Or not to key ...

 

Hams go both ways, but have you noticed something? Few blog poetically about SSB phone being their favorite mode. But CW, ah, it oft appears in print or conversation sporting a halo of sorts.

 

Every tab here has a parallel universe on the topic. Even this tab, pointing here! Go, then just click the same tab!

But, i you want to avoid true blogospheric treatment of the topic, by all means don't click on that here!

 

 

"CW" is just a convention, but an arcane one almost unique to ham radio.

 

CW viz radio is not even in Webster's 11th Collegiate (still current!), where it stands solely for Chemical Warfare. That is not ham radio! But you can find CW in the ARRL Handbook (for Radio Communications).

"Continuous Wave" is the Handbook's preferred definition, but not necessarily a most accurate one. There are other options. Even the FCC acknowledges this by refusing to describe it beyond 'Morse telegraphy by means of on-off keying'. And, can you believe, this is actually incorrect as it omits the word "radio!"

Most ruthlessly, CW means the interruption of a carrier wave (or "ICW"), as Wikipedia has it, dumping continuous completely. Leading to issues about what that continuous might, or might not be. Engineers would call it something quite different if they cared at all. But modern communication systems don't even have CW in the rear view mirror. It's gone, gone, gone. Not even a footnote in a modern textbook.

ARRL, happily, bothers to declare CW, if implicity, to be a carrier-supported transmission, in other words, radio.

Telegraphy sans radio carrier is not CW, it's just telegraphy. You know, the thing in movie westerns and such, like Around the World in Eighty Days* where it plays a key role. No radio back then. Barely a demo, that by Hertz who dies young before he can do anything practical with it. Had he not, I'd venture he'd be the guy we remember. Yet, it will forever be Hertz, not cycles, at least for younger hams.

Whatever it is, CW is only radio telegraphy; i.e., wireless, today and in the beginning.

CW is the very simplest thing we can do in ham radio, yet sublime. It may be "slow," but it's beautiful and accessible to even the newest ham and simplest shack. Even to SWL'ers who learn Morse.

So much more to say, you're grateful that it's here at the same tab name, and not right here!

 

* You can find Jules Verne's entire novel on the incredible Project Gutenbeg site. Then just Find all references to "telegraph." There are 12. Including citing the most iconic newspaper of the day (back in 1873) The Daily Telegraph. So even the news, basically all news more than 12 hours away by (steam) train, was by telegraphy, but not by radio! There's also the original 1956 Hollywood movie, still a great viewing pleasure even after all these years - on any streaming service carrying films.

 

 

What history this key thing has wrought.

 

From wired comm(unication)s to radio comms, virtually all of it springs forth from the USA, strangely enough.

The first serially-coded transmission scheme was the single-wire American Morse-Vail telegraph. The coding scheme for this eventually became the standard we use today, International Morse Code.

As often, wily characters invent the whole thing, starting with Samuel Morse 75 years before radio. His was originally a crazy idea, suitable only for computers, which of course didn't exist back then. But it did specify dits and dahs, and for that, one supposes, we remember Morse forever. And alas forget Alfred Vail, who actually invented the code, as opposed to the symbols. Yeah, there's a difference there that any engineer would recognize.

The first CW was Marconi's Morse code "wireless" 6km demo (1887), eventually stretched by hop (skip and jump, a wondrous mystery) across the Atlantic (1901), one way from England to New Jersey, as a spark-gap transmission.

It would take another two decades for anything more practical in CW to happen, and it was almost obsolete, and certainly not cost effective, on arrival by then!

But throughout all the following decades, radio amateurs kept the waveform alive for sheer fun and DX.

If you can stand more of this, go to the same tab here, as usual.

 

 

Endless material on CW on the web. My curated takes ...

 

Looking for practice at various WPM? Here are some convoluted links for CW op(eration)s.

Then there is the CWops gang itself, to which the swifter may be magnetically drawn.

For fun and myriad suggestions, a nice piece from Gary, ZL2IFB, is The FOC Guide to Morse Code Proficiency. I notice that Gary has his paddle on a anti-slip pad. They do tend to slip around at just the wrong moment!

There's a much older, not completely moldier, treatise on CW that's worth a look. Half psychological (take that as you like), the other half is filled with history and good practical stuff. I particularly liked Chapter 6.

 

If desiring more links of usefulness, or at least that entertain, find them here at the same tab, as usual.

 

 

Esoteric for the uninitiated, yet, commonplace.

 

Iambic keying is beyond mere streams of dits or dahs. And, a fork in the road. Claimed as less work, a path more taken, iambic can complete your character but not your word.

You may initially have zero interest in this. But if you start using CW, I guarantee you will become interested.

 

Double paddle key required. Which vastly outsell similar single paddles, and for fewer bucks. ECON 101. And, no mechanical marvel needed at the neutral point.

Iambic is said to run out of gas around 30 WPM. Something about quantum squeeze. Does it apply to you? If you can decode 30 WPM by ear, you likely know the answer!

And always start with receive!

That neutral point. A key must not send by itself! So how can a single paddle's single lever return midway, bounce- and vacuum energy-free of wayward dits or dahs? Yet at slightest touch precisely demand dits or dahs? IP, cost or koan, as you like. Not with double paddles! Piece-of-cake engineering.

Can you learn iambic? It’s easier than you’d think. Can you unlearn iambic? It’s not. So …

As Yogi Berra said about that fork, “take it,” as you set aside a bug or straight key. You might even take the road less taken. But remember, few go back.

 

So much more to say, here, of course.

 

 

Now this is getting a bit more esoteric.

 

Prefixing "A" to any non-voice radio mode suggests Audio. So ...

 

You can generate CW several ways. In modern rigs, you can generate it on your computer and, via an (in olden days analog from a sound card, say RCA, but now commonly digital, say USB) interface, drive an audio tone version of CW into (and out of) your rig.

ARRL recognizes, say, "AFSK" as an audio interface (with a computer) for FSK tones into (and out of) your rig, you could say the same about CW, thus "ACW." You could then use your keyboard to "Morse encode CW," and your computer display to "decode CW." A bunch of keys instead of one key. Software instead of your hand and ear. This is, sort of, a hijacking of the original idea. More related to RTTY than "purist" CW.

 

There's more to say about this scheme here, as usual.

 

 

Finally, the wildly esoteric. Really, off-the-charts esoteric.

 

Not surprisingly, you can receive and send CW as a true, high fidelty audio signal. Pretty much the same way you hear another's and send your voice over SSB. Why would anyone bother to do this?

Well, they do. And here is the full story. If you can stand it.