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First off I just want to say I love your site, I work three months with out real progress, now I'm moving right along. Second when should I start practice sending? should I start with straight key or paddles? What should be the routine for practice sending? Thanks again for your wonderful work on the site. Paul

either would work. Straight key is cheaper but most rigs now come with keyer so paddle is good too.

Get the telephone book and sent the lines in that for practice is how we did it

Ask 10 hams, get 10 answers. Some will say you shouldn't start sending before you can easily copy all characters, others will tell you to start with a straight key because you can't get the rhythm right if you learn sending with paddles.

In my humble opinion, early sending practice can make learning CW significantly easier and more fun, and it doesn't matter whether a straight key or paddles are used. For practical purposes, I'd prefer the latter however.

73 & gl, Fabian

I live in France. Where can I obtain paddles in France, and is there a site that details how to use them? Obviously, I'm not ready to go on the air, so it would be a set-up with paddles and a speaker/earphones.

Thanks

For the price of some unetched copper covered plain circuitboards, you can make your own inexpensive paddles that are actually quite usable, and compare in functionality and feel to much more epensive paddles. It should take just an hour or two, and you can use them with your rig's encoder. I just built a single paddle yesterday and it works great! Good fun!
The board is $4.49, or 3.49 euros, which will give you enough materials for several paddles. You'll need a little more for some brass (steel would do, but is not as pretty) screws, but the whole this will be less than 10 dollars/euros.

Here's one source of the "how to:" http://www.amqrp.org/projects/paddle/NB6M%20Paddles.html, and Here's a US source of the boards: http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2102495.

Or see my circuitboard double lever paddle based on the NB6M design: http://members.ziggo.nl/cmulder/paddle.htm

To practice you need a keyer chip. K1EL is selling them for a few dollars each. The K12 kit is a nice keyer. See: http://k1el.tripod.com/

73, Carel - PA0CMU