Hi All,

There is talk afoot about offering an on-the-air basic level CW class as a net on the WA7ABU repeater to give some new hams a chance to see if CW is their thing or not, and to help some of the more senior hams re-learn it or brush up their perhaps rusty copy and sending skills. To conduct such a class, we can start by teaching Morse code from scratch to newbies, while also teaching more advanced students with copy sessions at various word-per-minute speeds. Here, only the leader of the class would need to worry about the technical aspects of sending Morse tones over the repeater, and the students are not bothered. If we can put together such a class, we may offer it on the Saturday or Sunday, as the week day evenings are all taken with other nets. By offering a copy-only class, no one needs to invest in any equipment or modify their rig to plug in a Morse key, which they were not designed for. We can start out with that approach, and if there are some listeners who want to practice sending code over the repeater as well, we would help with ways to do that without involving much if any cost or effort.

Please chime in if this would interest you. If so, please let me know when a good time to hold such a net would be for you. We may soon launch an alpha test version of the class regardless of response on a Sunday evening, say between 7pm and 8 pm, and see what response we get. I'll make announcements on different nets on the repeater when that time approaches. Hope to hear you there!

73,
Scott
KF7GGN