting him. I send along my name and a signal report.
After another rather long pause, he sends a faster set of mangled characters that sounds like a cat walking across my CW keyboard. No pauses, just one long string of dits and dahs. I make out a my name, my RST and the punctuation and state. He is still sending my callsign incorrectly; his too for that matter.
It hits me — this guy can't copy CW at the speed his sending, and I'm not sure he can copy or send at any speed. That's terrible to think, but it's true.
He sends it back to me, and I still don't know his name or exact QTH. I send him the age-old “BAD QRM” excuse and sign clear.
This makes the second ham I've worked in the last 7 or 8 weeks who didn't have a solid grasp of CW. Slowing down helped in both cases. I guess the differenct these days is that you can have this happen anywhere in the band – in the “old” days, most of your CW learning was spent in the novice bands.
This ham, by the way, was an Extra Class licensee from Georgia. He's been a ham for just over a year (upgraded to Extra in September), and his 2×2 call is his second vanity call. His first vanity call was a “K4” call followed by his initials — certainly a cooler callsign that his 2×2. Beauty is in the eye of the license holder, I guess. His original callsign was — naturally — a KI4xxx.
I hope I find this fellow again on the band. He'll have more fun if he'll slow his sending rate down and practice a little Hopefully he'll learn all of this soon enough — I really can't be too tough on the guy, he's a fairly new-to-HF ham, and he's got the guts enough to work CW when he doesn't really have to do it. He's got a lot of moxie … I probably should drop him a QSL to encourage him to stick with it.
That's it for tonite …. 73 es cu agn … de KY4Z …. sk ….. dit dit ……….