Long Island CW Club

When I was in Visalia earlier this year, I had the chance to listen to a talk from Bob W06W.  He was from the Long Island CW Club and he was there to talk about a device that helps people operate CW.

It was described as the Haptic CW device.

I will link to the information about the device at the end.  The intent here is less about explaining the device, but to write about the Long Island CW Club impact on my CW training.

Unlike the CWOps classes, the LICW classes are much more loose and freestyle.  I didn't have to register to visit the class.  I just needed to join at the right time and Zoom room.

And, in the class something distinct occurs.  The leader of the class, gives rather practical and interesting exercises for everyone to do together.   What I like about the format is that the classes do not 'break out into rooms'.  We stay together and listen and copy from each other.

In the last Intermediate-2 class (the level that I'm at), what the instructor did was show a graphic image of pet or animal and on the fly each of us had to send a quick sentence about it.  Nothing scripted, nothing pre-arranged.   Then the instructor asks who copied what that student sent.   We take turns and it's a fun way to practice copy and sending.

I'm of the opinion that it is best to 'learn by doing' -- and so real QSO with real people is my favorite way to practice.  Drilling on pre-recorded things is fine, but not as satisfying as working a real station on the air.

The other comment I will make is that something occurred during both the CWOps class that I am part of as well as the LICW sessions.  The remark was made that (paraphrasing) "When practicing with automated software like Morse Runner or the facilities in Learn CW Online (http://lcwo.net) what you want is to have errors that hover in the 20-30% range.   If your errors are less than 5% then real learning isn't happening.  When the errors rise to 20-30% then real learning takes place."

I had been waiting for a while to learn about better techniques in CW training and it has taken a long time to get to that kernel of information.  I guess in hindsight it seems obvious.      I can reflect on the world I'm used to -- the software development and engineering world -- we use the phrase "fail fast" which is a way of suggesting that getting a design implemented as soon as possible to see and experiment yields rapid corrections and refines the design.  By failing 'fast' we improve 'faster'.

The translation in CW-training is that by failing 'faster' we figure out what to work on faster and what to practice more diligently.

Just an observation.

As promised the link to the Haptic CW device.