RADIOACTIVITIES Newsletter of the Argonne Amateur Radio Club
Volume XLI, Number 1	January, 2000

Services polled 30 specially selected active teachers and instructors about their Amateur Radio instructional efforts and experiences. The group surveyed included those who have been likely to respond to earlier surveys, have had a high-level of classroom activity and success, and have used innovative teaching techniques.

Questions included student ages, school or club group composition, numbers of successful licensees, and types of operating activities students liked best. The questionnaire compiled and distributed by Field & Educational Services Correspondent Dan Miller, K3UFG — specifically asked for details about what made an Amateur Radio program successful with students — the hits and misses. The overwhelming majority of those responding expressed optimism about the future of ham radio and its special attraction for young people. Surprisingly, a few students also shared their experiences and told what excites them about hamming.

Ian Snell, KD7EPH, got his ticket by attending the electronic communications class taught by Robert Strange, K7VVU, a teacher at Payson High School in Payson, Utah. The class was aimed at teaching students about radio and interesting them in getting a ham radio license. Snell says getting his license was fun and taught him a lot. "I was able to rent a radio from my teacher to use at home and school," he said. "The next thing we did was build a J-pole antenna. I was able to communicate with most of Utah Valley. And once I got on the repeaters, I was able to talk to people in the Salt Lake Valley."

Strange’s daughter Margo Madsen, KC7PKF, also attended her dad’s class. "I remember becoming interested in Amateur Radio the last semester of my senior year," she said. "The instructor was kind enough to let me sign up for the class provided I pass the Technician license exam."

Margo Madsen jokes "advanced knowledge" that persuaded the teacher to admit her to the class, "but more likely it was nepotism as I am his daughter!" Margo’s husband, Keith Madsen, KC7HKL, says he got involved in the electronic communication class during the 1994-95 school year. "I enjoyed the class, studied and received my Technician License," he reports. "The school had an Amateur Radio station so I was able to get on the air immediately after receiving my license in the mail."

All teachers surveyed agreed that getting someone licensed was only the beginning. While they felt that it was their responsibility to prepare students to get on the air, involvement with a local club was seen to be of equal importance since a club can offer support, guidance, and answers to questions.

Miller agrees. "In our fast changing technology, the need for continuing education in the hobby has never been greater," he says. "Membership in a club allows us to learn and develop our interests, while serving the community in which we live." If you’re involved in an instructional program and would like to contribute to the survey, contact Dan Miller at dmiller@arrl.org for a questionnaire. The information respondents provide helps fellow teachers better serve the next generation of active hams. Lesson plans are also welcome. Complete survey results will appear in early 2000. — Mary E. Lau, N7IAL

You may ask "Will the newsletter change in any way?". And the answer is Yes. I am unsure of the details as of now but they will become obvious with time. I believe in the saying which goes something like "If it works well then don’t fix it." And that goes for the AARC newsletter as well. Possibly more technical/construction articles, new/exotic modes, etc. are some of the things that I have in mind. Right now I just want to get the ins and outs of doing this job down cold. Or at least cool. So take this journey through time with me, the new editor after 17 years, and we will see what happens together. Ok? Good, lets begin.

Since neither the President nor Vice-President was present, Joe, as Secretary, opened the meeting at 12:15 p.m. Since there was no quorum, the meeting was immediately adjourned.

42% of the full members and 27% of the associate members have signed up for 2000. There should be another 2000 membership application form included with this newsletter if you have not already signed up. Please swamp Bill and me with applications in January. Please DO NOT staple or tape your check/cash to the application. It is unnecessary and does create some interesting guesses at times. Your application usually winds up getting torn and I can loose some information from the application. Also, please don’t cut the applications forms; leave them full sheet size. I have gotten some forms without calls, so I fill out your membership card without a call, then a few days later, I find there is a call in my database, but, sorry, too late, the membership card has already gone out. I do not have my database handy when I fill out the membership cards. For the ANL people, PLEASE put your building & room number on your application as this will save me having to look it up in the phone book and does save me a lot of time. For ANL-W, use your building number NOT just ANL-W or Idaho. If there is an X in the lower right corner of your address label, you have not paid for 2000 according to my records.

A reminder: the W9ANL repeater is also a RTTY repeater. Since the 145.31 machine was taken out of RTTY service, some of the RTTY activity has moved to 145.19. So, those of you using the repeater for RTTY, please keep your audio on and wait for the beep before keying up to allow others to break in.

I have accepted a voluntary layoff from Argonne and my final day will be January 31, 2000. I will be among the ranks of the retired! The bylaws of the Argonne Club are that the treasurer must be a full time Argonne Employee; therefore, I will be resigning as treasurer as of the end of January.

Make groups of letters which are similar such as E I S H 5    A W J 1    N D B 6    G Z 7 U 2    T M O 0 3    A U V 4 9    F L Q Y 8    P X C R K    period comma ? / double dash( _...._ ) or make do as best you can. If you do not like my choices, change them to suit your self. There are two duplicates in the above for those with sharp eyes. Just make sure that you have all 26 letters, 10 numbers and 5 punctuation marks that will appear on the exam.

Place each of these groups with the morse equivalent on a file card or larger piece of paper such that you can read it without your glasses and put one at a time up on your bathroom mirror and review it while you are brushing your teeth, shaving and combing your hair. Speak the characters out loud at least a couple of times each morning. Change the card every day. When you sit down with the morning newspaper, try to say the code characters using the newspaper as text as dits and dahs (which sound more like code than dashes and dots) for two or three minutes keeping a complete list handy for lookup. Everyone learns by association and repetition.

Very young children learn by example and association with generous repetition. If you have a computer with a code program, make up files with each group arranged in various orders (in 5 letter groups) and setting the sending speed at about 5 words per minute, spend a few minutes copying each group everyday. Change the practice group each day until you have covered all the groups. Now make up files combining two groups and practice them a file at a time. By this time you can probably copy the whole code set from computer generated random 5 letter groups.

I prefer the random groups as you will be exposed to all of the characters in the set evenly. Text gives a lot more practice on some characters than others and you need them all to pass the exam. Also there is a problem with anticipation and random groups removes the incentive to guess the rest of a word in progress.

A word about the Farnsworth method. Most modern computer programs support sending the individual characters faster than the overall rate. This makes the sound of the code stay the same as the overall rate increases and helps avoid the bad habit of counting out the characters instead of memorizing the sound of each character. If you can do this, I recommend setting the character speed at 15 wpm and start trying to copy at an overall rate of 5 wpm.

For those without access to a computer, other methods must be used. Two persons can work together sending to each other. A cassette recorder can be used such that you can send to the recorder and at a later time copy your own sending. This assumes you have a key, audio oscillator, and a means of recording, which could be speaker to mike.

If you have a reasonable receiver with a reasonable antenna you can practice with W1AW (the ARRL station). Any one who subscribes to QST can supply frequencies and times. The practice sessions start at 5 wpm and continue with 7.5, 10,15 and 20. Bulletins are sent at 18 wpm. Good Luck.

I found the code to be a real struggle from Day One. I’m not sure what I did wrong at the beginning, but I was 13 years old and had no Elmer. (This was in 1975 — the lack of Elmers is not a new problem.)

I wanted to get my General class ticket as soon as possible and get on HF phone. After failing my first try at General, I decided to go ahead and get my Novice license and at least get on the air. My newly arrived call sign, WB3FAX, and Heath HW-7 transceiver spent many happy hours plodding along at slow CW, and I eventually did pass my General exam in 1977. I worked code, but never became any good at it. The good CW ops in my area were more interested in displaying their superior skills than they were in helping a newbie like me to improve.

I’d always felt that when it came to CW, you either had it or you didn’t — and I obviously did not "have it". I stayed a poor CW op for years. I made an effort to make CW QSOs, but I was doing it more out of some weird sense of obligation than out of pure enjoyment. Every CW contact was still a struggle, and I could only imagine what it must be like to actually enjoy CW operating. In the late 1980s I got a renewed interest in ham radio, due in part to the tremendous HF propagation conditions at the time. I discovered the thrill of DXing and began chasing countries. I quickly learned that with my 100Ws and a dipole, I could work a lot more DX on CW than on SSB, even during the great conditions we were having. Simply as a result of CW DXing, my code speed increased. Much more importantly, my confidence in CW operating began to rise. This new confidence, coupled with a need for more frequencies to chase DX, led me to upgrade to Extra.

So there I was, Extra ticket in hand, a new call sign, WR3O, and I still found almost every CW contact to be a struggle. Sure, I could copy "WR3O UR 5NN" but if you tried to engage me in conversation above 15 WPM, forget it. I would send "SRI OM MUST QRT NOW" then sit there at the rig wondering if I would ever be able to "really" operate CW. It just wasn’t fun, and I couldn’t seem to find the kind of practice I needed. Up till now, I didn’t know about FISTS.

I’d met and become good friends with a CFO guy (N4IBF, now a Silent Key), but he didn’t have the time or perhaps the interest to groom me into a good CW operator. I remained in that "some got it, some don’t, and I don’t" belief paradigm.

Then, about four or five years ago, I discovered contesting. With some relentless prompting from AA4NU (probably my first true "Elmer") I took the plunge and started operating CW contests on 160 meters. Here was a situation where people really wanted my QSOs, regardless of my speed or poor fist. Something clicked, and before I knew it, the whole night had rolled by. I had worked hundreds of stations. And I’d never had such a good time in front of the radio!

I’d also practically worked WAS on 160 meters in one evening! Now this was some fun operating. I was hooked. The next few years I got more and more involved in CW contesting. I think one of the keys in the early days was the confidence of knowing that the exchange was going to be fairly station’s CQ frequency and listen to them work a dozen stations until I was sure I had their call sign and exchange information correct before working them. The pure standard. There was also the fact that I could sit on a fun of CW contest operating got me on the air regularly and greatly increased my confidence in being able to copy code.

I still couldn’t hold a conversation above 20 WPM, but my confidence continued to climb. After a while, I started listening around 7.033 and thereabouts just to see if I could copy some of the "real" (ie, QRQ) CW ops. Much to my amazement, I could actually keep up with them at reasonable speeds (25+ WPM) if I was relaxed and not trying too hard. The years of copying thousands of contest exchanges had definitely had an impact.

Recently I’ve gotten brave and started answering CQs from good fists running at a decent clip. Sometimes I can keep up, and sometimes I can’t. Sometimes the other ops are patient and sometimes they’re not. Same goes for me. It takes a lot of patience sometimes to hang in there with a poor fist — whether it’s mine or theirs! My CW sending needs a lot of practice, but it is getting better with each QSO

So, what is the point of this long monologue? It is not to promote CW contesting — although you should give it a try! The first realization was that for me, operating CW had to be fun in order for me to want to stick with it. I happened to find that fun in CW contesting. Another point is that it is never too late. I am 37 years old and have been licensed since age 14. I am just now starting to actually enjoy CW after all these years. Finally, there is just no substitute for practice. If I practice regularly, I will improve whether I’m trying to or not.

My suggestion for folks struggling to become CW operators is to find some on-the-air activity that’s fun, then pursue it. Whether it is ragchewing, awards chasing, DXing, contesting, homebrewing, QRP, find something that appeals to you and pursue the fun. Don’t worry about how you compare with others, and don’t let the chest-thumpers make you feel inferior. Find what you like and go for it. You might well find that there is a CW operator inside of you just waiting to be discovered.

Good luck, and see you on the air!