Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Way to Encourage New Ops, Dude


I'm on 80m right now listening to a Cuban station (CO8LY) on CW. The guy is doing well, about 15 wpm with a 9 wpm Farnsworth rate; just my speed. He's got a good fist and is managing the pileup well.

Three times in the past half hour I've heard guys come back to him at well over 25 wpm. He's patiently trying to confirm their calls, sending bits with a question mark at the end. It's clear that his max rx speed is around 9 wpm. And yet; these clowns won't slow down for the guy! It's like they're insisting that he match their speed. Unbelievable.

Why do CW ops do this? Slow down. It's not a race, not a competition. He who dies with the fastest key doesn't win. Give the kid a chance to learn and maybe in a few years you can work him at 30 wpm if that's what gets you off.

2 comments:

AB9NZ said...

Really enjoy your blog, but I think you missed the boat on this one. Ed (CO8LY)is a real cw pro, and 25 wpm wouldn't faze him a bit Take note of his 301 thousand lookups on qrz. I agree that others should stand down if he's helping out new guys though. Vry best of 73 de Tom AB9NZ http://radiotelegrapher.posterous.com/

W6DTW said...

Of course you're correct; he might have been elmering someone. I guess that Ed felt (as you and I would agree) that the other guys need to slow down for the new ops.