CW PROSIGNS

A short course on these interesting and very useful CW shortcuts. I am posting this a second time, it was removed without my knowledge.

[@vtxcs]

Hello Chris, just run across your video. Been an Extra for almost 40 years. I am just getting back into CW as I haven't been operating CW for many many years. In the late 80's I was in the Army stationed in Germany. I was granted my reciprocal callsign DA1AS. As a consequence of where I lived out in the countryside, cable tv was not fully implemented so most of the neighbors had these big tv antennas. Well operating from my Kenwood 520 was curtailed since I created a fair amount of interference. Well, found out that CW did not bother neighbors as much, or the XYL! Also, I operated from 0300-0530 in the AM so that helped. Heck I was already getting up early anyway for PT training and the Army mission. For almost 3 years I exclusively was a CW operator. Had a single paddle Heathkit iambic keyer. Was able to get up to about 35-38wpm I had a ball, thousands of contacts. Also, I was the DX operator! Your prosigns, the reason for the message. I found I also liked . Yes, its the sound, hi hi. Anyway, I had a habit of K I used it primarily in the, over to you scenario. It just stuck adding the single K for (over). In my getting back into CW, like riding a bike, I can see it will not take long for me to get back into it. As long as my now, 62 year old fingers can work like my brain has remembered, but without realizing it I was sending the K. I automatically did it and at first had to think why? Then I remembered that particular prosign. Just thought I would share that with you. Once learned, never unlearned. Now that I am getting back into CW wonder why I stopped for so long. Hope to hear you on the air sometime. 73, Dan AB5VJ

[@stevejohnson1968]

Great CW Tutorials.. Thanks for making..

[@ac0m-glennthompson432]

Dumb question: when sending a prosign, do you include the brackets?

[@lyingcat9022]

Negative Goodman :) The are just used when transcribing the Morse code into plane text. It just denotes that it is indeed the Prosign and not two separate characters. It’s BK combined into a prosign and not say the initials BK or an abbreviation using BK.

[@cdherter1]

Certainly up to you, but I will say many of us use carrot quotes because they're just easier to type. Generating a bar over the text is challenging! You can alternatively just say Prosing BK. Chris