I'm Tom, I'm located in Dahlonega, Georgia (about 50 miles NNE of Atlanta). I have a TenTec Rebel, a J-37 key and I am in the process of hanging a G5RV (from the trees of course). I hope to be on the air within a week - I need to work on my code a bit, the last time I did any CW work was about 45 years ago.
73
Hi Tom,
Welcome aboard, welcome indeed. It's a great crowd here and plenty to read in the various sections. I should mention that membership is pretty much world wide, has a huge range of interests but all are bound together by that ol' qrp thing. You have a classic key, classic antenna and what many reckon is destined to become a classic rig, so good luck when you fire it up!!
I had a shorter lay-off from the key than you at only ~20 years. I spent an hour or two reading code from freebie cw programs (I'm on linux but there's plenty of no cost options for Windows and Android around too.) and that definitely helped me. I set my key tension a little high, the gap a little wide and wandered off onto the bands: those settings made it easier for me to send slow-ish reasonably formed cw: it was QLF code but readable, still is QLF, really. I'm still having a ball and I hope you really enjoy climbing back onto the morse code bike: you may wobble a bit when you first get on, but you never really forget.
Just in case nobody tells you, when you get back into it, its street legal to spot yourself on this web site's cluster: it's a way to tell members where you're QRV and a useful way to find out which members are on air and where.
I guess you've spotted that this club has a sorta nautical flavour: that was
Nicola's idea. He lays on this site, operates the Levers of Power behind the scenes and he works tirelessly to keep things running smoothly, which they do.
Jenny is Cap'n,
Mike runs the Tavern and I'm the Ship's Cat.
You don't have to be nuts to be a member here, but just sometimes, it helps.
Once more, welcome aboard, shipmate.
Vic /Ship's Cat
