The need for QRQ

CT2GXW

CT2GXW

Star Member
Hello,

I'd like to understand the reason of why QRQ code sending is considered a sort of an achievement, and a higher degree in CW stations, distinguishing them from the beginners, who can't follow the machine gun stream of dits and dahs, very common on the bands.

It gets to the point that some ops send the characters at high speeds, but with huge intervals between them, because they can't cope with the speed they try to send. But still, they insist on sending at 25+ wpm. And from my experience, only a few QRS to a station calling at lower speeds, making awkward QSOs with huge speed difference between the stations.

I know there are contests for QRQ, software to practice it, key makers have pride in the tremendous speeds achieved by their pieces in the right hands, but what is the point in all this? In SSB people don't try to speak as fast as they can, do they? I think it's about transmitting a message, and making sure the receiver gets it correctly.

I know very experienced ops do it naturally, but feels like there is like a non written rule that you got to QRQ in order to be in the premier league. Sure there are lots of beginners (like me), in the 12-16 wpm range to make contacts with, but it seems there is an obligation to continuously improve on the speed (net forums are full of topics discussing it) in order to "move further" on the CW experience.

Why is that?
 
As you say, some of the higher speed operators do so because they are so familiar with Morse after many years of use and practice. Having said that I took my Morse test over here in the UK something like thirty or so years ago, and had been interested in Morse code long before that. Despite pretty well regular practice since then (mainly receive practice), I still find that I cannot go much above about 15-20 wpm on hand sent CW, especially when the operators are using their own made up abbreviations or start using long unfamiliar words.

If I listen to machine sent Morse, common abbreviations (QRM, QTH, TNX, AGN and so on), I can follow them at 40wpm. What I find is that when I listen to hand sent Morse using a mixture of known and unknown words and abbreviations, some of it I can head read with ease, other bits I just cannot get for the life of me without 'replaying' the code in my head. When I do that I end up loosing words that I could otherwise easily copy, so it gets very frustrating!

So even with thirty to forty years of practice one way or another I still would not even attempt to respond to a fast CW station because I know that I would mess up at the first word I did not copy. It's like walking down stairs, you only have to miss one step to end up falling all the way down!

There's a good video on YouTube by K1OIK https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPwxgH-BE10 and in that he mentions (at approx. 7 minutes) that despite 52yrs on the air he still cannot get above 20wpm, so it's not only me.

Yes there are QRQ contests, and that's great, it's good to see what some humans can achieve. Some folks do excel at sending and receiving at high speeds. On the air anyone that operates at such speeds is limiting themselves to only operators that can also run at the same rate, so they have a much smaller group to choose from. I've mentioned before on here, I've heard operators running at close on 40wpm calling CQ for hours at a time, and when they do get a contact it last less than a minute and they're off calling CQ again. I personally don't see what they get out of this, and I'm pretty sure there are a lot of operators listening that would jump in for a QSO if only they would slow down some.

A common argument I see around the web is that some QRQ operators claim they CANNOT send and receive at slower speeds, but that is just lack of practice (and maybe some impatience). It would be nice to say the reverse, that my lack of achievement at any great speed was due to lack of practice also, but after thirty odd years listening to Morse pretty much every day, sometimes for hours at a time, I think I can discount that one. ;D

This rise if 'fast' operators seems to have come about over the last ten years or so maybe? Some of this may be due to the new rigs which can display what you are sending, and more importantly can decode incoming Morse and display that also. I wouldn't mind betting that there are a good number of those fast stations that rely on that decode feature quite heavily, or at least refer to it more frequently than they would care to admit.

We mustn't forget though those who can, through practice but also due to maybe some genetic dispensation, who can send and receive CW with ease at speeds that to some of us are simply unobtainable and seem mind-blowing bd

For sure they are in a league of their own, and maybe inspiration for others, but I know my limitations and just accept them...

Why QRQ? Because they can I guess!

73, Mark...
 
Hi Mark,

Thank you for your answer.

I don?t mean to criticize those who are gifted or experienced enough to be able to send and receive at great speeds. I get that it?s a part of the hobby with its own followers, and that is fine.

But I feel there is a culture that implies one should be looking for increasing speed as an objective after learning the code. There are trained operators saying online that someone who is starting to learn the code should start listening at speeds 25-30 wpm, as this is the way they later can achieve these working speeds.

And I tried it for a couple of times while I was going through the Koch method, and slowed down again before frustration made me give up. I don?t care if I won?t get that fast, anyway.

Maybe you?re right and new rigs with auto decoding promote the trend. Mine has it and I don?t use it. Contests are another example. The bands get filled with stations you never hear on other occasions, shooting teletype code to send callsigns and 5NN.

On voice QSOs, any beginner station has the chance to work big guns, the old guys, etc. maybe the working conditions are different, but the big station helps to pull the signals and the QSO exchange is made.

On CW, forget it. Beginners make contact with beginners, and around them there?s a vast amount of teletype like signals they can?t even dream of working, because they know they will lose it the moment the stations comes back - like falling down the stairs, as you say.

And this is limiting in itself for CW newcomers, in my point of view.
 
I largely agree with you Pedro, with one or two minor caveats.

I have found that there are some "old-timers" who are actually happy to slow down. They'll rattle along ragchewing at 40+wpm with their mates, but they also are happy to bumble along at much slower speeds. I don't know if the natural competitive streak that seems to drive some people to "only be able to QSO at 40+", even though I personally believe that's tosh. The older ops simply seem to have less to prove and are happy to help other people achieve solid copy rather than speed.

The other place where I've seen people slow down is for SOTA activations. I believe this is because there is something in it for them. If someone activates a summit at QRS, if a chaser wants them in the log they have no choice but to slow down :-)
 
@CT2GXW
I had it the other way around once. I heard a guy calling CQ on 2m CW at maybe 12-15wpm, so I went back to him. As is the way on 2m over here we QSYed up about 25kHz, and he checked to see if I had QSYed and was actually on the frequency. I responded that I was there and passed it back to him. He then jumped up to around 35wpm and started blasting away for nearly three minutes (it seemed a lot longer at the time!)

As he was not running break-in operation I could not stop him, but had to wait for him to pass it back to me. When he finally did I asked him to QRS back down to 15wpm because he was too fast. He responded by saying that he thought because I had a G0 callsign I would be able to copy Morse at the higher speed!

Er, no!  ;D

@MI0PYN
Yup, it's amazing how slow some of the stations can go when, as you quite rightly put it, they want something! Some folks just flatly refuse to slow down for some reason. I've heard stations calling at say 25-30wpm and have not had a single response for hours. Then, maybe as a last resort, they start to slow down some. All of a sudden folks come out of the woodwork and reply! And the slower they go, the more and more stations that answer their calls. I've heard that scenario so many times on 80m, 40m etc.

I think it was an American op' whose site I was looking at, where he said something like, "If all the stations you hear are calling at speeds way above what you can read, try putting out a call yourself at a speed you are comfortable with. There is most likely someone sitting there thinking exactly the same thing, but if no one tries a call then no one will ever know!"

73, Mark...
 
Hi Mark,

Regarding putting a call, that?s exactly what I started doing, with the result you describe: stations that were listening appear and gain confidence to do a QSO at a speed they are comfortable with. And this is how I make most of my QSOs. But for the 1st ones, I admit it took some guts to go out and call.




 
CT2GXW said:
Hi Mark,

Regarding putting a call, that?s exactly what I started doing, with the result you describe: stations that were listening appear and gain confidence to do a QSO at a speed they are comfortable with. And this is how I make most of my QSOs. But for the 1st ones, I admit it took some guts to go out and call.
Click to expand...

The two problems I've had with putting out calls is that I get stations coming back at speeds far faster than I sent the calls at (from time to time), and the other is I get stations who just cannot send Morse, or else it is really corrupted code (letters and words all run together in one, broken characters where the dits and dahs are sent as separate groups and not as whole letters or numbers). I've had some where I'm convinced they are just randomly tapping the key and hoping that they can telepathically transfer their messages! :))

The only way around this is to just answer calls rather than initiate them, but then we are back to our original problem!

I sometimes wonder why we torture ourselves like this! ;D

73, Mark...
 
I think the First Class Operators club suggest being comfortable at 25 wpm is part of their eligibility criteria, and that made me wonder if that has always been the case, even when everybody was using straight keys? I sure can't do 25wpm on a straight key. I probably don't get 100% copy receiving at 25wpm either.

I note on CWCom I get the best copy sending at 18wpm on the straight key, which is pretty much my comfortable maximum. I set my paddle keyer to 22 wpm, as I find I make more mistakes at higher speeds. Also I can get pretty adequate copy at those kind of speeds.

Receive speeds are tricky. I bet most of us can copy 'CQ' 'DE' 'QTH' etc as words at rather good speeds. But if you use a tutor or the French military CW practice station to listen to five figure random groups, your copy speed will be somewhat lower. Even callsigns are easier than 5 figure groups; you kind of know where the number is going to be, prefixes are familiar and there is a limited choice of suffixes after a '/'

Rufzxp is a good resource for callsign practice.

I vaguely recall reading that SOE operators would be allowed out on operations with 9wpm morse capability. So even 9wpm is capable of effective communication.

A lot of SKCC QSOs seem to be around 12-15 wpm.
 
He responded by saying that he thought because I had a G0 callsign I would be able to copy Morse at the higher speed!

There seem to be quite a few G0s who can't/won't use morse at all. It makes me wonder if the rumours of folk being paid to sit morse tests claiming to be someone else are true! (You needed photo ID when I did mine and they even fixed a photo to the pass certificate!!!)
 
Well I know to one operator who did exactly that (paid someone to take the test for him).

A nice enough guy, I met up with him a few times at various radio club field days. I was puzzled one day though, a repeater came up on 2m and did the usual Morse ident. The person in question said it was some repeater of another, but I thought hang on, it was some totally different one. While we carried on chatting my handheld opened up again, this time a different repeater gave an ident. The person in question again mis-identified the repeater.

Some time later while chatting with another group of Amateurs (in person, not on air), this guys callsign came up, and I mentioned what had happened before, and how I was puzzled that he mis-identified two repeaters. The comment that came back was that he did not in fact know Morse, and that after a large win on the football pools he had paid someone to sit the Morse test for him so he could obtain an A-class licence.

The folks even knew who had sat the test for him, and how much he had been paid.

As for SOE operatives, I guess given the flair for direction finding that the Germans had, maybe there was little point in taking the training beyond the 9wpm level as their life expectancy was most likely very low indeed. I know that may sound callous but that was the reality at the time.

My own father was in RAF Signals, and as a private (or whatever the rank was called for a minion!) he had to pass an 8wpm test. The guy that he assisted was a corporal I think, and he had been an Amateur operator in civilian life before joining the RAF, my father says he could operate up to around 30wpm plus using an 'unofficial' cootie key he had made from an old hacksaw blade!

73, Mark...
 
I like high speed CW (HSC). It is a personal challenge to master clean copy as well as well timed sending using a sideswiper. The faster the better. I am an electrical engineer and have the understanding of all sorts of electronic gizmos which are an intellectual challenge ... if you write or design it yourself. Just loading a program and setting a few bullets etc is not a challenge even tho it might take a bit to understand all of the jargon. And, I am do not want little boxes scattered around on my desk. I did that long ago when I needed to understand little gizmos.

I prefer the mental and dexterity challenge sending fast machine readable code. Currently trying to transition from head copy only to using a mill. This has become a real challenge and is what draws *me* to HSC. YMMV
 
CT2GXW said:
I know very experienced ops do it naturally, but feels like there is like a non written rule that you got to QRQ in order to be in the premier league. Sure there are lots of beginners (like me), in the 12-16 wpm range to make contacts with, but it seems there is an obligation to continuously improve on the speed (net forums are full of topics discussing it) in order to "move further" on the CW experience.
Why is that?
Click to expand...

For many Morse is a second language that we are fluent in using.  It's a lot of fun to zip along when talking to someone on CW because it's like a conversation you would have face-to-face.  The ideas flow from your brain to the paddle without thinking of the mechanics of it.
If you have to copy a really slow station, character by character, it just isn't as much fun :-)  So it seems natural to encourage others to become adept at faster speeds.  It's more fun !

Glenn AE0Q
 
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