Ham Radio Help Desk

So you have your ham radio ticket and are interested in getting on the HF bands. You are not alone. The HF bands are THE place to really see what ham radio is about. If you only have a technician license, you won’t be able to exercise phone privileges except on 10 meters. However, you do have CW privileges on 80, 40 and 15 meters. You should take full advantage of this.

Assuming you have made the investment in an HF radio and antenna, you might still be worried about making that first Morse code contact.

You may also be very apprehensive what others will think of your Morse code CW skills.

Not to worry. We were all beginners once and yours truly is still in the learning process.

The good news is many organizations exist to help you get going with CW and have several web pages full of excellent information on what to expect during CW contacts.

FISTS.ORG is one such organization.

They publish a Basic CW Operating Manual to help you get started. Here is the link… enjoy.

As you begin your adventure sending and receiving Morse code on the HF bands you will almost instantly hear a variety of short hand abbreviations. Many are obvious while others aren’t.

CW works well with these abbreviations and may even lend themselves to cell phone text messaging since both systems benefit from sending fewer characters.
(more…)