A Beginner's Guide to Making CW Contacts

http://www.netwalk.com/~fsv/CWguide.htm

There are dozens of specialities or activities under the broad banner of Amateur Radio. Amateur radio is also known as ham radio, why, nobody knows for certain. From working DX, to building radios from scratch, to satellite communications, to slow-scan TV, to just plain rag chewing(or talking) with new and old friends all over the world; there is something for everybody.

As a true ham radio fanatic, my personal favorite ham activity is yakking with other hams in Morse Code, also called CW(for continuous waves). Morse Code has a mystique to it, it is an extremely cool method with which to communicate. In this Beginner's Guide to Making CW Contacts I am going to try and give those hams new to CW a better idea of how to start. How to find someone to talk with, what to talk about, how to deal with QRM, how to end a CW contact, how to get lots and lots of QSL cards, and much more useful and practical information.

I wrote this Guide from the perspective of hams in the United States. Many of my references, for example to frequencies and to radio propagation, pertain to amateur radio in North America, although most of the CW operating techniques I discuss apply to worldwide CW operation.