4 ms·

Is 25-26 WPM considered 'high speed' nowadays? I haven't been an active amateur radio guy for over 40 years, but I remember getting the delay league's 30 WPM

Is 25-26 WPM considered 'high speed' nowadays? I haven't been an active amateur radio guy for over 40 years, but I remember getting the delay league's 30 WPM cert and having to send and receive 20 WPM to get the extra. I also remember going out to work field day with a radio club using my straight key because I was not using CW much and was getting rusty at it. After a day or so of that, I think I was keeping up with most of the operators with keyers and paddles, a little over 30 wpm, I figured. I was acquainted with a professional telegraph operator at that time, and she said that they just cruised at around 50 wpm, and she worked 4 hours of international morse and 4 hours of American morse each day. What was/is the highest speed for the ARRL certificates? I remember hearing lots of signals going way faster than what I was comfortable with, even rare DX stations who were trying to keep up with the pileups. The two things that surprised me about the video was that the key was not plugged-in, meaning that he could not hear his fist sounding like CW as he was pounding away, and that vertical motion of his key was so large -- I used to set my key to have a very narrow gap with a stiff spring when I wanted to send quickly.

Johnythree 4y ago
To get clean keying (especially at high speed) you need a fairly large gap, and actively bash the key up and down, as it keeps the contacts clean. Using a narrow gap results in a very scratchy signal with lots of contact bounce.. To put it another way, it's the snap action caused by the momentum in your wrist that gives clean keying. Just tapping the key results in scratchy morse which has no rhythm and is hard to copy. You must actively lift the knob (with your thumb under the knob) as well as pushing it down.

4 ms·

Is 25-26 WPM considered 'high speed' nowadays? I haven't been an active amateur radio guy for over 40 years, but I remember getting the delay league's 30 WPM

by lucas_membrane 4y ago

Johnythree 4y ago
To get clean keying (especially at high speed) you need a fairly large gap, and actively bash the key up and down, as it keeps the contacts clean. Using a narrow gap results in a very scratchy signal with lots of contact bounce.. To put it another way, it's the snap action caused by the momentum in your wrist that gives clean keying. Just tapping the key results in scratchy morse which has no rhythm and is hard to copy. You must actively lift the knob (with your thumb under the knob) as well as pushing it down.