Elmers Corner – July 2024

At the present time, the Intermediate Class CW Course is already half-way completed. Classes are on Thursdays, but two of the classes were cancelled because of the 4th of July holiday and of a prior commitment I had for July 11^th.  Classes will commence this week on July 18^th. The classes should be completed in August, in time for either a first ever Advanced CW Class or another Basic Class.

If you are interested in either of these future classes, state your desire at the next meeting to help me decide which class is to be next, or you can drop me a note and send it to gcarccourses@gmail.com.  I may not hold another class this year, depending on this response, but continue working on an online course that I have been putting together for some time. It is quite extensive and fairly different from other courses out there. Since we all have different  learning skills and a desire to use methods of learning differently than others, and just because we have the freedom to do so, I have decided to incorporate both the Koch and Farnsworth methods within my online courses. Your choice!  These methods will be used to learn code and progress with all 3 levels of the present FCC licensing, the Technician, General and Extra Class licenses.

For me as an instructor, I cannot even explain to you how much I have appreciated all the individuals that have taken part of my CW courses to make the effort to continue their skills with CW. Obviously in today’s age of codeless tests, no one has to learn CW, but it is super gratifying to me that people still want to learn something they just don’t have to learn to have fun in the hobby.

CW has been out before the land-line telephone, the cell phone or the internet. It is one of the earliest forms of modern communication in our time, and it gave birth to the desire to find even more ways to communicate.

Again, I thank everyone who has given their time and energy to learn Morse code. With the upcoming online courses, there may be even more interest in learning Morse code. Of course, there are many courses to take out there, but mine will surely be different. You go at your own pace, and it’s up to you to excel and keep at it. You won’t have to work a CW class in your busy daily schedule each week. There will be a small fee charged to take the course, and it will be mainly used for webspace that will be used for it, plus the time and effort it has taken to put it all together.

Other things that will be available on the course pages are study guides for each of the 3 classes of Amateur Radio Licenses available today.

The most recent question pools will be available to review and study. As an example to the study pools, each question will be asked, but the answer and complete explanation along with the theory to go with what is being asked will be displayed for learning and review, so you will immediately have everything you need to fully understand the correct answer. Each answer will be fairly detailed so that you will understand the correct answer and why the other answers that were provided in the multiple choice question pool would not be the correct answer.

Sooner than later, the question pools may be available before the actual CW Courses, but I have to find the time to get this all done.

Trying to slow down to do other things just isn’t one of my options at this time, but eventually I will have both the CW learning courses done along with the question pools of the 3 classes of amateur radio licenses.