The Appeal of CW – Part 2
The Appeal of CW – Part 1 is here
I get a fair amount of email as a result of various things I post here and a lot of it is from young new hams (to me, young is under 30!). They’ve gotten themselves into a great hobby in an age when attention spans are short and instant gratification is the expectation.
Expertise and accomplishments don’t lend themselves to those characteristics, so when the younger generation takes up a hobby that requires a certain amount of dedication to get licensed, it absolutely makes my day to hear about it.
Some of those new ops end up here as a result of an interest in DXing, but interest in CW among these new guys varies. They haven’t yet been in the hobby long enough to know how the two modes compare in DXing. I’d like to perhaps shortcut that process with a few words of my own experiences.
Rather than the same old song & dance about tradition, the original digital mode and all that, I’ll take a shot at what keeps CW relevant in a time of numerous digital modes, phone and other aspects of the hobby.
As a new ham in the 70′s I had two modes available to me: phone and CW. Even back then, ham radio for me was all about DXing – there was magic at being able to converse wirelessly and “internetlessly” with someone in Omsk or Mogadishu.
After upgrading to General, I thought I’d never look back on CW now that I had phone priviledges and a shiny new microphone. But it didn’t take long to find out that phone DXing is tough and inefficient compared to CW. I know the numbers tell it but I was experiencing and validating the theory with each non-reply from much of the DX I called.
The wattmeter and physics verified what I suspected: My 100-watt transmitter had an average output on phone of 25-35 watts. So does yours – it’s a characteristic of the mode and human speach.
But on CW, the letter E – that briefest of characters – goes screaming out with the full effect of each of those 100 watts. Given the same transmitter, a tiny little dit contains significantly more horsepower than the loudest phone op screaming into his mic with gain and speech processing cranked to the max.
My appreciation of good engineering loves the efficiency of that. On CW – and only on CW – my rig gives me its true rated output. I’m getting my money’s worth in full as that dit goes sailing across an ocean, often leaving my SSB counterpart’s signal in the tall grass of the intended receiver’s noise floor.
On CW, average power equals peak power – verified not only by the wattmeter, but the logbook as well.
Phone started to look very disappointing despite my prior enthusiasm for it. So back to CW. It was that or settle for less DX and much more frustration in attempting it.
Later, I learned about power density. A 25 wpm CW signal occupies 100 Hz of bandwidth. An SSB signal, typically 2000 Hz. Therefore, the power density of a 100-watt CW signal is about 1W/Hz while a 100-watt SSB signal is .05W/Hz.
And that’s pretending (for phone’s benefit) that we’re getting the full 100 watts out of the SSB transmitter…which we aren’t.
If CW turns you off because it’s difficult to learn, consider this:
The difficulty of learning CW and then working DX easily is less than the difficulty of not learning CW and being consigned to DXing on SSB with its inherently greater difficulty.
Any CW DXer can tell you about contacts made and new countries worked over difficult paths, super-weak signals and QSB. I’ve got dozens of those stories myself…those contacts would have been impossible on phone. Not unlikely – impossible.
There are other reasons that DXing is so much more effective on CW than on SSB, namely that CW pile-ups can be exploited in ways not possible on other modes. You can read that here if you’re interested.
It’s no accident that QRP DXers and 80/160m DXers almost exclusively use CW. They may very well like the mode in its own right, but for those who are results-oriented, it’s the go-to mode for all the reasons mentioned above.
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Themocracy
Well said!
Technology can be a wonderful thing, yet I lamented the “magic” that was lost with the demise of the glowing vacuum tubes. CW, QRP and wire antennas have brought that magic back to me.
Bob – W2TAC
Bob, you could always re-create your Novice station. I’ve often thought about it but I’d still be solid state (Ten Tec Century)!
I’ve been a ham since 2009, and I love operating on HF, but I use PSK31 almost exclusively. I have tried to learn CW several times over the years, and I’ve made some progress, but I find it to be a real struggle. At this point I can probably rattle off just about every letter, number and the common symbols, but actually copying CW, even at 5 wpm, is nearly impossible for me. I get a run of 2, maybe 3 letters, and then I’m lost.
I *know* that practice is key, and every couple of months I put some effort into it, but I tend to get discouraged after a bit, and the ease of PSK31 lures me back! The motivation for learning CW is still there though, and it’s the same as what you talk about. It’s clearly the best mode for DXing. Also, I’m interested in portable ops, and lugging a laptop around is really not practical. I now have a KD1JV ADS-4a kit ready to build… but it won’t be much use to me if I can’t copy QSOs!
I’ll try to get back to practicing this weekend :)
Owen, I’d say that consistency is the key. That, and not trying too hard – otherwise frustration sets in.
I think a lot of discouragement in learning the code (and elsewhere in life) comes from expecting too much too soon. Just go at it for a while with no expectations whatsoever, and just like you learned English, walking, Windows, etc – it’ll come. Let it be natural, not forced.
Owen, everyone learning CW bumps into the brick wall several times. Every next step is preceeded by breaking through that wall. Even the +70WPM QRQ guys need to do it to get to +80WPM.
The important thing is to realize that the wall is not a limitation or an inability to learn CW. It’s a sign that you’re about to enter the next level if only you break through it.
I have learned CW up to 12 WPM in 2 months by practicing 10-12 minutes a day. Not longer because frustration will kick in, just a 10 minute session but don’t skip a day, practice EVERY DAY. Some days it seems that you forgot all you learned before, but that’s the wall. The next day you’ll notice you can copy slightly faster or can buffer more characters.
When you’re about to take it to the air: don’t forget no one will get hurt and no damage will be done so don’t be afraid to answer a CQ. Real CW ops will adjust to your speed.
GL ES hope to work you. 73!
I always use the same reasoning to promote CW to ‘frustrated’ SSB DX’ers. The problem is they only believe it when they experience it but to experience it they have to learn CW.
I followed that path too more than a decade ago. Soon I unhooked my microphone and bagged DX like a breeze. While I still do SSB in contests, I don’t care about it for DX. The best DX comes in CW and is worked easily in CW to boot.
I’ve convinced a friend of mine to try CW by decoding it with CW-GET and reply by keyboard. Simple stuff like call/5NN. Soon he raked up DXCC in CW, with much less hassle than on phone. And now he makes quite some contacts in CW contests. I even think he came to enjoying CW. There is no shame in using CW decoders. More stations to be worked for me! ;o)
Anyway: you can overcome the power difference in SSB versus CW that you talk about with beefy amplifiers. But those just don’t bring the joy of telegraphy. To me CW goes along with the magic of radio. I love the sound of a fluttery tone of a polar path DX (in the morning HI).
However I am shocked to be filed under ‘old’ by your standards HI but I was still ‘pretty (and) young’ when I studied CW to pass the test 12 years ago. I was in the last-but-one CW test session, after that they dropped the CW exam. Maybe I would have never learned the code if it weren’t mandatory at the time. But that’s another topic all together.
It’s a cliché but: CW 4 EVER!
Yes, quite a conundrum – to have to learn it to appreciate it. Good idea about contesting though as you don’t really have to copy code to be able to copy a simple callsign and rote exchange – that would allow a newbie to experience the benefits with minimal invetment in learning, esp with CWGet or something similar.
And “not young” doesn’t mean “old”. Old starts at my age + 15 years.
John,
You nailed it! Nobody gives a crap about “upholding tradition”, but increasing the effectiveness of your signal by 20x without investing a cent in additional hardware is a compelling story.
I’ve been telling people for a while that CW is easier than phone and they look at me like I’ve grown a third head. You don’t have to worry about linearity, speech processing, equalization, or accents. You just push the button and signal goes out. Once you learn the code, the rest is a piece of cake.
Plus, it really is a modern mode. Things like computer keying and CW skimmer open up lots of neat possibilities. PSK is nice too, but you’ll get more contacts on CW simply because more people use it.
And if anyone thinks it’s a dead mode, I have a screenshot of a bandscope from the ARRL DX Contest that tells quite a different story!
73 de AJ4MJ
I periodically get the feeling from other people that CW needs defending – FISTs and other groups state that, in part, as their goal. My own thought, and the reason for this post, is that if you are aware of its assets you’ll realize that the mode needs no defense. If by some quirk of fate AM, SSB and the digital modes had been developed first – and then CW came along – it would be seen as a viable mode by those who disparage it today, simply because it would be newer.