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BD4TDO BI1SOP brianshaw009 cjy Decker HU IEN JJ5RAT KJ4BJC Marco3 N7QR PU2TYL Rei skmttty ttty WT5O ykom3

Hi,

Just signed up to learn CW. Now I've never done any CW before or even tried learning it ! I've just tried my first lesson and it wasn't too bad for a first attempt but I would like to increase the spacing between each letter a bit. What should I adjust character speed or effective speed ? Thanks Simon.

The general rule is to increase the character speed until you no longer are counting the dots in your head, and decrease the effective speed so that you have time to think and type.

Later on, you can increase the effective speed. I'd start at 20wpm character speed and 5 to 10 wpm effective speed.

Also check this form for similar questions, there are a lot of good tips, like this one: http://lcwo.net/forum/506

Ok thanks, I've left the character speed at 20 and reduced the effective speed to 5 ! Hopefully I can raise that back up soon.

Simon.

The only disadvantage of doing that, at least for me, is that I wasn't learning the proper spacing. I found that I couldn't actually distinguish the inter-character and inter-word spaces correctly because I was spending too much time using Farnsworth timing (that's what we call the split speed, at least here in the US).

So I actually do 80% or more of my training at straight timing for that reason. It may not work that way for you, but I'd suggest doing an occasional run at straight timing to make sure that things are OK. If you find it seems that everything runs together, consider doing more straight timing work (but the cool kids say not to do that too slow, so stay above 12 WPM or whatever it takes not to start counting).

I've been start and stop with my training for a while, but I have to agree with KA7FIU... don't drop the effective (word) speed too much.

I'm able to copy many characters at 20wpm but with the 20wpm word speed I get lost because I've trained with too low of effective speed too often.