CW Software

After 30 years, I've decided it's time I get my CW going again. This will be useful for the UKAC VHF/UHF contests and other CW activities. And it is a nice challenge to hopefully keep the brain going.

Software

The software listed below are some of the official Debian CW packages on the the Debian morse page that work for me. It looks like this software only run on Linux. I'm currently only interested in getting my CW reception going so nothing fancy required like morse decoding, high level QSO training or sending. I'll practice sending once I can actually receive CW again!

• cwcp: Has an easy to use ncurses interface.
• morse: Easy to use command line program, e.g. morse -r -w 20 sends generates random text at 20wpm. It has plenty more options. I don't know if it is a bug or if I'm missing something, but I can only shut it down by killing the process.
• xcwcp: GUI program. Similar to and probably based on cwcp. This is the one I mostly use.
• ebook2cwgui: Converts a text document to a CW mp3 file. Useful for creating practice audio for use away from the computer.

Note that the programs cwcp, xcwcp, cwgen and cw are based on the the unixcw project which has the libcw at its heart.

Other

Some online CW resources. Not listed here are online courses and sites that allow practice via the browser. I'm not using any of these now.

• ARRL Operating Schedule: The ARRL transmitting schedule giving times, frequencies and content. This includes CW practice transmissions as well as voice, CW and digital bulletins. I used to listen to this in the mid 80s to get my CW reception up to scratch for the test.
• ARRL Code Practice Archive Files: Archived from the ARRL on air practice transmissions.