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K5GP

Joined: Sat, Apr 4th 1998, 00:00 Roles: N/A Moderates: N/A

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A Quick Way To Determine Your CW Speed Feb 22nd 2014, 13:30 1 6,476 on 22/2/14

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A Quick Way To Determine Your CW Speed K5GP on 22/2/14
I have an old keyboard with a knob that changes the speed. Its a one character at a time machine with the standard 3 dit spaces between letters. I wanted a quicker way to check the speed other than counting how many times Paris is sent in a minute.

I found that sending M's is the best way while watching the second hand on a clock. Sending at 12 wpm is one letter M per second. You can immediately tell if the sending is synced with the motion of the second hand ticking away. Well its easy to see that sending two M's per second is 24 wpm and three M's per second is 36 wpm.

What about other speeds? There are a couple of magical spots that line up with every other second. If you hold down the M and count 123123123123 etc., the count will align exactly at 18 wpm. If you count 123451234512345 etc., the count will align with every other M exactly at 30 wpm.

If you have only paddles, possibly counting dots and dashes in sync with a second hand could be used to time other cw speeds provided they are not too fast to count. I haven't worked that test out yet since I only use my old keyboard for sending cw.

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