LIDS Hamfest Competition

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It’s only a few weeks until National Hamfest at Newark Showground, the UK’s biggest amateur radio rally, and LIDS will be there! Not on a stand – at least not this year, we’re too cheap for that – but LIDS members will be wandering around inside and outside the main hall and operating the LIDS club station from the camping area, using the club callsign M0LCW/P. And that has given us a great idea for a competition…

LIDS is all about encouraging people to have a go at CW for the first time, and we know plenty of LIDS members who are taking their first steps at learning the code but not yet plucked up the courage to try a QSO. Well, here is your chance.

CMpFzsmWEAAOA6uEvery LIDS member who has a CW QSO with M0LCW/P over the Hamfest weekend will be put into a draw to win a lovely LIDS mug. One QSO counts for each day of operation (Thursday/Friday/Saturday), so you can have 3 chances to win. But every LIDS member who works us will receive a LIDS lapel badge, so you simply can’t lose!

M0LCW/P will be operational on 40m at irregular intervals over the weekend. Watch our Twitter feed for details of when we are QRV. Mostly it will be when David G7AGI is not himself wandering around the main hall, loitering at the Bring & Buy tent, sipping rum and/or smoking cigars. Quite frankly it will be a miracle if he gets on the air at all, but let’s proceed on the basis that he will.

There is no minimum speed for contacting M0LCW/P. Just call at whatever speed you are comfortable with. If you prefer, send a DM to the LIDS Twitter account with your QRG and M0LCW/P will call you instead. Don’t worry if you’re still struggling to make the characters work for you because all we need is your callsign in the log to be eligible. Have a look at our guide to your first CW QSO if you need a little extra encouragement.

This is a great opportunity to have your first Morse contact as well as get the coveted(!) LIDS club call in your log. And if that wasn’t enough, you get a LIDS lapel badge and a chance to win a LIDS mug!! If that doesn’t persuade you to blow the dust off that Morse key then we really don’t know what will.

 

Your CW experiences

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LIDS is all about trying new things and learning from each other, and there’s a great community on Twitter who are prepared to share their knowledge. We would like to add a page to our site with hints and tips on learning Morse Code, written by our members, to share their experiences with those who are still learning or only just considering it.

So why not put pen to paper (does anyone do that any more?) and let us know your Morse story. What advice would you give to someone just starting out? Which methods worked for you, and which didn’t? Any pitfalls to avoid? Best ways to practise? Software you’d recommend?

We will publish all submissions in their entirety and won’t be editing them at all. We are not trying to write the ‘definitive’ guide to learning Morse – there are plenty of those out there already. These are your stories and your experiences, and what works for one person may not work for another. So we will publish them all, even if they contradict. You don’t need to be an experienced CW op to send us your story either; we want everyone’s views.

Please email your submission to ‘david at desilva dot org’. There’s no closing date because we are happy to keep adding and adding to this font of knowledge (and that includes editing something you’ve already sent in if you subsequently want to change it).

Tnx es 73.