Your First CW Contact, Start to Finish

Almost nobody's first contact goes badly because they did not know the code. It goes badly because they knew the code and not the script. Somebody answers, there is a tone in the headphones with your callsign in front of it, and the question stops being what are those letters and becomes what am I supposed to say now. Below is the whole answer: one complete contact, written out uninterrupted and then taken apart line by line. The callsigns are invented for the example. Everything else is what actually gets sent.

Before you key anything

Find a clear frequency and listen for a good thirty seconds. Then ask: QRL? — is this frequency in use. If somebody is there but too weak to hear, they come back with C or just their call, and you move. Nothing after a second ask and it is yours.

Two more things. Send at the speed you can receive, not the speed you can send — a brisk CQ invites a brisk answer and you will have nobody to blame. And zero-beat the station you are answering: tune until his note sits at the same pitch as your sidetone. Calling 400 Hz off the mark is the most common beginner mistake, and on a busy band it means he never hears you at all.

The contact

CQ CQ CQ DE K6Z K6Z K6Z K

K6Z DE W7XY W7XY K

W7XY DE K6Z = GE OM ES TNX FER CALL = UR RST 579 579 = QTH SAN DIEGO CA = OP JIM JIM = HW CPY? = W7XY DE K6Z KN

K6Z DE W7XY = R FB JIM ES GE = UR RST 559 559 = QTH BOISE ID = OP DAVE DAVE = RIG 40 W ES ANT DIPOLE UP 30 FT = HW? = K6Z DE W7XY KN

W7XY DE K6Z = R TNX FER RPRT DAVE = RIG HR 5 W ES ANT EFHW IN A TREE = WX SUNNY 22 C = FB QSO ES TNX = 73 ES HPE CUL = W7XY DE K6Z KN

K6Z DE W7XY = R TNX JIM = QSL VIA LOTW = 73 ES GL = SK K6Z DE W7XY E E

E E

Line by line

CQ CQ CQ DE K6Z K6Z K6Z K

CQ is the general call — any station, please answer. DE is French for "from", and the call after it is the sender's. The three-and-three shape is not arbitrary: somebody tuning across the band has to land in the middle of your call and still catch enough of it to answer. Two repeats is too few, six is long enough that people tune past. The closing K means "go ahead", addressed to nobody in particular. Send that block twice, listen ten seconds, send it again. Three unanswered rounds and the band is telling you something.

K6Z DE W7XY W7XY K

The answer, and the shape is deliberate. His call twice, mine once. The rule of thumb is to send the other station's callsign as few times as it takes to get his attention and your own as many times as it takes to be copied correctly — he already knows who he is. On a quiet band one and two is plenty. In a pileup you send nothing but your own call, once, and then shut up and listen.

W7XY DE K6Z = GE OM ES TNX FER CALL ...

The first real transmission, and every piece of it earns its place. The = is the prosign BT, ▬•••▬, keyed as one run-together character: a separator, the CW equivalent of a paragraph break, doubling as breathing room for whoever is writing this down. GE is good evening; GM and GA do morning and afternoon. OM is "old man", the standard address to a male operator of any age whatsoever, with YL the equivalent for a woman. ES is "and", TNX FER is thanks for, UR is your.

RST is the signal report and it is three separate scales: Readability 1 to 5, Strength 1 to 9, Tone 1 to 9. 579 says perfectly readable, moderately strong, a pure note with no hum or chirp. Almost everyone sends 599 out of reflex, which is a courtesy rather than a measurement. Send what you actually observe and you will be a more useful correspondent than most of the band. QTH is location, OP introduces the operator's name, and HW CPY? asks how well you are being copied.

The closing KN, ▬•▬▬•, matters more than it looks. K invites anybody to transmit. KN invites only the station you just named. Use KN once you are in a contact and you will lose fewer of them to a third operator wandering in.

K6Z DE W7XY = R FB JIM ES GE = UR RST 559 559 ...

The same shape coming back, which is the point — hear one of these and you have heard the structure of nearly all of them. R is roger, "I received all of that", a claim about copy and not about agreement. FB is fine business: good, well done. His report to me is 559, so I am readable and clean but weaker than he is. Then rig, power and antenna, the usual third leg of a first exchange and the part most operators actually want to hear.

W7XY DE K6Z = R TNX FER RPRT DAVE = RIG HR 5 W ...

RPRT is report, HR is here, WX is weather, HPE CUL is hope to see you later. This is the fork in the road: keep going and you have a ragchew, which can run an hour, or say 73 and close. Neither is rude.

K6Z DE W7XY = R TNX JIM = QSL VIA LOTW = 73 ...

QSL here means "I will confirm this contact", and LoTW is the electronic logbook most operators use for it. 73 is best regards — already plural, so "73s" is a small tell. SK, •••▬•▬, is end of contact, and is not interchangeable with AR, •▬•▬•, which only ends a message. Then E E: two bare dits, the traditional wave goodbye, answered by two more from the other end. It is the one piece of the exchange with no information in it at all, and nobody has proposed dropping it.

Every abbreviation, expanded

QRL?

Is this frequency in use. Ask before you call, always.

CQ / DE

A general call to anyone / from. The callsign after DE is the sender.

K▬•▬

Go ahead — any station may reply.

KN▬•▬▬•

Go ahead — only the station I named.

BT ( = )▬•••▬

Separator between thoughts. One character.

AR•▬•▬•

End of message. Not the end of the contact.

SK•••▬•▬

End of contact.

R•▬•

Roger — received and understood.

RST

Readability 1-5, Strength 1-9, Tone 1-9.

QTH

My location is / what is your location.

QRS / QRQ

Send slower / faster. QRS is the one you will need.

QSB / QRM / QRN

Fading / station interference / atmospheric noise.

OM / YL

Address for a male / female operator.

ES / FER / UR / HR

And / for / your / here.

TNX / TU / FB

Thanks / thank you / fine business, meaning good.

HW? / PSE / AGN

How am I being copied / please / again.

QSL

I acknowledge, or I will confirm the contact.

73 / GL / CUL

Best regards / good luck / see you later.

The full set lives on the prosigns page and the Q code page, and it is worth reading both once before your first call rather than during it.

What will actually go wrong

He sends faster than you can copy. Send PSE QRS. Most operators drop five words per minute immediately and without comment, because most operators have been you.

You miss his callsign. Send PSE UR CALL AGN. Losing a call in the noise is an ordinary event, not a failure, and it happens to people with thirty years on the band.

Two stations answer at once. Send the two or three letters you are certain of with a question mark — W7? AGN — and the right one comes back while the other waits. Never guess a whole callsign.

He fades out mid-sentence. That is QSB. Wait thirty seconds before calling into the gap. It usually comes back.

The short version

Everything above compresses. In a contest the entire contact is two transmissions: K6Z DE W7XY 5NN ID K and TU 5NN CA K6Z K — where 5NN is 599 with the nines cut to N to save a fraction of a second. Four seconds, and it counts for exactly as much in the log as the long one.

Learn the long version first anyway. It teaches you the shape the short one abbreviates, and the shape is what you are after. Run the whole exchange against the trainer until the abbreviations arrive as sounds rather than puzzles, and if you are still counting dots when they do, that is a separate problem with a separate fix — see breaking the 10 WPM plateau.